This kind of reductive attitude towards what it means to be human is what really depresses me, not current ai tech.
Maybe engineers aren't who you should be looking to for what it means to be human. This board can't answer every question you face.
Sorry if my comment didn’t give enough context. I’m not the OP, so I’m not asking any questions.
I was interpreting the parent comment as saying the spark of consciousness only needed a cost function.
Personally, I disagree that our current neural nets are accurate representations of what goes on in the human brain. We don’t have an agreed upon theory of consciousness, yet ML businesses spread the idea that we have solved the mind and that current LLMs are accurate incarnations of it.
More than the functionality of ai replacing current human jobs, I worry what we will lose if we stop wondering about the universe in between our ears thinking we know everything there is to know.
He didn't ask about being human. He asked about having the capabilities to do certain things.
We can no longer equate intelligence with humanity. Humans are just one kind of intelligence.
Just add a cost function.