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> "Being conscious, in my mind, is the ability to observe information and change your mental model of the world based on it." Neural networks aren't conscious.
by hodwik 10y ago
> "Being conscious, in my mind, is the ability to observe information and change your mental model of the world based on it."
Neural networks aren't conscious. Consciousness requires that a locus of ego experiences sensations of qualia.
Just because something is intelligent doesn't mean it is conscious.
- DanielBMarkham 10y agoI tentatively agree, but this may end up being a distinction without a difference, i.e. if something appears conscious because it's intelligent, for all the outside world can say, it is conscious. I believe strong AI is going to solve this question over the next several decades.
- meric 10y agoIntelligence can be unaware. Often they call algorithms "artificial intelligence". Consciousness cannot be unaware. Given only a limited set of inputs in a limited space, (e.g. r, g, b, a channels in a jpeg image, and a limited set of filters to separate cats from monkeys), modern neural networks are hardly aware, so they're hardly conscious.
- DanielBMarkham 10y agoGiven only a limited set of inputs in a limited space... I believe you are making the edge case here, simply because that's where our technology is. The alternate position is that given a rather larger set of inputs, over a rather larger space, an intelligence could appear to outsiders as being as conscious ans sentient as they are, even though what we're talking about "under the hood" is some simulacrum of sentience, not sentience as we humans experience it. This is the "if a computer plays chess as well as a human, is the computer really playing chess? Or just mechanically moving things around?" My point is that with some larger solution space, the question doesn't matter anymore.
- hodwik2 10y ago> "My point is that with some larger solution space, the question doesn't matter anymore." The question still matters ethically. If they're not aware, should we put their rights over the rights of humans? Probably not, no. E.g., If AI is seemingly intelligent, but without consciousness, we wouldn't want to give them a right to self defense.
- DanielBMarkham 10y agoI understand your question, but I do not currently understand how to process your question. If I look at something and it has quality A, is it any different to me than if I look at another, fake thing, that also has quality A? If every way I examine it, it is the same, is it not the same? At least to me? We are entering the realm of the unknown, perhaps the Great Unknown. Here we cannot reason. It's not rational. It's not irrational. It's trans-rational. Sidebar: I'll note that you mention consciousness. There is a strong reason why I attempted to define consciousness ahead of sentience. The latter is dependent on the former. Both definitions are controversial. ADD: It occurs to me that some kind of religion and alien contact are intractably linked, both from our side and from the other side. Interesting.
- meric 10y agoGiven the limitations of computation over large inputs and large spaces, the question is, could sentience be a prerequisite of solving those kinds of problems? All we know about machines and computations is the harder the problem the more their computation is aligned with biology.