I'm trying to educate myself in both philosophy and in engineering; I think it's realistic to expect a person to understand both the arts and the sciences, at least to an undergrad level, and I think there is value in both.
The philosophy of consciousness is interesting, though; I mean, the question "what is consciousness" is interesting and important, and... well, if we want to create consciousness, we need to answer that question; Even if it's an emergent property of something else we do, which is to say, even if we create a machine we call conscious by accident, we still need to know it when we see it; and right now, I'm not sure that philosophy even has a good "I will know it when I see it" kind of answer to that question.
But yeah, my response was mostly an attempt to point out that the article is talking about something that is more like "CASE tools" than like HAL
The philosophy of consciousness is interesting, though; I mean, the question "what is consciousness" is interesting and important, and... well, if we want to create consciousness, we need to answer that question; Even if it's an emergent property of something else we do, which is to say, even if we create a machine we call conscious by accident, we still need to know it when we see it; and right now, I'm not sure that philosophy even has a good "I will know it when I see it" kind of answer to that question.
But yeah, my response was mostly an attempt to point out that the article is talking about something that is more like "CASE tools" than like HAL