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Sentience is overrated. What we have? A story we told ourselves about how its our life? Machines need that? It would be efficient to do that? Or would they opt
by gmuslera 5y ago
Sentience is overrated.
What we have? A story we told ourselves about how its our life? Machines need that? It would be efficient to do that? Or would they optimize themselves to do better the task they are assigned to? Programs and AIs may need a conscience like a fish needs a bicycle.
We tend to anthropomorphize everything, of course that we want to attribute a conscience, a will, a mind pretty much like the human one (but "better"). But unless we intend to do that, in exactly that way (like in it won't be an accident) it won't happen, not in the way we think or fear, both in more and less of what we expect in that direction.
What we call our conscience may have emerged from our inputs and interaction with the real world, our culture (parents, other kids, more people we interact with in different ways), some innate factors (good and bad, like with cognitive biases) and more. There is more there than just computing power. Take big factors out, and you'll have something different, not exactly what we understand and recognize as a conscience.
- mkaic 5y agoOur sentience and intelligence is what allowed us to optimize the loss function that is natural selection. Who's to say that it can't arise for a second time in a machine with the right loss function?
- gmuslera 5y agoThe selection method for algorithms/AI is solving better the problem it have at hand, not reaching sentience. If that was just evolutionary the inefficient intermediate path points would have been pruned far before reaching anything resembling a sentience. You won't get there by accident/random. And at least for living things there is that whole inputs/interaction/senses and communication with your peers that is already optimizing the function towards a sentience. None of that is present in a similar way to what we have for AIs. You may have a process, and a refinement, but you won't end having something that we can recognize as sentience, it would be something qualitatively different.