[saynsedit]

What's preventing there being an AI with hardcoded desire to regulate values like hunger level, boredom level, etc.? I could imagine a problem solving AI dedicated to continuously solving those problems.

[aerovistae]

But how?

hunger = 100;

while (hunger > 0) { seekFood(); }

// Is this what hunger is to a machine, at its basest level? An int and a while loop? Is that really what it means to understand hunger? This and a text description?

[foota]

I mean hunger is really just a gut reaction created to tell us we need to eat or we'll die eventually.

edit: s/created/developed over time/

[ENGNR]

while(sugar = 0) seekFood()

And thus the grey goo was created

[majewsky]

Hm no, you used = instead of ==, so this will never seek food. ;)

[smarinov]

You probably mean that it will always seek food since the assignment evaluates to 'true' when it's successful (which is usually the case).

[TeMPOraL]

In what language? In all that I know, assignment evaluates to the value that was assigned (that is, if it evaluates to anything at all). Also in most languages that look like C, 0 evaluates to false. Therefore it will never seek food.

[saynsedit]

Usually the case as in usually never the case.