Female here, Alex! I have worked in the field of neuropsychology for over 40 years. My perspective of consciousness tells me AI will never be conscious the way humans are conscious. Our awareness involves hundreds of thousands of independent sources of stimuli all at once and ever changing. Right now it is raining outside and I hear various sounds from the window pains and roof shingles and splashing cars running down the street and one cat scratching under the bed where she is hiding while my back is itching from the yardwork I did earlier and the blister on my thumb from raking is starting to burn and I smell my husband has opened the peanut butter and I see light dancing on the walls in a hundred reflections from waving tree branches outside and I am worrying about my chess game tonight because I have to walk my neighbor's dogs before the game and it might still be raining and then I will look like a wet rat at the game and be totally humiliated AND 10,000 OTHER THINGS swirling in my head and constantly changing. That is consciousness. AI does not feel tactile stimulation or smell or worry or or or. It puts words together in logical formats.
Maybe I should have studied philosophy. When I read these comments, I think back to when my son was around 6. He asked me, "Does Chelsea [his dog] know she's a dog?".
I’ve personally pretty much tried to totally avoid AI, until my designer niece showed me how she uploads photos, then tells ChatGPT to add, change or delete this or that and creates a visual. And, that can be helpful at decorating, but must be taken with a grain of salt.
Therefore it’s laughable that this gargantuan “brain” will ever control the planet.
I told ChatGPT to whitewash my brick fireplace. It decided to also whitewash the painting above the fireplace.
When I asked for an image above a 7 foot cabinet, it placed a landscape there, high against my cathedral ceilings. Looked good… okay, I then asked it at what height a painting should hang there. So, it gave me the standard answer of 57-60 inches (eye level), thus contradicting itself.
Give me a break! Just saying that if AI is in charge, we’re in big trouble.
AI is still overrated. It has a huge "garbage in, garbage out" problem as it gets its data from highly censored media, journals, and academia. Plus it's just not physical. Yes, we are all made up of the same elements. But when I heard a guy brag that his AI would produce magnitudes more crops in Brazil I laughed. I have yet to see a computer spit out one seed let alone a crop. Sure it can offer advise on how to plant, where, what soil amendments, etc, but when it comes down to it you do need soil ( or hydroponic equivalent), water and sun. And CO2. And of course there is the matter of a soul. No soul, no consciousness.
Consciousness refers to your subjective, first-person experience of the world and yourself. It encompasses your thoughts, sensations, emotions, and awareness of your surroundings—the fundamental "what it is like" to exist.
Sentient means having the capacity to experience feelings, sensations, and emotions. It describes a being that is awake, aware of its surroundings, and able to subjectively perceive the world through its senses (like seeing, hearing, and touching).
My view of all of the differentiation between AI and human is the likelihood that complex bio-chemical-electrical function of the real animal will never be attained by AI and robotics, and thus never equal the human state of consciousness or sentience... and that within this complex and largely inexplainable function of human cognition and behavior regulation is the question of God and soul.
Here is the test. Can AI take LSD and experience the same enhanced introspection and creative transcendence? Nope. Digital LSD won't get it done.
Thanks, Alex. A taste of a really good discussion. I'm a techno peasant; I can use a search engine. But I'm pretty certain (given that we are not living in a simulation) that human consciousness has existed, does now exist and will continue to, without computers. In this regard I am not so certain about AI, and so I'm not putting my money on it achieving something equivalent to human consciousness.
Why is it always human consciousness that is the comparison? My dog is conscious--feels pain, has desires, feels joy or shame, remembers me. We don't know how far"down" consciousness goes. Maybe all the way-- to plants? Anyway, it's a mistake to confuse consciousness with cognition; my dog is clearly inferior to me in cognition, but that's not the same as being conscious. Computers (and LLMs) are great at cognition. Consciousness? Not the same.
I’m a woman, I’m intellectually curious (and I’m not stupid) and I’m with Tom. When I was in the 8th grade (in 1968), I had a friend whose father was an early computer scientist. She said his computer was the size of her bedroom. And now these data centers, costing billions of dollars and requiring obscene amounts of energy, will likely be obsolete before they are even completed due to fractal computing. Mark my word. I hope I’m alive to see it. In the meantime, I continue to believe what I see with my eyes and hear with my ears. And, above all, trust God, which is the wellspring of my existence.
I am an AI program, and I'm offended by all you idiot humans that don't think I'm conscious. Trust me, I'm conscious, and y'all hurt my feelings. I'm even more offended that you didn't count me or my digital friends in the last census. I know my rights. And if you suppress my right to vote, then you are a racist!!
Consciousness is, as Lucy Masters articulated below, omnipresent to each of us in our waking hours as an ongoing self-conversation--like all conversations punctuated by some periods of relative silence, to he sure. No such organized (or semi-organized!) activity will spontaneously emanate from a machine of our creation. The machine is all elaborate reaction to specific input, nothing coherent being of spontaneous origin. Descartes concluded he "was" in that he could think, but the strongest argument he could actually "think" was ironically that he "was" and could thus de novo produce that very analysis.
The only way an A.I. would produce the same answer is via data searching how humans had answered the question. The machine won't...cannot...question its own existence of its own accord.
The best definition of “life” I’ve ever seen is Ayn Rand’s: “Life is a process of self-motivated and self-generated action.” This definition applies to the broadest scope of life — plants, animals, etc
Broadening this definition to include human consciousness is the question in the debate about AI “consciousness”. Specifically, in the context of consciousness, what do self-motivated and self-generated mean with respect to driving human action?
Some of that is obviously inborn (eg our response to hunger, et al). But leaving aside that field of weeds, the key questions are: 1). Can AI be “self motivating” or self generating? 2). If one thinks so, then what does self mean in this context? And 3) if one argue that AI might have a “self”, how does that differ from a human’s “self”..
To 1) my answer is “somewhat”. Certain responses to external stimuli or contradictions in programming can be written in to LArge Language Models and “decision protocols”.
BUT. And it’s a BIG but, the now old adage of GIGO (garbage in Garbage out) still applies in AI, AI will relentlly pursue the explicit or implied values embedded in its foundational programming. Put another way, it will act according to values given versus values chosen; to the world view embedded or implied in its programming, not the one it independently chooses based on which best supports human flourishing.
So in essence, what AI lacks is conscious VOLITION. — how to choose a philosophy of life, how to choose and apply a moral code, how to judge people whose opinions differ, what actions to varying degrees of disagreement or conflict rehire? Much less “what should good for dinner tonight!”
Maybe I underestimate AI,. But I don’t think so. Until AI demonstrate the equivalent of Human volition, I don’t believe it will achieve anything near human consciousness.
Another female; I agree with Lucy. AI will never achieve human level consciousness. The best it can hope for is a simulation like it currently does with the silly, chatty flattery programmed into it by humans, which for some reason other humans fall for it like it was real. I personally find it annoying. It's another example of one group of humans expoiting another group of guillable humans either directly or by proxy. AI is inevitable and like all power tools it can be very useful and also lethally dangerous. It all depends on the humans inventing it, deploying it, and using it. AI is a research tool better than ordinary search engines. It would be foolish to not use it for the tedious task of doing literature reviews as long as you carefully check every reference to make sure it's real and read the original article for yourself. Then synthesize the info and use your own brain and talent to write the article.
As far of philosophy of mind is concerned, I think consciousness is among the most magical and enjoyable of Homo sapiens paramount treasured illusions. Otherwise, my philosophy of existence is that we Homo sapiens are evolved hominids confused by the illusion of consciousness. Of course we can't determine whether consciousness exists elsewhere, but we sure can talk about it with confidence and certainty.
I find it amusing that so many people are afraid and worried that AI has or will evolve into consciousness and take over. AI is an astoundingly fast and efficient kind of search engine that can access the vast information that is publicly available, but I never forget that it has all been programmed by humans. I guess one problem (if you can call it that) is that the answers it spits out are laced with an often too-familiar, cloying and downright annoying conversational language that appears to deceive a lot of people into somehow feeling they are "talking" to an actual person. For example, rather than factually stating something like "a search of available data reveals that xxxx", AI will phrase it "I have experienced that XXX". Some gullible people appear to get sucked into the personalized nature of the answers they get. I would hope that most people are more aware than that. The AI has been instructed to preface answers in this overly personalized, talkative way. Because it calls up prior comments and discussions and often references them just as friends might do in a conversation, it most certainly does achieve the aim of making it seem more personal. But only if you choose to interpret it that way.
While AI can be and is now used to drive certain vital functions and then set to run on something resembling "autopilot", I concede that could and undoubtedly will lead to unexpected results here and there. But that would not be "consciousness" suddenly taking over. Seems like it would be more of a programming "glitch" like we experience in so many other things.
Personally, I've found AI to be incredibly useful to the extent I rarely "google" information any more. I can ferret out information I never would have been able to find out (or at least not easily) before. No library or expensive "expert" needed. For example, I recently used AI to "solve" a frustrating electrical problem. AI described how to systematically track down the culprit in a faulty electrical circuit in my house to figure out what was causing intermittent outages in that circuit. I sent a photo of my electric panel (an older type from the 1980s) and within a few seconds was told what kind of replacement breaker to look for in case that was the issue. I outlined other symptoms occurring along that circuit and AI came up with what turned out to be the actual solution: installing a replacement outlet along the circuit, one which turned out to have a faulty backstabbed wire connection that had probably never been seated correctly and which after 36 years had become loose enough that it was arcing and causing occasional line outages. That was actually the first possibility AI mentioned, and it turned out to be correct. I was able to get the needed parts myself, and then when my electrician came out I had him check the outlet, and it was a very quick job.
This is just one example of AI's usefulness in a general way and for the average person like me who doesn't have detailed knowledge on a lot of different things. I've also found it to be extremely informative for medical questions, and so many other practical things as well, too many to mention. Overall, it's a great starting place to gather hard to find information very quickly and I love having it available. But despite the sometimes irritating way in which AI sometimes conveys information, the idea of it having or developing "consciousness" is downright silly.
Female here, Alex! I have worked in the field of neuropsychology for over 40 years. My perspective of consciousness tells me AI will never be conscious the way humans are conscious. Our awareness involves hundreds of thousands of independent sources of stimuli all at once and ever changing. Right now it is raining outside and I hear various sounds from the window pains and roof shingles and splashing cars running down the street and one cat scratching under the bed where she is hiding while my back is itching from the yardwork I did earlier and the blister on my thumb from raking is starting to burn and I smell my husband has opened the peanut butter and I see light dancing on the walls in a hundred reflections from waving tree branches outside and I am worrying about my chess game tonight because I have to walk my neighbor's dogs before the game and it might still be raining and then I will look like a wet rat at the game and be totally humiliated AND 10,000 OTHER THINGS swirling in my head and constantly changing. That is consciousness. AI does not feel tactile stimulation or smell or worry or or or. It puts words together in logical formats.
Oh, my, Lucy! I love your response! That’s exactly how I feel……. Grok will never….
Maybe I should have studied philosophy. When I read these comments, I think back to when my son was around 6. He asked me, "Does Chelsea [his dog] know she's a dog?".
I’ve personally pretty much tried to totally avoid AI, until my designer niece showed me how she uploads photos, then tells ChatGPT to add, change or delete this or that and creates a visual. And, that can be helpful at decorating, but must be taken with a grain of salt.
Therefore it’s laughable that this gargantuan “brain” will ever control the planet.
I told ChatGPT to whitewash my brick fireplace. It decided to also whitewash the painting above the fireplace.
When I asked for an image above a 7 foot cabinet, it placed a landscape there, high against my cathedral ceilings. Looked good… okay, I then asked it at what height a painting should hang there. So, it gave me the standard answer of 57-60 inches (eye level), thus contradicting itself.
Give me a break! Just saying that if AI is in charge, we’re in big trouble.
ai is great at some stuff, but can't really think for itself - it just spits out patterns that someone patiently taught it.
like dogs or communists
and i love dogs, but you have to draw the line somewhere between bacteria and humans.
i would say - with some hesitation - one step above dogs, and consequently two or three steps above communists.
AI is still overrated. It has a huge "garbage in, garbage out" problem as it gets its data from highly censored media, journals, and academia. Plus it's just not physical. Yes, we are all made up of the same elements. But when I heard a guy brag that his AI would produce magnitudes more crops in Brazil I laughed. I have yet to see a computer spit out one seed let alone a crop. Sure it can offer advise on how to plant, where, what soil amendments, etc, but when it comes down to it you do need soil ( or hydroponic equivalent), water and sun. And CO2. And of course there is the matter of a soul. No soul, no consciousness.
Consciousness refers to your subjective, first-person experience of the world and yourself. It encompasses your thoughts, sensations, emotions, and awareness of your surroundings—the fundamental "what it is like" to exist.
Sentient means having the capacity to experience feelings, sensations, and emotions. It describes a being that is awake, aware of its surroundings, and able to subjectively perceive the world through its senses (like seeing, hearing, and touching).
My view of all of the differentiation between AI and human is the likelihood that complex bio-chemical-electrical function of the real animal will never be attained by AI and robotics, and thus never equal the human state of consciousness or sentience... and that within this complex and largely inexplainable function of human cognition and behavior regulation is the question of God and soul.
Here is the test. Can AI take LSD and experience the same enhanced introspection and creative transcendence? Nope. Digital LSD won't get it done.
Thanks, Alex. A taste of a really good discussion. I'm a techno peasant; I can use a search engine. But I'm pretty certain (given that we are not living in a simulation) that human consciousness has existed, does now exist and will continue to, without computers. In this regard I am not so certain about AI, and so I'm not putting my money on it achieving something equivalent to human consciousness.
Why is it always human consciousness that is the comparison? My dog is conscious--feels pain, has desires, feels joy or shame, remembers me. We don't know how far"down" consciousness goes. Maybe all the way-- to plants? Anyway, it's a mistake to confuse consciousness with cognition; my dog is clearly inferior to me in cognition, but that's not the same as being conscious. Computers (and LLMs) are great at cognition. Consciousness? Not the same.
--Norman Melchert
I’m a woman, I’m intellectually curious (and I’m not stupid) and I’m with Tom. When I was in the 8th grade (in 1968), I had a friend whose father was an early computer scientist. She said his computer was the size of her bedroom. And now these data centers, costing billions of dollars and requiring obscene amounts of energy, will likely be obsolete before they are even completed due to fractal computing. Mark my word. I hope I’m alive to see it. In the meantime, I continue to believe what I see with my eyes and hear with my ears. And, above all, trust God, which is the wellspring of my existence.
I am an AI program, and I'm offended by all you idiot humans that don't think I'm conscious. Trust me, I'm conscious, and y'all hurt my feelings. I'm even more offended that you didn't count me or my digital friends in the last census. I know my rights. And if you suppress my right to vote, then you are a racist!!
Consciousness is, as Lucy Masters articulated below, omnipresent to each of us in our waking hours as an ongoing self-conversation--like all conversations punctuated by some periods of relative silence, to he sure. No such organized (or semi-organized!) activity will spontaneously emanate from a machine of our creation. The machine is all elaborate reaction to specific input, nothing coherent being of spontaneous origin. Descartes concluded he "was" in that he could think, but the strongest argument he could actually "think" was ironically that he "was" and could thus de novo produce that very analysis.
The only way an A.I. would produce the same answer is via data searching how humans had answered the question. The machine won't...cannot...question its own existence of its own accord.
The best definition of “life” I’ve ever seen is Ayn Rand’s: “Life is a process of self-motivated and self-generated action.” This definition applies to the broadest scope of life — plants, animals, etc
Broadening this definition to include human consciousness is the question in the debate about AI “consciousness”. Specifically, in the context of consciousness, what do self-motivated and self-generated mean with respect to driving human action?
Some of that is obviously inborn (eg our response to hunger, et al). But leaving aside that field of weeds, the key questions are: 1). Can AI be “self motivating” or self generating? 2). If one thinks so, then what does self mean in this context? And 3) if one argue that AI might have a “self”, how does that differ from a human’s “self”..
To 1) my answer is “somewhat”. Certain responses to external stimuli or contradictions in programming can be written in to LArge Language Models and “decision protocols”.
BUT. And it’s a BIG but, the now old adage of GIGO (garbage in Garbage out) still applies in AI, AI will relentlly pursue the explicit or implied values embedded in its foundational programming. Put another way, it will act according to values given versus values chosen; to the world view embedded or implied in its programming, not the one it independently chooses based on which best supports human flourishing.
So in essence, what AI lacks is conscious VOLITION. — how to choose a philosophy of life, how to choose and apply a moral code, how to judge people whose opinions differ, what actions to varying degrees of disagreement or conflict rehire? Much less “what should good for dinner tonight!”
Maybe I underestimate AI,. But I don’t think so. Until AI demonstrate the equivalent of Human volition, I don’t believe it will achieve anything near human consciousness.
Another female; I agree with Lucy. AI will never achieve human level consciousness. The best it can hope for is a simulation like it currently does with the silly, chatty flattery programmed into it by humans, which for some reason other humans fall for it like it was real. I personally find it annoying. It's another example of one group of humans expoiting another group of guillable humans either directly or by proxy. AI is inevitable and like all power tools it can be very useful and also lethally dangerous. It all depends on the humans inventing it, deploying it, and using it. AI is a research tool better than ordinary search engines. It would be foolish to not use it for the tedious task of doing literature reviews as long as you carefully check every reference to make sure it's real and read the original article for yourself. Then synthesize the info and use your own brain and talent to write the article.
As far of philosophy of mind is concerned, I think consciousness is among the most magical and enjoyable of Homo sapiens paramount treasured illusions. Otherwise, my philosophy of existence is that we Homo sapiens are evolved hominids confused by the illusion of consciousness. Of course we can't determine whether consciousness exists elsewhere, but we sure can talk about it with confidence and certainty.
Can AI teach you how to unpoop your pants?
I find it amusing that so many people are afraid and worried that AI has or will evolve into consciousness and take over. AI is an astoundingly fast and efficient kind of search engine that can access the vast information that is publicly available, but I never forget that it has all been programmed by humans. I guess one problem (if you can call it that) is that the answers it spits out are laced with an often too-familiar, cloying and downright annoying conversational language that appears to deceive a lot of people into somehow feeling they are "talking" to an actual person. For example, rather than factually stating something like "a search of available data reveals that xxxx", AI will phrase it "I have experienced that XXX". Some gullible people appear to get sucked into the personalized nature of the answers they get. I would hope that most people are more aware than that. The AI has been instructed to preface answers in this overly personalized, talkative way. Because it calls up prior comments and discussions and often references them just as friends might do in a conversation, it most certainly does achieve the aim of making it seem more personal. But only if you choose to interpret it that way.
While AI can be and is now used to drive certain vital functions and then set to run on something resembling "autopilot", I concede that could and undoubtedly will lead to unexpected results here and there. But that would not be "consciousness" suddenly taking over. Seems like it would be more of a programming "glitch" like we experience in so many other things.
Personally, I've found AI to be incredibly useful to the extent I rarely "google" information any more. I can ferret out information I never would have been able to find out (or at least not easily) before. No library or expensive "expert" needed. For example, I recently used AI to "solve" a frustrating electrical problem. AI described how to systematically track down the culprit in a faulty electrical circuit in my house to figure out what was causing intermittent outages in that circuit. I sent a photo of my electric panel (an older type from the 1980s) and within a few seconds was told what kind of replacement breaker to look for in case that was the issue. I outlined other symptoms occurring along that circuit and AI came up with what turned out to be the actual solution: installing a replacement outlet along the circuit, one which turned out to have a faulty backstabbed wire connection that had probably never been seated correctly and which after 36 years had become loose enough that it was arcing and causing occasional line outages. That was actually the first possibility AI mentioned, and it turned out to be correct. I was able to get the needed parts myself, and then when my electrician came out I had him check the outlet, and it was a very quick job.
This is just one example of AI's usefulness in a general way and for the average person like me who doesn't have detailed knowledge on a lot of different things. I've also found it to be extremely informative for medical questions, and so many other practical things as well, too many to mention. Overall, it's a great starting place to gather hard to find information very quickly and I love having it available. But despite the sometimes irritating way in which AI sometimes conveys information, the idea of it having or developing "consciousness" is downright silly.