What would it take for a computer with A.I. to become a computer that has psychic powers?

There is no such thing as psychic powers.

@ragingloli is quite. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and yet the evidence for extraordinary claims of psychic powers is so far from being extraordinarily completing that that assertions it exists are laughable. That doesn’t mean they are false, just that they fall far short of the evidence required to make them believable.

Intuition, on the other hand, clearly does exist. It comes from life experience and recognizing similarities in causes. leading to correct predictions of effects. In some areas of endeavor, say modeling the behavior of a hurricane, computers exhibit more of what we would classically call intuition than humans can muster without access to said computer models.

I think a computer would never be able to have intuition, they don’t work that way. Intuition is a hunch, a feeling, not a certainty. For a computer, it is either 1 or 0, a yes or no, so a computer would operate on certainty alone.

As for psychic powers, there is no such thing. However, if you consider predicting the future to be a psychic power, then perhaps a computer powerful enough to calculate all possible variables, all possible locations and trajectories of every atom, and all possible outcomes, could perhaps predict the future with quite a good degree of precision. That is of course assuming, that we don’t need a computer the size of the universe to run the calculations.

@poisonedantidote Quantum computers will operate in probability densities meaning they can consider infinite possibilites between 1 and 0. It’s probably what’s going on at the quantum level in human neural networks.

@ETpro Very interesting, I did not know that. It makes sense when you take in to consideration the uncertainty principle.

As for intuition in humans, I have no idea what could be the cause. I would imagine it is to do with a hunch you get from past experiences, but that can’t be fully correct, as I remember having intuition about things before I had enough experiences to call on.

If a machine had enough information and processing ability it might appear to have psychic powers. It might come up with uncannily accurate hunches based on pattern recognition.

Its not the answer you would require it would be the question The answer is 47 or is it 57

UC Berekely has a very rudimentary version of “mind reading” now.
Look at the second video clip in the article to see how far they have come – and how much work remains.

“Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and computational models, UC Berkeley researchers have succeeded in decoding and reconstructing people’s dynamic visual experiences – in this case, watching Hollywood movie trailers.

As yet, the technology can only reconstruct movie clips people have already viewed. However, the breakthrough paves the way for reproducing the movies inside our heads that no one else sees, such as dreams and memories, according to researchers.
The approximate reconstruction (right) of a movie clip (left) is achieved through brain imaging and computer simulation

“This is a major leap toward reconstructing internal imagery,” said Professor Jack Gallant, a UC Berkeley neuroscientist and coauthor of the study published online today (Sept. 22 2011) in the journal Current Biology. “We are opening a window into the movies in our minds.”

Thirty years from now we will look back and marvel how crude it was back then.

It simply has to learn the art of Bull Shitting people.

How would we know if something had gained psychic power? We’d have a history of prediction, but what would be a success rate that differentiated from very good programming coupled with a huge database?

@flutherother and @poisonedantidote have it right, people who believe in psychic power wouldd just be real confused.

A very wise human running the programming