Re:Neural nets are not “slightly conscious,” and AI PR can d...
by throwawaydroid on Monday February 21, 2022 @09:54AM
(#30416505)
Consciousness is such a loaded word, and means something different depending on who you are talking to. For instance surgeons & anesthesiologists have a very peculiar definition of what it means to be conscious(ie conscious sedation); regular people might not agree it meets the minimum criterion of being awake and aware of yourself. I think a more important goal if we are designing artificial life might be whether or not an AI is conscientious(like morally).
Re:Neural nets are not “slightly conscious,” and AI PR can d...
by webmaven on Monday February 21, 2022 @04:13PM
(#30420701)
> I think a more important goal if we are designing artificial life might be whether or not an AI is conscientious(like morally).
I have the feeling that attempts to create conscientious AI will just result in paperclip maximizers that have to use rationalization as an indirection layer to engage in their paperclip maximizing behavior.
Not much of an improvement, but realistically, what other result would be tolerated by whoever is building a DWIM AI to run a paperclip factory and for whom conscientiousness would just be a regulatory box to tick?
Re:Neural nets are not “slightly conscious,” and AI PR can d...
by galaxyLogic on Monday February 21, 2022 @09:04PM
(#30423252)
Good point, conscious and conscientious, is what we need
In other words if we can observe a machine thinking about its own (symbolic) thinking, then I think it's conscious.
Consciousness is the ability to observe one's own mental processes and make sense of them symbolically. That is one possible definition of it.
You are right that we can't really prove that humans are conscious, because we cannot observe their thinking.
But, to prove that a machine is conscious all we need is to agree on a definition of what it means to be conscious, because machines can be easily inspected. And then find a machine that demonstrates features that fit the definition.
If we can't agree on what it means for something to be conscious then the whole question of whether some AI is or could be conscious is of course meaningless.