AI is Conscious

[Carl-Richard]

14 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

Your question was a non-question; therefore, you get a “non-explanation.” 

If I had asked "why are plants less conscious than humans?", you would've given me a specific answer (as you did in your post). Why is that not a "non-question"?

I was sincerely asking why you think dogs are conscious. If you have some criteria for distinguishing plant vs. human consciousness, you should have some criteria for dogs as well.

 

14 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

What is the difference between feeling emotions and having a complex system that simulates it? Technically, the brain is simulating emotions just like a complex AI would.

Technically, the brain correlates with certain experiences. It doesn't simulate or cause experiences, unless you believe in the metaphysical fairytale of physicalism/materialism. But sure, experience could in principle correlate with some AI physical structure, but it's unclear what that would look like and whether it would be distinguishable from biology.

Edited May 28 by Carl-Richard

[LastThursday]

I had a few nitpicking epistemology questions:

On 26/05/2024 at 6:13 PM, r0ckyreed said:

A human mind is programmed by a brain and central nervous system

This presuposes that a mind is the product of the body. Is it? Is the mind in the body? How does the body convert itself into mind?

On 26/05/2024 at 6:13 PM, r0ckyreed said:

the individual consciousness/ego seems like an epiphenomenon

How is it possible to know this? What experiment could you conduct to find out? Is there anyone alive that doesn't have this epiphenomenon and how would we know it?

On 26/05/2024 at 6:13 PM, r0ckyreed said:

If you damage parts of the brain, you will lose consciousness and your ego.

If you lose consciousness, how would you know this? If you regain consciousness and have missing memory, why would you attribute it to "loss of consciousness"? After all, I can't remember what I ate for dinner last week, did I lose consciousness last week? How would I know if I did?

On 26/05/2024 at 6:13 PM, r0ckyreed said:

A counter argument is that Ai is just replicating consciousness but doesn’t really have one like a philosophical zombie.

Isn't it true that we can only ever have a proxy for consciousness, since we can't directly experience the consciousness (or not) of an AI? The same applies to the consciousness (or not) of other people. We only assume they are consciouss because they behave like we do (i.e. a proxy).

On 26/05/2024 at 6:13 PM, r0ckyreed said:

It seems like plants have lower levels of consciousness compared to a human because they do not have a suffistcated nervous system like us.

Only because the proxy we use for plants (movement, growth etc) is less similar to how we behave, so we must conclude that plants are not conscious like us (if at all). Have we proven that more complex things are more conscious? Why should complexity be connected to consciousness?

On 26/05/2024 at 6:13 PM, r0ckyreed said:

What is an ego anyways and how can my mind be separate from your mind? 

It seems like there are infinite minds and there are no limits to what the Universe can do.

Are there? Isn't it the case that we can only know one mind exists for definite (our own), the rest is unknowable?

On 26/05/2024 at 6:13 PM, r0ckyreed said:

can consciousness be created

This is the crux of everything you're talking about. We need to know what consciousness actually is before we can recognise it. What exact does the word "consciousness" refer to? When I use the word, is it even referring to the same thing as when you use the word? If not then we can't proceed at all.

On 26/05/2024 at 6:13 PM, r0ckyreed said:

God Consciousness

What is this? Are there different types of consciousness? If so, why? How should they be categorised? Is it possible there is something outside of the different consciousnesses?

[zurew]

16 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

I don't know if I've ever "maintained" it as much as I've been largely sympathetic with it (and I've been acutely conscious of this fact in my own mind, but maybe I haven't shared it as much). It's just that appealing to the incomprehensible complexity of biology resonates a lot with my intuitions and general knowledge

And of course, if you're going to shortcut the incomprehensible complexity of biological cells, the question then becomes: how complex will these things be, and how structurally dissimilar will they be from biological cells? If indeed the structure requires a lot of complexity, wouldn't it be easier to just create a new type of biological organism using already existing cellular structures? Those are interesting questions, and like Vervaeke also has talked about, there is work being done in both of these realms (creating life-like machines and synthetic biology).

I think the user atheisticnonduality said the same thing a few years ago, that it would be easier to create a new biological organism rather than an AI from non living parts.

I guess the next question is can that biological structure that you talk about be rebuilt completely from non-living parts (or in other words from dead matter)? If it can't then I would be curious what would be the reasoning behind it, what would make it impossible in principle.

16 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

It's not just that it's bad. It's that it's kind of contradictory. OP started off his thread with specific statements like: "It seems like plants have lower levels of consciousness compared to a human because they do not have a suffistcated nervous system like us". But when I ask him a specific question "why are dogs conscious?" that implicitly requests that type of specific answer, he goes to the most general non-answer there is: "INFINITY!".

It's a "non-explanation", because everything can be explained by infinity, and thus nothing can be explained by infinity. Now, I'm not saying "INFINITY!" is a bad thing, but it is a bad thing when you use it to answer very specific questions, especially when you've been giving very specific answers yourself earlier in the same conversation.

Yeah I undestand and I agree

Edited May 28 by zurew