OSNews

- Isaac Asimov has written many great books about robots acqiring conscience.

- FPGA architectures are not well suited for neural networks. They address different problems.

- You can build adaptable hardware with FPGAs ( for example hardware emulators... ) but you won't get extra computing power using on-the-fly reconfigurable devices, except for some dedicated signal ( or image... ) processing application where you can download a configuration at startup.

- The ultimate goal of computer science is to raise the abstaction level of the programmation, from binary encodings to a self programming computer. In the end, all professional programmer would be replaced by users telling the computer what it is expected to do. Many years ago, people felt that intelligence would be some advanced programming language ( in that time, AI research was related to Lisp and Prolog ), now, an intelligent robot is portrayed as a very complex neural network.

- A really intelligent robot is not a computer. A computer can make millions of multiplications each second without making any mistake. A intelligent robot will make mistakes. One century ago, people able to make fast multiplications were considered as intelligent, now we know that all computers can do that with zero intelligence.
An intelligent robot will probably need to use real computers or have one embedded. ( Maybe humans will also have embedded computers one day, ... )

- Isn't indecidability related to Gödel theorem, which prevents any solution to that problem of self programmation ?

- The people the most involved in making intelligent electronic devices work for military applications. Frightening, isn't it ?

- Our brain is much more complex than any computer on earth whereas electronic devices are much more faster than electrochimical reactions of neuronal networks. The solution is to exchange complexity with speed. Computers work that way : They are sequential devices whereas our brain is parallel...

- When people started to conceive computers or "mecanised" automatas ( Von Neumann, Vaucanson, Babbage, De Vinci... ) they were dreaming of intelligent robots, no one expected the rise of Operating Systems, Internet, Spreadsheets and all that wreck. Comparing the initial goals with today's results, computer science is a complete failure.

@Marc : Future of automobiles : We'll use them forever : Until the invension of teleporters...

Beam me out.