[ilaksh]

As far as I can tell, people only wonder about this if they assume that consciousness has some kind if supernatural aspect to it.

[paganel]

I'm not the OP, and most certainly I do not believe there is any "supernatural" aspect behind the human mind, but what will really, really convince me that the Singularity would have arrived will be the moment when robots/machines will have understood humor. Them, the machines, being able to actually make new jokes will be the decisive proof that we, humans, are not the only "intelligent" entities on this planet.

And even more OT, this reminded me that I don't recollect any "robot jokes" in any of the science fiction books I've read. Granted, there weren't that many (just the basics: Asimov, Frank Herbert, Philip K. Dick, some Stanislaw Lem), but I'm curious if any SF writer wrote "robot jokes", more exactly jokes that us, humans, think will be made by robots in the not-so-distant future.

[sigil]

Have you ever read transcripts from the Loebner Prize Competition, a Turing (con)test they hold each year? Machines keep getting funnier.

http://www.worldsbestchatbot.com/Competition_Transcripts

[dnr]

Lem's best work (IMO) is the stuff about robot culture, including jokes. Try The Cyberiad and Mortal Engines.

Edit: Though, to be fair, Lem didn't write near-future SF, his robot stories were more like alternate universes.

[jfoutz]

Another in a long line of goalposts that assert "this is intelligence". Chess fell, driving fell, machine translation is falling. Robot storytellers (which, i think would cover humor) are only a matter of time.

[MaysonL]

Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Read it.

[s_baby]

Not really. Believing a turing machine can create consciousness has implicit assumptions that may or may not be true. Is consciousness completely computational or does it piggyback on some qualitative attribute of the substrate? Can the processes of the brain be reduced to data structures and algorithms? Can simplified models be an adequate replacement for "chaotic" processes of the brain which are not computable without remainder using silicon? There are plenty of known unknowns which have implications for the possibility of such simulations. If you think the simulation of consciousness is a given then you probably have a hand-wavy understanding of the problem.