“The fundamental problem is that, because of the recent successes, people are extrapolating and promising things that are just not possible,” Faggin told last week’s ISS meeting in Half Moon Zaby, California.

‘AI is still based on neural networks,” said Faggin, “in fact, this is based on a simulation in a computer, which obeys a mathematical model that tries to capture what our brain does—which is done completely differently than what we do with computation – so it’s two steps removed from the actual operation that happens in the brain.”

“But most important, we are conscious beings and robots and computers are not conscious,” added Faggin, “and I have a good theory why that will never occur. But we are promised conscious robots in four years – conscious computers in four years. That’s not in the cards. Not even close. No neural network can comprehend anything.”

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“So the moment that you move away from a certain set of data that it can learn—patterns and the correlations of that data – that mechanical structure is completely clueless as to what to do,” continued Faggin, “even self-driving cars require there to be this common sense sort of low-level comprehension.”

“Living systems are the example that we need to learn from,” added Faggin, “how do you keep information processing? Living systems are exquisite information processing systems. These are not classical systems. They are systems of a kind we are still trying to figure out.”

“So to me, the next step is not going to come from silicon,” said Faggin, “it’s moving from our way of understanding systems to an organism, which is a living thing where material flows in and out of a cell. Two days later, the atoms and molecules of that cell are not the atoms and molecules that were there. Is that what happens in a computer? No. The atoms and molecules of the computer are the ones which it was built with. So you use that as a scaffold and run signals over it. Life doesn’t work that way.”

“Why are we smart? Because we are based on the stuff of life, and that’s next frontier,” concluded Faggin, “in AI, you force it to understand the difference between a living system and a mechanical system. We have convinced ourselves that our minds are like computers. That’s not even close. We have emotions. Where are the emotions in computers? We have thoughts. Then we have sensations. When I smell something, I don’t have a simulator to tell me it’s a rose. I’m actually smelling the rose. It is a sensation. That’s what consciousness does. I urge you to look beyond the way we do things. The real stuff is living systems.”