Are the robots we create alive?

Fragment of a discussion from User talk:Sheldor
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Ignoring the organic covering, I would say it's definitely not alive. (at least for now, I am quite happy using the negative entropy test for something being alive)

Since it's not alive, it's not human. :)

But since you brought it up, I would also mention that there are qualitative differences between humans' intellects and computers' precessing power. A computer is basically a bunch of rocks (or tinker toys (http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~cfs/472_html/Intro/TinkertoyComputer/TinkerToy.html)) arranged in a particular way. You can have them find 2^10 but they don't have an UNDERSTANDING of 2 or 10. (Using more terminology from formal logic: They lack the ability to abstract particulars to form universals; they can't have simple comprehensions.)

AW02:44, 27 February 2013