Is AI conscious?

@wildgrass said
Like you're going to create sentience. Doesn't that seem god-like? when Johnny 5 got struck by lightning or something? You speak of fairy tales.

There's no soul needed for consciousness, biology is just a mix of chemistry and electricity. The mechanisms are fundamentally different from how a computer might access, interpret and store information. It is folly to think the ...[text shortened]... thropomorphic computers because it then gives a justification for us to turn our lives over to them.

Frankenstein's experiment is not really that impressive. He was using already formed human body parts and jump starting the assembled body with an electric jolt.

IRL there would be problems with the parts immune systems rejecting each other but other than that...

@AThousandYoung said
As Alan Turing pointed out in the movie clip above just because a machine doesn’t have the same thoughts and feelings we do does that mean it didn’t have thoughts or feelings?

Let’s consider the Ship of Theseus. A person can have mechanical parts replacing their organs and not lose sentience. At what point do they lose sentience?

How about a computer replacing the brain? That would have access to chemicals and biology.

In these analogies, interesting ideas, but we are actually talking about creating consciousness, not asking what it would take to remove it.

You build the Ship of Theseus with wood. Consciousness is a developmental process that operates under principles of biology. I think one of the follies of Turin's logic is that synthetic computational software can create intelligence. We still can't fully explain how knowledge is stored in our own bodies but we can say for certain that the knowledge storage, recall of that knowledge, is completely different from how it's done synthetically. Our brains do not act like computers, and vice versa.

These things are super impressive. I use them all the time. But I can tell you that almost no one outside of silicon valley wants a future where we accept that millions of bots released from silicon valley are conscious and deserve human rights. The tech bros want them to run the world. Anthropomorphizing them is a huge mistake.

@wildgrass said
In these analogies, interesting ideas, but we are actually talking about creating consciousness, not asking what it would take to remove it.

You build the Ship of Theseus with wood. Consciousness is a developmental process that operates under principles of biology. I think one of the follies of Turin's logic is that synthetic computational software can create intelligenc ...[text shortened]... e human rights. The tech bros want them to run the world. Anthropomorphizing them is a huge mistake.

Wait a sec. Are we discussing if it’s possible or are we discussing if we want it to happen? You seem to have changed the goalposts on me.

Have you changed your mind about if it’s possible? If not who cares what tech bros want?

@AThousandYoung said
Wait a sec. Are we discussing if it’s possible or are we discussing if we want it to happen? You seem to have changed the goalposts on me.

Have you changed your mind about if it’s possible? If not who cares what tech bros want?

It's possible but not with the approach that's being discussed here. The only way to build consciousness would start by using the biological systems required to form it. Here it seems they're trying to build consciousness using the wrong parts.

@moonbus said
Yes, it is theoretically possible, but that would not be conclusive evidence that the monkeys were conscious. Randomly shuffling Scrabble letters for 14 billion years must also, eventually, produce a complete Scrabble board which makes sense.

This is the point I have long since given up trying to argue w/ @KellyJay about how life got started: there are only about 100 natu ...[text shortened]... d to happen, somewhere, in all the billions and billions and billions of galaxies. It happened here.

One question though, is the utility of consciousness. There are a lot of people out there who have never learnt to think critically. Of what value is that consciousness, if it feeds off fear, bigotry and propaganda that the followers will mindlessly vote in demagogues who enact policies against their own best interests. We are not all imbued with the consciousness of an Einstein or a Bohr. At what point is consciousness overvalued and to what extent is trying to achieve that in AI a waste of time?

AI will develop on its own path and it will have features analogous to human thought processes, but will always be non conscious in a human way. The issue is independent AI agents that act against human interests and operate mathematically in dimensions far beyond human understanding that make their processes indecipherable to us. That’s a real problem.

@AThousandYoung said
Frankenstein's experiment is not really that impressive. He was using already formed human body parts and jump starting the assembled body with an electric jolt.

IRL there would be problems with the parts immune systems rejecting each other but other than that...

This post reflects either another joke or an ignorance of biology.

@wildgrass said
This post reflects either another joke or an ignorance of biology.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/vladimir-demikhov-two-headed-dog

@kmax87 said
One question though, is the utility of consciousness. There are a lot of people out there who have never learnt to think critically. Of what value is that consciousness, if it feeds off fear, bigotry and propaganda that the followers will mindlessly vote in demagogues who enact policies against their own best interests. We are not all imbued with the consciousness of an Einste ...[text shortened]... ar beyond human understanding that make their processes indecipherable to us. That’s a real problem.

So many issues to answer all in one post.

To begin with the first one, to what extent consciousness is utile... Consciousness may turn out to be an evolutionary experiment wh/ fails and drops out of the gene pool. H.saps has not been on this planet anywhere near as long as dinosaurs were, before the asteroid hit.

While we are not all endowed w/ the intelligence of Oppenheimer, we might all have done better with the conscience of Einstein, at least in respect of splitting atoms. Edward Teller, 'the father of the H-bomb' and model for Dr. Strangelove, said "we must know what can be known." To wh/ I would respond: but we must not do what can be done. So, where's the line btw knowing and doing? There was a war to be decided, I get that, and the Nazis were also working on building a heavy-water reactor. Recent historical research has shown that the Nazis were a long way away from sustaining a critical reaction, much farther away than they themselves realized; and it is another long way from sustaining a critical reaction to actually building a bomb. Still, the Allies did not know that then, it was top secret. I can understand why the Allies pressed ahead w/ building atom bombs. What is still hard to accept is that highly educated and intelligent people working on the project themselves did not know how destructive an atom bomb might be. A few people thought the entire atmosphere might catch fire. They were wrong, but what if ..

I think we are apraoching a similar sort of apocalyptic what-if scenario with AI, especially when hooked up to omnipresent surveillance cameras, face-recognition software, and the entire federal social security database. And don't forget that Trump (actually, his minders, Project 2025) want to centralize the states' voter databases (though, for the time being, courts have stopped it). If that doesn't ring alarm bells in conservatives' minds, the very people who traditionally want small goobermint, I don't know what would.

@moonbus said
So many issues to answer all in one post.

To begin with the first one, to what extent consciousness is utile... Consciousness may turn out to be an evolutionary experiment wh/ fails and drops out of the gene pool. H.saps has not been on this planet anywhere near as long as dinosaurs were, before the asteroid hit.

While we are not all endowed w/ the intelligence ...[text shortened]... ves' minds, the very people who traditionally want small goobermint, I don't know what would.

Last point, MAGA is not small government. If they are still saying that, they are lying, perhaps lying to themselves.

@AThousandYoung said
https://allthatsinteresting.com/vladimir-demikhov-two-headed-dog

What the heck point are you trying to make with this link? This just looks like a standard organ transplant experiment. Or are you trying to say they used AI to endow consciousness to a dog?

@wildgrass said
What the heck point are you trying to make with this link? This just looks like a standard organ transplant experiment. Or are you trying to say they used AI to endow consciousness to a dog?

Tell me about your biology expertise.

I’m not an expert but I do have a Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry and I’ve taught high school classes on the topic.

@AThousandYoung said
Tell me about your biology expertise.

I’m not an expert but I do have a Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry and I’ve taught high school classes on the topic.

I assumed you were a history teacher.

@vivify said
I assumed you were a history teacher.

Nah that’s an amateur interest.

@wildgrass said
Last point, MAGA is not small government. If they are still saying that, they are lying, perhaps lying to themselves.

Agreed, the GOP has abandoned all the principles of traditional conservatism. And maga never had any principles to abandon.

@moonbus said


I think we are apraoching a similar sort of apocalyptic what-if scenario with AI, especially when hooked up to omnipresent surveillance cameras, face-recognition software, and the entire federal social security database.

As an aside, something to reign in our dystopian apocalyptic thinking, this exchange with an electrical engineer talking about the impact of AI in his industry gives an interesting perspective. A perspective that is gaining ground where AI may require more human input than less.

YouTube?si=LJGS8x7fmSY_DRzR