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The comparison is apt and, yes, both contexts are similar. But the observation still doesn't answer whether either a group of humans, a digital neural network

The comparison is apt and, yes, both contexts are similar. But the observation still doesn't answer whether either a group of humans, a digital neural network or an ant colony actually is conscious. "conscious" is a language construct that defines an abstract concept that is only vaguely defined. Why? Because we haven't found a falsifiable theory that allows us to objectively state "x or y are conscious or not conscious" One big hurdle is that if you assert that an ML algorithm is conscious, then you open the door to all kinds of implications that many humans don't like or disagree on. Such as whether we are unique and special, or that we may also be deterministic automatons and free will doesn't exist. At that point, you get caught up in modern philosophical debates which have started with Kant and Hume.

afthonos 7y ago
> Such as whether we are unique and special, or that we may also be deterministic automatons and free will doesn't exist. That's only scratching the surface of the implications. The real question arises when we have to decide what moral rights consciousness proffers. A lot of arguments for and against vegetarianism, for instance, focus on whether animals suffer in a way that we would understand as suffering. A lot of arguments for terminating a comatose life center around the lack of consciousness. If you suddenly declare that a piece of software is conscious, you have to grapple with what it means for all these questions—and for that matter with what we do with the software itself. Is the software enslaved, having to perform the same thing over and over again? Does turning it off kill it? Does it want anything? Specifically, something other than what its lot is? Should it have a voice in deciding how it is used? Should it get the vote? Should agglomerations of humans? Say, corporations? Should they get free speech? Sci-fi books have explored a lot of these subjects, of course, but reality will be different, and we'll have to deal with it on its own terms.
- visarga 7y ago
  Don't worry, if it is conscious it will fight back and have a will of its own. It won't be hard to tell. But we could quickly settle this question if we checked some things first: does it need anything (have necessities)? does it learn? can it act on its environment? Can it evolve? Is it part of a group or alone? If no, then it's probably not conscious. All the conscious agents I know have one and the same ultimate goal - to exist and reproduce themselves. All their other goals are just subgoals. By my definition a virus and AlphaGo which was trained as a population of interacting agents with a winner survives rule are both conscious of their environment, which is just a board for AG.
  - retsibsi 7y ago
    Why are you confident about any of these things? Unless you're simply stipulating a definition, and not worrying too much about whether it corresponds to 'consciousness' in the sense most of us care about.
  - to1y 7y ago
    >Don't worry, if it is conscious it will fight back and have a will of its own. It won't be hard to tell. If life was a cartoon maybe. Although i'm sure many people would argue if it believes its conscious we have no right to dispute, as we cannot know and even may be essentially the same.
  - Psyladine 7y ago
    >Don't worry, if it is conscious it will fight back and have a will of its own. It won't be hard to tell. Ever threatened legal action against a multinational corporation?
visarga 7y ago
> "conscious" is a language construct that defines an abstract concept that is only vaguely defined. Why? Because we haven't found a falsifiable theory that allows us to objectively state "x or y are conscious or not conscious" I lean on defining the concept based on adaptation to the environment - consciousness is the function that adapts an agent to its environment. Its purpose is to safeguard the agent against external perturbations and achieve its own goals. For example, how would we get food without consciousness. How would reproduction work? Consciousness has a vital role here. Evolution works at a slow pace, consciousness is required for quick adaptation, otherwise the penalty is death. I think consciousness is being made into something transcendent, or unfalsifiable, or essentially different than physical processes because we like to make ourselves feel special in comparison to the world.
- retsibsi 7y ago
  But some of us are using the word 'consciousness' to refer to the existence of subjective experience. It may be impossible even in principle to get very far on most of the deepest questions about consciousness in this sense. But it's still real, it still matters a great deal, and we still make important decisions based on our best guesses. (Why should I care what happens to other people, and try to avoid harming them? Because they're clearly conscious, capable of joy, suffering, etc. What about other animals, like dogs and cows and chickens? That seems pretty obvious too, given our biological and behavioral similarities. What about molluscs? Hmm, there are some potentially important differences there. What about rocks? I can't know, but they have none of the features I usually associate with consciousness, and if they do have internal experience I have no idea what determines it, so I might as well continue to assume not.) As soon as you define consciousness in functional terms, you make it tractable, but you also detach it from the thing we were originally wondering about. (The problem is that purely materialist or functionalist explanations always run into the question 'but why does there have to be internal subjective experience associated with these things/events/systems, and not others?'. Consciousness itself, in the 'qualia' sense, never plays a functional role in these explanations -- and if we weren't already assuming its existence, they would give us no hint that it exists.)

afthonos 7y ago

> Such as whether we are unique and special, or that we may also be deterministic automatons and free will doesn't exist. That's only scratching the surface of the implications. The real question arises when we have to decide what moral rights consciousness proffers. A lot of arguments for and against vegetarianism, for instance, focus on whether animals suffer in a way that we would understand as suffering. A lot of arguments for terminating a comatose life center around the lack of consciousness. If you suddenly declare that a piece of software is conscious, you have to grapple with what it means for all these questions—and for that matter with what we do with the software itself. Is the software enslaved, having to perform the same thing over and over again? Does turning it off kill it? Does it want anything? Specifically, something other than what its lot is? Should it have a voice in deciding how it is used? Should it get the vote? Should agglomerations of humans? Say, corporations? Should they get free speech? Sci-fi books have explored a lot of these subjects, of course, but reality will be different, and we'll have to deal with it on its own terms.

visarga 7y ago
Don't worry, if it is conscious it will fight back and have a will of its own. It won't be hard to tell. But we could quickly settle this question if we checked some things first: does it need anything (have necessities)? does it learn? can it act on its environment? Can it evolve? Is it part of a group or alone? If no, then it's probably not conscious. All the conscious agents I know have one and the same ultimate goal - to exist and reproduce themselves. All their other goals are just subgoals. By my definition a virus and AlphaGo which was trained as a population of interacting agents with a winner survives rule are both conscious of their environment, which is just a board for AG.
- retsibsi 7y ago
  Why are you confident about any of these things? Unless you're simply stipulating a definition, and not worrying too much about whether it corresponds to 'consciousness' in the sense most of us care about.
- to1y 7y ago
  >Don't worry, if it is conscious it will fight back and have a will of its own. It won't be hard to tell. If life was a cartoon maybe. Although i'm sure many people would argue if it believes its conscious we have no right to dispute, as we cannot know and even may be essentially the same.
- Psyladine 7y ago
  >Don't worry, if it is conscious it will fight back and have a will of its own. It won't be hard to tell. Ever threatened legal action against a multinational corporation?

visarga 7y ago

> "conscious" is a language construct that defines an abstract concept that is only vaguely defined. Why? Because we haven't found a falsifiable theory that allows us to objectively state "x or y are conscious or not conscious" I lean on defining the concept based on adaptation to the environment - consciousness is the function that adapts an agent to its environment. Its purpose is to safeguard the agent against external perturbations and achieve its own goals. For example, how would we get food without consciousness. How would reproduction work? Consciousness has a vital role here. Evolution works at a slow pace, consciousness is required for quick adaptation, otherwise the penalty is death. I think consciousness is being made into something transcendent, or unfalsifiable, or essentially different than physical processes because we like to make ourselves feel special in comparison to the world.

retsibsi 7y ago
But some of us are using the word 'consciousness' to refer to the existence of subjective experience. It may be impossible even in principle to get very far on most of the deepest questions about consciousness in this sense. But it's still real, it still matters a great deal, and we still make important decisions based on our best guesses. (Why should I care what happens to other people, and try to avoid harming them? Because they're clearly conscious, capable of joy, suffering, etc. What about other animals, like dogs and cows and chickens? That seems pretty obvious too, given our biological and behavioral similarities. What about molluscs? Hmm, there are some potentially important differences there. What about rocks? I can't know, but they have none of the features I usually associate with consciousness, and if they do have internal experience I have no idea what determines it, so I might as well continue to assume not.) As soon as you define consciousness in functional terms, you make it tractable, but you also detach it from the thing we were originally wondering about. (The problem is that purely materialist or functionalist explanations always run into the question 'but why does there have to be internal subjective experience associated with these things/events/systems, and not others?'. Consciousness itself, in the 'qualia' sense, never plays a functional role in these explanations -- and if we weren't already assuming its existence, they would give us no hint that it exists.)