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Is anyone else really confused why so many people are concerned about this when the Earth is literally boiling away and fascists are integrating themselves into every government system? I’m not saying we should be completely ignoring this concern but I just do not understand the obsession with it. My dad keeps talking about the AI singularity and I’m like that’s the least of our problems right now? Maybe that’s just me but…
I think those other things exacerbate the fear in “AI”. Like, on top of all of that other stuff, some fancy new software is starting to take jobs in writing, journalism, art, voiceovers, etc.
We have no empirical metrics for what conscious even is. It’s a completely emergent property. This is a long running philosophical debate. People also disagree on whether or not animals are actually conscious. So if people don’t even think their dog is conscious, then their ability to decide if an algorithm is would be questionable.
The weirdest problem we’re going to have is that AI could get really good at faking consciousness. It could merely be mimicking consciousness based on how it’s learned consciousness should look like, but is really just regurgitating information.
So how do we tell the difference between “real” consciousness and mimicry?
my god my entire lemmy feed is about AI all day everyday to the point I truly hope it does gain consciousness and eats my eyeballs
Considering that there are swaths of the population to this day that barely consider (If they consider at all) certain other swaths conscious beings, I don’t have high hopes for us figuring out if an AI is.
Terry Bisson 1991
Haven’t watched the vid, but I’ve been thinking about this lately. Consciousness isn’t like a super well-defined concept, I don’t think, so by some loose metrics I’d figure we’re basically there, or really close. Given it’s not like a physical or material concept, the appearance of consciousness to me is more- or-less consciousness. Make sure you treat your chat bots nicely!
The same time we’ll know other humans are conscious: never.
I think we can very strongly infere that other humans are conscious from knowing that we are conscious ourselves and seeing that other peoples brains work in the same way as ours and people think and behave in a very similar way as us and also have a concept of what consciousness is that corresponds with our own. In my opinion believing that other people aren’t conscious is in the same category of beliefs as the past, the future or even the world and physical laws not existing outside of our subjective experiences. Sure you can not mathematically prove any of that but questioning it isn’t really useful for more than a philosophical exercise of scepticism. As for AI I think it is a tricky question that I can’t answer. Right now I don’t think it is but maybe in the future it will be.
Questioning whether other humans are conscious has value in that it helps us figure out what could make other entities conscious. Exactly as we’re doing in this thread.
