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Regardless of whether this guy is right or wrong, this brings up an interesting angle: we know that we won't be able to (we are not able to) distinguish self-co
by atleta 4y ago
Regardless of whether this guy is right or wrong, this brings up an interesting angle: we know that we won't be able to (we are not able to) distinguish self-conscious and non-self-conscious entities with a 100% accuracy. Both because the division between the two categories is not a strict one (i.e. there aren't two disjunct sets but a spectrum) and because we can't 100% trust our measurement.
Which means that we should rather talk about two distinct tests/criteria. It's either "we can be (reasonably) sure it's unconscious" or "we can be reasonably sure it's conscious". What I expect to be happening (and what maybe happening here) is that people who argue do so along different criteria. The guy who says it's self aware probably does along the first one (it seems self aware so he can't exclude that it isn't) and google along the second one (it can't prove it is, e.g. because they have a simpler explanation: it could easily just generate whatever it picked up from scifi novels).
BTW, if we talk about the fair handling of a future AI, we might want to think about it's capacity of being able to suffer. It may acquire it sooner than looking generally intelligent.
We can see a similar pattern around animal rights. We're pretty certain that apes can suffer (even from their emotions, I think) and we're pretty certain that that e.g. primitive worms can't. However, it seems that we can't rule out that crustaceans can also suffer, so the legislation is changed wrt how they should be handled/prepared.
- me_me_me 4y agoThe problem is deeper then you make out to be, we have no idea how to prove other humans are conscious, other then I am human and I believe I am conscious so if other human claims to be conscious then they must be.
- atleta 4y agoI'm not making it out to be anything and I'm definitely not claiming that I know the solution. If anything, I was contemplating that the problem is more complex than it seems: it doesn't matter how you measure self-awarness, since it's not well defined and since the measurement is guaranteed to be inaccurate, you have to decide which side you will err on. > we have no idea how to prove other humans are conscious, other then I am human > and I believe I am conscious so if other human claims to be conscious then they must be. Indeed, however we operate, we have defined consciousness based on that, so that part of your argument is false (or even meaningless). Now the reason we assume other humans are conscious too is because we know that we're pretty similarly built, so we mush operate in a pretty similar way. More than that, we have made a lot of observations that proves that most humans do operate similarly (think e.g. fMRI experiments). So it's not only that others say so. But you are right, we don't seem to have a very good definition of what self-consciousness is after all and we don't have a fixed set of criteria or measure that can be applied to any non-human entity. But that's basically what I said originally.