Re:How We’ll Know an AI Is Conscious
by karmakaze on Monday March 29, 2021 @10:33AM
(#26622233)
I don't think this is a practical problem. It may be an ethical one to some, say about as many as vegans. I'm not saying that to minimize it, but rather get a ballpark sense of how urgent this is.
As a thought experiment, say AI does eventually gain consciousness, increasing in awareness, what might some of the stages be:
1. barely self-aware
2. self-aware but without awareness of humans as being conscious
3. fully self-aware and gaining awareness of humans as being conscious, but unable to indicate its self-awareness to humans
4. self-aware, and successfully communicated this to humans
0. not self-aware, and successfully communicated its self-awareness to humans
Now if we put animals on this spectrum, do we have a problem? Likely not since we as animals ourselves will be generous in granting 'awareness' to anything that looks like it.
For machines, levels 1-3 is unfortunate, but perhaps not much more so than the animals that are lower on the evolutionary ladder and not so cute as to be protected by humans.
0 is actually more likely, perhaps not for the scientists who do this research, but for the public at large, who have a tendency to anthropomorphise everything anyway. For this same reason, 3 seems unlikely, or at least unlikely to be a long period.
As a thought experiment, say AI does eventually gain consciousness, increasing in awareness, what might some of the stages be:
1. barely self-aware
2. self-aware but without awareness of humans as being conscious
3. fully self-aware and gaining awareness of humans as being conscious, but unable to indicate its self-awareness to humans
4. self-aware, and successfully communicated this to humans
0. not self-aware, and successfully communicated its self-awareness to humans
Now if we put animals on this spectrum, do we have a problem? Likely not since we as animals ourselves will be generous in granting 'awareness' to anything that looks like it.
For machines, levels 1-3 is unfortunate, but perhaps not much more so than the animals that are lower on the evolutionary ladder and not so cute as to be protected by humans.
0 is actually more likely, perhaps not for the scientists who do this research, but for the public at large, who have a tendency to anthropomorphise everything anyway. For this same reason, 3 seems unlikely, or at least unlikely to be a long period.