Can Machines Think?

Robert Wright becomes alarmingly passionate on his opinion of computers and their ability to think. Wright wrote an essay titled "Can Machines Think? Maybe So, As Deep Blue's Chess Prowess Suggests". Wright's main thesis or argument is whether machines are capable of thinking. The tone of his essay suggests that Wright believes computer can think but the observations and examples that he gives suggests otherwise. Before answering the main question, Wright must define what he would define at "thinking" for a computer. Wright does not explicitly say what he would consider thinking in reference to computers but he does give specific experiments in which computers can perform mathematical equations quickly and efficiently. And a different example where an IBM computer, Deep Blue, and Garry Kasparov competed in a chess match. At the end of Wright's essay it was still unclear as to what he truly believe computers were capable of.

Although computers are continuing to advance and technology is growing exponentially every day, I do not believe that computers will ever be capable of "thinking". Sure computers may be able to do extensive math equations and even recognize speech but will they be able to analyze that speech for stress or anxiety? No, that is a human trait and I don't think we will ever be able to teach a computer how to do that. Computers will never be able to make "fight or flight" decisions, they won't be able to decide where to go for dinner, and they won't be able to write essays about consciousness. Wright brought up the example of the Turing test where interrogators must decide and choose whether they were communicating with a human or a computer keyboard. In theory this test would be a good experiment of the thinking capabilities of computers but the interrogators interpretations are entirely subjective - and if that is the case, no thinking power is being measured, only the thinking of the interrogator.

Computers will never be able to feel emotions like anger, jealousy, joy and love - this important factor is the exact reason why computers will never be able to think independently. How do we teach a machine these feelings? And if that were possible, how then do we we teach the computer to use those feelings to think and make judgments? Until these questions are answered, computers will remain lifeless machines and will be incapable of higher cognitive functioning skills.