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A comment on Can AI Become Conscious?. Parent comment

Re:Can AI Become Conscious? by downerending on Tuesday May 12, 2020 @04:23PM (#23159225)
Arguably, if the answer was obviously yes, we wouldn't all be arguing about it. And as for "random inputs", I don't think that's the kind of free will most people have in mind--it's arbitrary, but doesn't involve people having control over themselves in any way.

My thought is that the defining characteristic of consciousness is suffering. If you can't torture it, it's not conscious. If you can, it is.

This would seem to rule out the programs that run on our computers. But, since we have little (if any) real understanding of reality, who knows?

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Re:Can AI Become Conscious? by mewpmewp2 on Tuesday May 12, 2020 @05:48PM (#23160353)
How do you determine something can be tortured?

What if you remove the ability of a person to feel pain? Modify chemistry just enough to always be high as if she had injected heroin? Does it mean the person is not conscious any more?

If we can simulate all particles of a human on a supercomputer and all the reactions to torture will be the same is it not really tortured?

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Re:Can AI Become Conscious? by downerending on Tuesday May 12, 2020 @06:40PM (#23160962)
The heroin example is a fair point. I'm not sure. In practice, it's hard to think of examples of conscious beings that don't suffer.

As to the latter, it doesn't seem that that would be torture. As I said, though, I think we ultimately know nothing about this subject. Nor can we, even in principle.

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