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I’m saying there’s nothing you can measure to say anything — even another human — has the same sort of subjective experience (consciousness, a soul, whatever) t

I’m saying there’s nothing you can measure to say anything — even another human — has the same sort of subjective experience (consciousness, a soul, whatever) that you’re experiencing right now, as you read this comment from inside your own head. You can make a guess, but it’s impossible to truly know. (This is a bit different from solipsism, if that’s what’s tripping you up. Although that, too, is a bit of a problem…) So any attempt to “prove” an AI is conscious is either going to fall into the hole of “well, how do you prove anything is conscious?” or is going to need a heavily distorted definition of “conscious” (like “seems kinda human” or “makes uncanny decisions we can’t fully explain”) to be true.

mensetmanusman 5y ago
This might assume that only things that are measurable could be true.
galaxyLogic 5y ago
I think we can say that AI is conscious if we can observe its stack-trace showing it creating symbolic representations of its own processing and then processing those and using the same language for that representation as it uses for communications with humans. In other words if we can observe a machine thinking about its own (symbolic) thinking, then I think it's conscious. Consciousness is the ability to observe one's own mental processes and make sense of them symbolically. That is one possible definition of it. You are right that we can't really prove that humans are conscious, because we cannot observe their thinking. But, to prove that a machine is conscious all we need is to agree on a definition of what it means to be conscious, because machines can be easily inspected. And then find a machine that demonstrates features that fit the definition. If we can't agree on what it means for something to be conscious then the whole question of whether some AI is or could be conscious is of course meaningless.
- throwawaydroid 5y ago
  Consciousness is such a loaded word, and means something different depending on who you are talking to. For instance surgeons & anesthesiologists have a very peculiar definition of what it means to be conscious(ie conscious sedation); regular people might not agree it meets the minimum criterion of being awake and aware of yourself. I think a more important goal if we are designing artificial life might be whether or not an AI is conscientious(like morally).
  - webmaven 5y ago
    > I think a more important goal if we are designing artificial life might be whether or not an AI is conscientious(like morally). I have the feeling that attempts to create conscientious AI will just result in paperclip maximizers that have to use rationalization as an indirection layer to engage in their paperclip maximizing behavior. Not much of an improvement, but realistically, what other result would be tolerated by whoever is building a DWIM AI to run a paperclip factory and for whom conscientiousness would just be a regulatory box to tick?
  - galaxyLogic 5y ago
    Good point, conscious and conscientious, is what we need

mensetmanusman 5y ago

This might assume that only things that are measurable could be true.

galaxyLogic 5y ago

I think we can say that AI is conscious if we can observe its stack-trace showing it creating symbolic representations of its own processing and then processing those and using the same language for that representation as it uses for communications with humans. In other words if we can observe a machine thinking about its own (symbolic) thinking, then I think it's conscious. Consciousness is the ability to observe one's own mental processes and make sense of them symbolically. That is one possible definition of it. You are right that we can't really prove that humans are conscious, because we cannot observe their thinking. But, to prove that a machine is conscious all we need is to agree on a definition of what it means to be conscious, because machines can be easily inspected. And then find a machine that demonstrates features that fit the definition. If we can't agree on what it means for something to be conscious then the whole question of whether some AI is or could be conscious is of course meaningless.

throwawaydroid 5y ago
Consciousness is such a loaded word, and means something different depending on who you are talking to. For instance surgeons & anesthesiologists have a very peculiar definition of what it means to be conscious(ie conscious sedation); regular people might not agree it meets the minimum criterion of being awake and aware of yourself. I think a more important goal if we are designing artificial life might be whether or not an AI is conscientious(like morally).
- webmaven 5y ago
  > I think a more important goal if we are designing artificial life might be whether or not an AI is conscientious(like morally). I have the feeling that attempts to create conscientious AI will just result in paperclip maximizers that have to use rationalization as an indirection layer to engage in their paperclip maximizing behavior. Not much of an improvement, but realistically, what other result would be tolerated by whoever is building a DWIM AI to run a paperclip factory and for whom conscientiousness would just be a regulatory box to tick?
- galaxyLogic 5y ago
  Good point, conscious and conscientious, is what we need