I don’t really think so. I am not really sure why, but my gut feeling is that being good at impersonating a human being in text conversation doesn’t mean you’re closer to creating a real AI.
I don’t really think so. I am not really sure why, but my gut feeling is that being good at impersonating a human being in text conversation doesn’t mean you’re closer to creating a real AI.
If “what we call a soul” means consciousness, then I doubt there’s a way to prove that anything else than your own self can be shown to actually have a soul. Not even what we call “other people”.
You being aware of your own consciousness doesn’t mean every human necessarily is in the same, right? …and since we lack of a way to prove consciousness then we can’t assume other people are any more conscious than an AI could be.
I agree with this, it’s impossible to prove that other people are the same as you. Still, I have this feeling about AI atm. Maybe I just haven’t encountered one ^^
The problem is we probe consciousness trough language, and we created machines capable of damm good language. We tend to think language as a byproduct of conscience. If I feel like I’m a being separated from the world, I can use language to order that world. As AI Focus a lot on NLP we have machines capable of using language and describing the world as conscientious beings, but we have no way to tell the difference of a emulated conscience and a real one.
The difference is that we know we are all built on the same architecture. Since consciousness is the byproduct of how our physical brain functions, knowing that I’m conscious is a reasonable basis to assume that others are conscious as well.
The problem with AIs is that they’re not built on the same principles, and so we can’t know whether its genuine consciousness or mimicry. We can’t ever definitively know that something that acts consciously and claims to be conscious has an internal qualia of experience.
That said, I would argue that from an ethical standpoint we should err on the side of caution. If an AI claims to be conscious and acts as if it has self determination, then it should be given the benefit of the doubt and treated as a sentient entity. Given how we currently treat animals, I don’t have much hope for this though.
Do we know for sure that our architecture is the same? How do you prove that we are really the same? For all I know I could be plugged to a simulation :P
If there was a way to test consciousness then we would be able to prove that we are at least interacting with other conscious beings… but since we can’t test that, it could theoretically be possible that we (I? you?) are alone, interacting with a big non-sentient and interconnected AI, designed to make us “feel” like we are part of a community.
I know it’s trippy to think that but… well… from a philosophical point of view, isn’t that true?
I find solipsism isn’t really a useful framework to use, and we have to go on the assumption that the world we perceive from our senses is real. We can never prove it, but acting on this basis is the only logical approach available to us.
We know that our architecture is the same because we’ve studied the brain for a long time now. We understand how natural selection, genetics, and evolution work. This gives us a very strong basis to argue that our brains do indeed have the same basic function.
Oh but I agree that assuming our reality is solipsist isn’t useful for practical purposes. I’m just highlighting the fact that we do not know. We don’t have enough data preciselly because there are many things related to consciousness that we cannot test.
Personally I think that if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and acts like a duck then it probably is a duck (and that’s what the studies you are referencing generally need to assume). Which is why, in my opinion, the turing test is a valid approach (and other tests with the same philosophy).
Disregarding turing-like tests and at the same time assuming that only humans are capable of having “a soul” is imho harder to defend, because it requires additional assumptions. I think it’s easier to assume that either duck-likes are ducks or that we are in a simulation. Personally I’m skeptical on both and I just side with the duck test because it’s the more pragmatic approach.
I agree that we should always give systems that act as if they’re conscious and self aware . the benefit of the doubt. That’s the only ethical approach in my opinion.
As you note, we still lack the understanding of how consciousness arises and until we develop such understanding we can only guess whether a system is conscious or not based on its external behavior.
There’s a great distance between what we can prove and what we can know. Proving is a very high bar. I know God exists. I’m saying that I don’t know if those fictional characters are concious, they don’t really seem to be to me.