From the Q&A session at the end of "It's 2001. Where is HAL?" a lecture on the current [sorry] state of artificial intelligence by Marvin Minsky, Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The full lecture is here, a great read on why AI isn't working.

"The question is, if you duplicate the structures in the brain and the right functions, will that reproduce your personality and consciousness and allow you to live forever. I'm sure the answer is yes, of course. People are just machines. The idea of a soul is one of those ideas which says let's take all the things we don't understand and put them in one word. So it's not a very good theory. Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec and every science fiction writer since 1950 has written some story where you reproduce the connection structures of the brain and you've got a copy of the person.

"What I don't understand is why everyone isn't very excited about this and puts money and research into it so that they can live forever. But I have one little clue as to why they don't. I was once giving some lectures on longevity and immortality. I noticed that people didn't like the idea much, so I actually took a poll of a couple of audiences. I asked how many of you would like to live for 200 years. Almost no one raised their hand. They said because you'd be so crippled and arthritic and amnesiac that it would be no fun. So I changed the question. How would you like to live 200 or 500 years in the same physical condition that you were at half your age. Guess what, almost nobody raised their hand.

"But when I tried the same question with a technical audience, scientific people, they all raised their hand. So I did ask both groups. The ordinary people, if you'll pardon the stereotype, generally said that they thought human lifetime was just fine. They'd done most of the things they wanted to do. Maybe they wanted to visit the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan, but they could live without that. And surely another 100 years would be terribly boring. What did the scientists say? Right now I have the topological problem in the theory of thoughts and people have been worried about it for a hundred years. I bet I could crack it in 200.

"So I think the world is a very dangerous place. It's full of people who don't care. That's why they must play games instead of war. They're so bored. I was around during World War II - in fact I got into the Navy. Luckily they dropped the A-bomb when I was in boot camp and I got to not get killed like my friends in the Pacific. But the country was purposeful and galvanized. Everybody was so energetic because there was a purpose in life, mainly killing people. Games motivate kids. I wished we knew how and why and what we could do with it. Terribly important... I think games - and mathematics is the biggest game of all - are the important thing in life. There's a reason you want to live a long time. But nobody wants 200 more years of small talk. So let's give them something better."