The Buddha did not teach that only consciousness is real. He called such a view speculative, similar to a belief that only the material world is real. The buddhist teaching is, essentially, that the real is real and ever changing and that consciousness is merely a phenomenon of that which is reality.

Cheers, I should have been more precise in my wording there. I should have referred to some (Idealist) schools of thought in Buddhism & Hinduism, such as the Yogachara school in Buddhism.

Particularly with Hinduism, its embrace of various philosophies is very broad and includes strains of Materialism, which appears to be the other person's viewpoint, so again, I should have been more careful with my wording.

Look, I don't want to get into the weeds of this because personally I don't think it's relevant to the issue of intelligence, but here's a list of things I think are evident about consciousness:

1. People have different kinds of conscious experience (just talk to other humans to get the picture).

2. Consciousness varies, and can be present or not-present at any given moment (sleep, death, hallucinogenic drugs, anaesthesia).

3. Many things don't have the properties of consciousness that I attribute to my subjective experience (rocks, maybe lifeforms that don't have nerve cells, lots of unknowns here).

Given this, it's obvious that consciousness can be created from non-consciousness, you need merely to have sex and wait 9 months. Add to that the fact that humans weren't a thing a million years ago, for instance, and you have to conclude that it's possible for an optimisation system to produce consciousness eventually (natural selection).

Your responses indicate (at least to me) that you are, philosophically, a Materialist or a Physicalist. That's fine; I accept that's a philosophy of existence that one can hold (even though I personally find it sterile and nihilistic). However many, like me, do not subscribe to such a philosophy. We can avoid any argument between ppl who hold different philosophies but still want to discuss machine learning productively by using that term, one that we can all agree on. But if materialists insist on using 'artificial intelligence' then they are pushing their unproven theories and I would say fantasies on the rest of us and they then expose a divergent agenda, where one does not exist when we all just talk about what we all agree we already have, which is machine learning.

If you find it sterile and nihilistic that's on you, friend =)

I think pragmatic thinking, not metaphysics, is what will ultimately lead to progress in AI. You haven't engaged with the actual content of my arguments at all - from that perspective, who's the one talking about fantasies really?

Edit: in case I give the mistaken impression that I'm angry - I'm not, thank you for your time. I find it very useful to talk to people with radically different world views to me.

Every scientist has to be a materialist, it comes from interacting with the world as it is. Most of them then keep their materialism in their personal life, but unfortunately some come home from work and stop thinking critically, embracing dualism or some other unprovable fantasies. If you want people engaging with the world and having correct ideas, you need to tolerate materialism because that's how that happens. It offending your religious worldview is unrelated.

> Every scientist has to be a materialist

Quite obviously not true (and also untrue in a documented sense in that many great scientists have not been materialists). Science is a method, not a philosophical view of the world.

> it comes from interacting with the world as it is

That the world is materialistic is unproven (and not possible to prove).

You are simply propounding a materialist philosophy here. As I've said before, it's fine to have that philosophy. It's not fine to dogmatically push that view as 'reality' and then extend on that to build and push fantasies about 'artificial intelligence'. Again, we avoid all of this philosophical debate if we simply stick to the term 'machine learning'.

I'm not sure generic terms like "artificial intelligence" which describe every enemy in a video game are bound by a particular philosophy.