ABSTRACT
Human scientists are engaged in the project of creating artificial intelligence (AI) by a very different process, namely science. The great majority of AI researchers are not seeking to build a conscious mind, but trying to emulate particular intellectual skills at which humans have traditionally beaten computers. While successful whole brain emulation could be expected to produce something which thought somewhat like a human, an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) based on traditional AI might think in an entirely alien way. Most people working on AGI are materialists, sceptical of the dualist claim that consciousness exists in a spiritual realm which is distinct and separate from the material one. Sir Roger Penrose claimed that a phenomenon described by quantum physics known as the wave function collapse could explain how consciousness arises. The soul is what gives rise to consciousness, and it is also what marks us as different from animals.
