Is AI conscious?

[zurew]

1 hour ago, kylan11 said:

You are making a distinction between what is conscious and what isn't. I'm claiming that there is no such distinction and so it doesn't matter how advanced AI currently is, it is already conscious, as is everything else in the Universe. AI will get better as our understanding of our internal mechanisms get better, and drawing a line will get harder and harder.

If you say that everything is conscious, then the conversation should be about the levels  (of how concious that particular thing is). I assume you wouldn't say, that a rock is as conscious as a human or would you? 

2 hours ago, kylan11 said:

Now, speaking outside of materialism, IF everything is consciousness and everything is ultimately one thing, like ego-shattering experiences seem to suggest, then each pixel that makes up the screen you are reading this on IS consciousness. In fact, it is you.

Just because everything is consciousness, that doesn't tell us anything about how conscious that particular 'piece' of consciousness is. It doesn't tell you how conscious a rock is vs a human. 

I don't think assuming or knowing the nature of Everything or Reality is helpful to answer this thread's question. Even if a human and a cheetah is consciousness in their nature, in their essence, they still have different capabilities and possibilities in the relative world and this thread's question aims to ask a question regarding to the relative domain. 

[kylan11]

2 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Let's say rocks are conscious. Do rocks have thoughts, feelings, emotions, perceptions?

Is that what consciousness is? In that case, in dreamless sleep, or even deep states of meditation where you basically render void all of your sense perceptions, it would be fair to say that for all intents and purposes you do not exist. 

Being doesn't require any of this secondary phenomena. Hell, plants have none of the things you have described yet we know they are "alive", aren't they?

Even in materialism, at a subatomic level, rocks and humans are made up of the same stuff. So if we theoretically copy the way your atoms are organized artificially there will be nothing missing in the equation since your atoms aren't anything special or separate from the rest. Either consciousness is "in" each and every atom of your body, and therefore in the whole universe, or nowhere.

1 hour ago, zurew said:

If you say that everything is conscious, then the conversation should be about the levels  (of how concious that particular thing is). I assume you wouldn't say, that a rock is as conscious as a human or would you? 

Just because everything is consciousness, that doesn't tell us anything about how conscious that particular 'piece' of consciousness is. It doesn't tell you how conscious a rock is vs a human. 

I don't think assuming or knowing the nature of Everything or Reality is helpful to answer this thread's question. Even if a human and a cheetah is consciousness in their nature, in their essence, they still have different capabilities and possibilities in the relative world and this thread's question aims to ask a question regarding to the relative domain. 

The thread's question was ontological in nature, and I addressed it as such. If the question is instead, are they capable of performing the same functions as we do right now? No way. Little more than chatbots. First we need to understand how our brain works if we want to emulate, and eventually trascend its capabilities and limitations artificially.

But that's a boring discussion tbh, modern technology is in its infancy, we have a long way to go. Eventually we will get it right. The real interesting question is: when, and not if, when we will have an AI with general intelligence that rivals that of humans, will it be truly "alive"? Meaning, will it have qualia?

I'm saying yes, and I'm also saying that it already does, it just doesn't know it yet.

Edited November 10, 2022 by kylan11

[Carl-Richard]

47 minutes ago, kylan11 said:

Is that what consciousness is?

I'm proposing that is what people mean when they ask whether AI is conscious or not. If you choose to place consciousness as the ontological base of reality (and rocks and plants are equally as conscious as humans and dogs), good for you, but nobody cares  

What the AI consciousness debate is really about is whether they have a 1st person experience of things that we're experiencing from the outside and tend to associate with a certain human 1st person experience (e.g. human speech with thoughts, feelings, emotions, perceptions). The debate only seriously occurs once the machine starts displaying convincing human characteristics, as it did with LaMDA and its convincing human speech (which is not really speech, but rather letters on a display).

Edited November 11, 2022 by Carl-Richard

[thepixelmonk]

Modern "AI" has no more consciousness or qualia than a rock does. If you want to say a rock has "some level" of consciousness and qualia in some sort panpsychism type of point then fine go ahead, but at that point nobody really cares and isn't really what we're talking about.

Edited November 11, 2022 by thepixelmonk

[kylan11]

Fair enough. But there's no debate there. Anyone who knows a bit about how current AI works also understands that we are nowhere near to emulating the level of complexity to allow thoughts and emotions at a machine level. Absurd proposition considering our brains are still very much a mystery at this point in history.

Now assume we already have a strong AI that is capable of displaying perfect human behaviour, supported by a huge neural network that mimics the brain and cameras to allow it to see stuff. And no doubt we will have it at some point. Will it be conscious? Meaning exactly what you are referring to, 1st person perspective, thoughts, emotions, perceptions. Cause that is the real interesting question and I would like to get your thoughts on that.

If you intuitively say that no, it's just metal and microprocessors, and there's nobody really in there, I would answer that you are exactly the same way, a bunch of cells and eletrical signals between neurons creating the illusion. The implications are that there's nothing fundamentally different between AI and humans even right now. We're just more complex creating a better illusion of distinct identity.

I'm not trying to regurgitate some abstract philosophical doctrine to dismiss the question, quite the opposite really. The implications are very much practical and in my opinion they are the key to answering the practical question of today.

[zurew]

3 hours ago, kylan11 said:

If you intuitively say that no, it's just metal and microprocessors, and there's nobody really in there, I would answer that you are exactly the same way, a bunch of cells and eletrical signals between neurons creating the illusion. The implications are that there's nothing fundamentally different between AI and humans even right now. We're just more complex creating a better illusion of distinct identity.

When you play a videogame, and there are human characters in it and they imitate real human behaviour perfectly, do you say that they actually have an identity or no?

[LastThursday]

3 hours ago, kylan11 said:

Will it be conscious? Meaning exactly what you are referring to, 1st person perspective, thoughts, emotions, perceptions. Cause that is the real interesting question and I would like to get your thoughts on that.

Thing is we don't have a consciousness measuring device. And even if we did, could we really collapse all of conscious experience into a single number indicating "how conscious" something is? The best measuring device we have is our own intuition and comparing with the gold standard of consciousness: us. 

When we ask "is a rock conscious?" we intuitively know that even if it was, it wouldn't be very conscious, because it has very little in common with human beings. We crank up the consciousness scale for dogs, because they are more like humans and so on up.

It seems like the nub of the argument is whether a thing has any form of 1st person perspective at all. A 1st person perspective naturally excludes all other perspectives including yours, so it's impossible to "get at" that perspective and to know if it exists. We can only treat it like a black box and try different inputs to see what different outputs are in response. Then we can try and guess its perspective if it has one.

[Carl-Richard]

On 11.11.2022 at 8:15 AM, kylan11 said:

Now assume we already have a strong AI that is capable of displaying perfect human behaviour, supported by a huge neural network that mimics the brain and cameras to allow it to see stuff. And no doubt we will have it at some point. Will it be conscious? Meaning exactly what you are referring to, 1st person perspective, thoughts, emotions, perceptions. Cause that is the real interesting question and I would like to get your thoughts on that.

If you intuitively say that no, it's just metal and microprocessors, and there's nobody really in there, I would answer that you are exactly the same way, a bunch of cells and eletrical signals between neurons creating the illusion. The implications are that there's nothing fundamentally different between AI and humans even right now. We're just more complex creating a better illusion of distinct identity.

There are two main assumptions here: 1. the idea that the human experience is reducible to the brain, and 2. the idea that the brain is reducible to neuronal connections.

1. Is the human experience really the result of the brain, or is it the result of the process of becoming human; of being born, growing up and being exposed to various impressions? We haven't produced brains in vats yet. In all cases where we observe functional human behavior, we have humans who grew up inside a body, inside a healthy environment.

2. The brain consists of more structures than neurons (glial cells, neurotransmitters etc.). Why should the relevant processing stop at the level of neuronal connections? What about the configuration of the neuron itself, or the interneuronal structures, or the neurochemicals? The neuron is not an island. It's a part of an interconnected whole.

The view I subscribe to says that the best inferences we have currently is that biology is what thoughts, feelings, emotions, perceptions 'look like' from an outside perspective. The experience of abstract thinking does not make sense outside of an organism that is also capable of emotions, perceptions and lower behavioral operations. The higher levels have the lower levels nested inside of them, and you can't reverse engineer any one of them in a reductionistic way. You have to engineer the whole thing. So what conscious AI looks like is what abiogenesis looks like.

Edited November 12, 2022 by Carl-Richard

[kylan11]

On 11/11/2022 at 0:02 PM, zurew said:

When you play a videogame, and there are human characters in it and they imitate real human behaviour perfectly, do you say that they actually have an identity or no?

That depends on what you mean by identity. Do they exist? Yes.

Do they exist as a separate identity from the rest of the screen? That's a matter of perspective. You can choose to see them as a separate being in your screen or look at the screen as a whole and realize that it's just a bunch of pixels. They are both simultaneously. 

Are they aware of themselves as a distinct individuality? No. Not nearly complex enough. But neither do plants nor most animals that fail the mirror test. Or even you and I, before a certain age. Are they truly human? Duck test says yes, intuition says no. Are you a human?

[Basman]

Quote

On 11/11/2022 at 1:18 PM, Carl-Richard said:

You have to engineer the whole thing. So what conscious AI looks like is what abiogenesis looks like.

Very interesting take. I personally believe that machinery isn't capable of consciousness like humans (consciousness, as in sentience and awareness of internal and external existence).

I feel like this thread is kinda derailed by the non-dual discussion, because it ultimately doesn't matter what AI is from a non-dual perspective, in my understanding of it at least. The distinction of AI being conscious or not, that is.

 

[Carl-Richard]

55 minutes ago, Basman said:

I feel like this thread is kinda derailed by the non-dual discussion, because it ultimately doesn't matter what AI is from a non-dual perspective, in my understanding of it at least. The distinction of AI being conscious or not, that is.

That's what usually happens, especially with the conscious AI discussions, but really all discussions on here. Buckle up 

[DefinitelyNotARobot]

What makes something conscious to begin with? Like if you built a human, atom by atom, at which point would the human become "conscious"? Could a single atom make the difference? What I'm getting at is that we lack a clear definition of consciousness, perhaps because there is none, which makes it difficult to assess at which point something can be considered conscious in any meaningful capacity. Maybe AI is conscious in a very "primitive" sense, a very basic form of consciousness so to speak.

Edited November 23, 2022 by DefinitelyNotARobot

[Leo Gura]

Things are not conscious.

Humans are not conscious.

YOU are conscious.

YOU are not a thing and YOU are not a human.

Edited November 25, 2022 by Leo Gura

[AndylizedAAY]

@Leo Gura

On 11/3/2022 at 6:57 AM, Leo Gura said:

A computation is not a computation.

But I thought that I was not supposed to break something down even further reductionisitcally.

[AndylizedAAY]

@Something Funny

1 hour ago, Something Funny said:

@Leo Gura are you not worried that by just giving people answers like that you will turn your teachings into a belief system? Kind of like Christianity where most of your followers will be able to parrot such ideas as "I am God", or "God is absolute love", etc.  without having any direct experience of it?

Christians never parrot ideas that say "I am God" and no I don't parrot or believe dogmatically what Leo says.

[AndylizedAAY]

@Something Funny

3 minutes ago, Something Funny said:

I wasn't talking about you. I didn't even read any of your comments. I just asked Leo about his opinion.

How is saying "I am god" or "God is love" because you've seen Leo say it, without any direct experience different from someone saying "Jesus Christ is our saviour because bible said so"?

 

@Something Funny I never said that I am God or that God is love. 

1 hour ago, Something Funny said:

@Leo Gura are you not worried that by just giving people answers like that you will turn your teachings into a belief system? Kind of like Christianity where most of your followers will be able to parrot such ideas as "I am God", or "God is absolute love", etc.  without having any direct experience of it?

Christians never parrot ideas that say "I am God" and no I don't parrot or believe dogmatically what Leo says.

[AndylizedAAY]

@Something Funny

33 minutes ago, Something Funny said:

@AndylizedAAY once again, I am not talking about you. I didn't even notice your comments in this thread until you tagged me. This is literally the first time I see you on this forum.

I am not saying that they do. I am asking how is that fundamentally different from what they are saying.

And again dude, I wasn't even talking to you. I asked Leo's  opinion about his way of teaching.

Yeah I know, Leo rarely responds to me and might do the same to you so I thought that I would say something. I thought that I had something important to say and I didn't know that you ONLY wanted Leo's response. I can stop talking to you if you like.

[LastThursday]

@Something Funny, @AndylizedAAY why not have a private conversation about it, so we can stick to the topic instead?

[LastThursday]

@Something Funny don't be a petulant child. Stick to the topic.

[Carl-Richard]

@Something Funny @AndylizedAAY Holy shit are you guys on your periods? (You're making me use gendered insults god damn it)

Edited November 25, 2022 by Carl-Richard