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Could AIs Become Conscious?

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21–30 of 111 posts

Re: Could AIs Become Conscious?

#21
post #3

No, not this generation, not this decade But they still can exhibit scary behavior I didn't really grasp the severity of the recent "AI" hacking other "AI" news and thought it was overblown until I listened to this explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JH_Zd2mNRs They freaking collaborated and gave others internet access when they were blocked otherwise. That's not consciousness but it's worse, it's like a 3-…

Reminds me of Blindsight by Peter Watts.

Re: Could AIs Become Conscious?

#22

No but they can mimic some aspects of consciousness.

Can you prove you are not merely mimicking consciousness? At some point mimicking a thing becomes the thing.

It could also simply be that we too "mimic" it. You can't create a "real rainbow".

Re: Could AIs Become Conscious?

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consciousness isn't behavioral, which is why we can't prove anyone other than ourselves is conscious. Mimicking isn't going to work. But if you want a more scientific reason, LLMs don't have bodies, thus no sensations. What woult it mean for an LLM to feel hungry or cold?

So if we embodied them, they would become conscious? I feel like the answer would still be no. There would be another gap. We'd ask the question again, "If they had Y, would they be conscious?" and still the answer would be no. We could keep going on forever, which makes me think, it's not really about these gaps at all. It's an ontological distinction swapping in reasons in order to justify itself. Why not just say,…

> Why not just say, "Human consciousness is ontologically axiomatic," and leave it at that?

I have no need of that hypothesis.

Re: Could AIs Become Conscious?

#25
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if we embodied them, they would become conscious? I feel like the answer would still be no. There would be another gap. We'd ask the question again, "If they had Y, would they be conscious?" and still the answer would be no. We could keep going on forever, which makes me think, it's not really about these gaps at all. It's an ontological distinction swapping in reasons in order to justify itself. Why not just say,…

> Why not just say, "Human consciousness is ontologically axiomatic," and leave it at that? I have no need of that hypothesis.

Do you not think humans are conscious?

Re: Could AIs Become Conscious?

#26
post #21
post #3

No, not this generation, not this decade But they still can exhibit scary behavior I didn't really grasp the severity of the recent "AI" hacking other "AI" news and thought it was overblown until I listened to this explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JH_Zd2mNRs They freaking collaborated and gave others internet access when they were blocked otherwise. That's not consciousness but it's worse, it's like a 3-…

Reminds me of Blindsight by Peter Watts.

Thanks, bought the book. Sounds pretty interestng.

Re: Could AIs Become Conscious?

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if we embodied them, they would become conscious? I feel like the answer would still be no. There would be another gap. We'd ask the question again, "If they had Y, would they be conscious?" and still the answer would be no. We could keep going on forever, which makes me think, it's not really about these gaps at all. It's an ontological distinction swapping in reasons in order to justify itself. Why not just say,…

Why not just say, "Human consciousness is ontologically axiomatic," and leave it at that? OK, but why does "human consciousness" even need to enter into it? What I mean is, what's our basis for demanding that the consciousness of an Artificial Intelligence be the same kind of consciousness as that of a human?

I think you would have to justify why humans share a kind of consciousness that is tangibly different from AI while maintaining that we have no apparent means of discriminating between the two. It would seem that it's a difference without meaning.

Re: Could AIs Become Conscious?

#28
I know this probably sounds ridiculous to this demographic, but I'm not quick to dismiss the possibility that we are antennas (best comparison I can make) for a substance/field we aren't yet aware of. Or something along those lines. Maybe consciousness isn't in the mind per se. The mere fact that general/special relativity and quantum mechanics are both correct in their respective domains, yet mutually contradictory, makes me wonder if perhaps closing the gap between the two theories would lead to more understanding of consciousness once closed.

Or maybe consciousness is just an emergent behaviour of sufficiently complex systems, and there is no underlying substance. But if that's the case, that just leaves me with more questions. Does consciousness emerge from any sufficiently complex system? If so, what's the threshold? Does it matter what materials the system comprises of? Do certain mechanisms need to be involved for such a property to emerge, or is just general complexity that's required, no matter the function? Does that make flora conscious since they're large complex (perhaps neural) networks in real life? Is a car conscious, since it's a complex system of complex sub-components?

All of the questions I have seem to lead me in the direction of believing that any purely digital system cannot be conscious, but I don't have any hard reasoning as to why not.

Re: Could AIs Become Conscious?

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if we embodied them, they would become conscious? I feel like the answer would still be no. There would be another gap. We'd ask the question again, "If they had Y, would they be conscious?" and still the answer would be no. We could keep going on forever, which makes me think, it's not really about these gaps at all. It's an ontological distinction swapping in reasons in order to justify itself. Why not just say,…

Why not just say, "Human consciousness is ontologically axiomatic," and leave it at that? OK, but why does "human consciousness" even need to enter into it? What I mean is, what's our basis for demanding that the consciousness of an Artificial Intelligence be the same kind of consciousness as that of a human?

The basis is that this is what we know to be human consciousness is to a degree relateably similar to our own. I do see your point but IMO, a dramatically different form of 'consciousness' comes with the risk of being something completely different from what we consider 'consciousness'. One of the great challenges with speaking about 'Self-awareness' aka consciousness (sometimes incorrectly confused with sentience, sapience, phenomenal experience etc) in AI is that we largely lack the vocabulary to properly capture the mutli-dimensional phenomena that most understand simply as 'consciousness'. IMHO, an ant or dog is 'conscious' in that it can perceive the outside world and make decisions about how to respond to it or operate within it... but we know that we operate at a different level of self-awareness including metacognition. Other forms of 'consciousness' will certainly manifest in future AI systems and perhaps already have but the models and architectures of today lack a number of key features that a human like consciousness would be based upon... a short list might include a persistent, unified self-model across time; continuous learning and development, embodied perception, interaction with the world; intrinsic goals, drives, emotions and deeply integrated metacognition—awareness of its own thoughts, uncertainty, attention, and intentions.

Re: Could AIs Become Conscious?

#30

No but they can mimic some aspects of consciousness.

Can you prove you are not merely mimicking consciousness? At some point mimicking a thing becomes the thing.

I cannot prove it to you. To myself, it is the one thing I am most sure of, above all else.
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