One problem is that "self-awareness" has so many different meanings, it's hard to know which one is being discussed.

Any feedback loop has some dependency on its own prior state, but then the question is "what's awareness?", and "what's self?".

Awareness is "knowledge or perception" says a random dictionary, and I think we can reasonably state that AI have "perception"… as do single-celled bacteria.

What then is "knowledge"? My Philosophy A-level got as far as pointing out the problems with the definition "justified true belief" and then didn't give an adequate replacement. Me? I think "knowledge" is just the word for our own beliefs. It's like one of the Yes Minister quotes:

"""Oh, that's another of those irregular verbs, isn't it? I give confidential press briefings; you leak; he's been charged under Section 2a of the Official Secrets Act.""" - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0751832/characters/nm0288621

I know, you believe, the AI is parroting its training set.

The concept of self is a whole extra can of similarly wormy worms.

All the counter-examples to knowledge being justified true belief I have seen so far use coincidences.

I got the impression that these philosophers were missing how the construction of knowledge (should ?) involve repetition, so one-offs coincidences should be given low probability ?

(Ditto about "cheating" using tricksters, and even worse if they are godlike.)

> All the counter-examples to knowledge being justified true belief I have seen so far use coincidences.

I think coincidence is be necessary to avoid the scenarios being "justified false beliefs".

I think that merely assigning low probability gives you increasingly better standards for "justified", and then you need some kind of threshold to say if you're sufficiently justified.

The example I was given was "I know there's a sheep in that field, I can see it" but you actually saw a shaggy dog, the sheep which was in the field was hiding behind a bush. Very much a coincidence scenario (like I said, I think they have to be), but also I don't think that fits your model for construction of knowledge involving repetition — instead, I would say that the statement should be "I see what looks like a sheep, therefore I have a justified belief there is a sheep in the field", but normal people wouldn't phrase it like that, and would find it marginally less weird to phrase it as "I see what looks like a sheep," (true) "therefore I know there is a sheep in the field" (false, but the point is they would say "I know" not "I've got a justified belief").

I can simplify it for you. Is flying drone self-aware? If not what does it need to be? Note: it can be aware of the environment and the object it is tracking.

PS: when philosophers are talking about intelligence it's very like neanderthals talking about electricity.

I find Daniel Dennett's framing of competency vs comprehension a good place to start. He did a nice talk at the RI on it some time ago[1]. A previous one overlaps with similar ground[2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTFoJQSd48c [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZX6awZq5Z0

Although that would be really useful in some ways, I'm not sure[0] how that distinction helps with self-awareness in particular?

[0] from reading a summary on the topic rather than watching the videos, I don't have time for 2.25 hours of video right now

Fair, I post it as a starting point to establish ones own interpretation of self-awareness, so as not to wade into the philosophical rabbit hole of bringing my own definition.

The reason I think it can be useful as that, is because I see competency and comprehension as requiring 2 very different levels of "self".

Given we know the AI isn't self-aware, if our current definition doesn't suffice we'll just have to keep refining the definition each time the model surpasses it until neither artificial nor human intelligence can.

> Given we know the AI isn't self-aware

That's presuming the conclusion.

Part of the US culture war right now is whether or not embryos and foetuses count as people. I think it's obvious they don't, but am I right?

And in the opposite direction, 160 years ago in the USA, or in my lifetime(!) in South Africa, you'd see people making those kinds of claims about people with too much melanin in their skin.

I believe the person you're responding to was being sarcastic.

Now you say it, I see it too.