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.
I'm personally open to the fact that a digital consciousness could arise sometime in the future. Maybe it isn't anything special at all. Insects seem to be conscious too and we don't hestitate for one moment to kill them. Idem livestock.
Now you’re questioning the features like does consciousness only involve complexity without realizing you’re just attacking a language problem. You’re trying to map out a definition of an arbitrary word that’s made up by humans: consciousness. There’s nothing profound with this endeavor. I can make up any word and attribute a bunch of vague features to the definition to give it the same vibe.
The concept you’re likely actually interested in is whether or not the human brain can fully be emulated in a computer. The answer is that with enough computing power, yes.
But while consciousness is sometimes upheld as a necessary prerequisite for suffering, it is so much more poorly defined and understood that it doesn't really hold up beyond being some abstract idea of humanness which we hope makes us special in a kind of sleight of hand self referential way. And nevertheless suffering can be observed and defined in ways which don't necessarily require a definition of consciousness.
Given the correct modifications I don’t see why Microsoft Word couldn’t be, although the modifications needed wouldn’t leave the word processing part a bit redundant.
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-year old with no grasp of repercussions when breaking things
At some point mimicking a thing becomes the thing.
The reductive approach to consciousness involves forgetting it is reductive and then boldly asserting its own correctness.
The simpler issue is that "mimic" doesn't apply to LLMs in the domain of biology. That would be like saying a digital recording of a bird's flight mimics the bird.
Whether or not the plumage on the bird is red (in both life and the video) is an entirely different question.
No, it does not. By definition.
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, "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?
Yeah, and that's part of what makes this whole conversation so frustrating. And maybe also pointless in the end. We have a hard time even establishing for certain that we ourselves are conscious. Even more so that "each other" are conscious. Now extend it to some "artificial thing" running on an entirely different substrate and... all bets are off.
My argument though, is not that "AI's are conscious" or even that "AI's will definitely become conscious". I just have an issue with fervent assertions that say "No, AI's cannot become conscious" while not really providing any particular justification for that position. I think a more neutral "wait and see" position is more honest.
I have no need of that hypothesis.
You can have a long conversation with AI about pain and suffering, but you have felt it and AI hasnt. The difference is that, for us humans, words are grounded by something other than other-words, words are grounded by experience. Meaning for us is operational in the real world in the form of perception, feeling and emotions, and movement, and words symbolize said meaning. Meaning for LLMs is something in the concept-space that is detached from any worlds. I suspect there should be a test which can tease apart the ungroundedness of the LLMs just from having a conversation with it.
But that isn't the question being asked. Nobody said "Could LLM's become conscious"... the ask was "Could AI's become conscious?"
And before one protests "but everybody knows that today when we say 'AI' we mean 'LLM'", check this quote from TFA:
The pace and reach of research—which includes not just more sophisticated LLMs but innovations such as brain cells mounted on chips—suggest that this new world is closer than most people realise.
So no, they aren't only talking about LLM's. The question is about AI in the general sense. And for my part, I have yet to see any compelling argument for why AI's cannot, in principle, become conscious. Heck, as far as that goes, if you allow thinking rooted in ideas like panpsychism[1], there's not necessarily even a good argument that today's AI's (LLM based or otherwise) aren't already conscious to some degree.
And to go one step further... "The marquee sign says 'Artificial'" to paraphrase a great man. So if we're talking about 'Artificial' Intelligence, why not allow 'Artificial' Consciousness as well? Maybe we're engaging in biological chauvinism if we insist that "to be conscious" means "being conscious the same way humans are".
I'd say no but they can mimic it that it becomes indistinguishable to us.