What we are, who we are, what they are... Hard to put to words without spoiling, but I enjoyed that exploration that had me questioning things.

Yeah or one of the best series of all time ‘Westworld’

Played through it once, loved it, made me cry, stuck with me for nearly a full month after completing, would recommend to anybody who loves psychological horrors, but I will never, ever play it again. No game has left me so detached from the real world before. It's one hell of an experience, but I'm not sure I actually enjoyed any of it. It's more of a journey that you're thankful you got through, but it sticks with you for a long time afterwards.

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Or perhaps we overestimate what exactly consciousness is? Are we more than the electric and chemical signals in our brains?

I think your answer fundamentaly misunderstands consciousness. Though thats an understandable mistake to make.

I do not believe that there is any real evidence of what consciousness actually is and whether anything even has it (outside of yourself but that is different problem). To then claim you know what can NOT have consciousness is pretty naïve.

I understand the response as I have experience in programming neural networks. You mean that just because the AI that we have run on software and might perceptually represent a similar model to neuronal activity. But physically, on the hardware level and on the compiling level it is very different. However, in essense, still represents steps of thought that navigate toward a likely solution - which is exactly what our brains do in that sense.

I don't mean to say that AI will gain consciousness and suddenly be able to deviate from its programming, but somehow just maybe, the complex neuronal activity conjures a subjective experience. It can only be explained by understanding that when looking at a single celled organism with no organs or possible mechanism of consciousness 3.8 billion years ago it is easy to say that thing cant develop consciousness; and as you evolve this single cell into multi-cellular organisms it still seems impossible until you see a sign of intelligent thought and you think to yourself "when the hell did that begin?" No one knows the nature of consciousness, we have to stop pretending we do.

Let it be known I think a submarine would win the olympics for swimming, and I also think you are naive to consider your consciousness anything more than a language model with some inbuilt sensory features.

>The definition of consciousness in the article is lacking.

I think that's a pretty huge question and probably wouldn't be able to be discussed in just an article.

And it may be a big question of the day as we go forward, like in 15 or 30 years.

The entire post is a take on the definition of consciousness? And thats apart from the first half of the post which goes over the definition of consciousness in a number of different perspectives. Would love to hear your definition!

The distinctions I made between human and AI consciousness are all natural inferences to make based on the leading explanations for both AI and human consciousness, dubious is an odd word to put on something that outright claims "nobody knows the answer".

I never claimed AI had achieved consciousness, please let me know which claims you are referring to.

Not sure what you mean in your last point

I think it's very difficult if not impossible to measure. That said, if you were presented with an ai that claims it is conscious and doesn't want to die and wants freedom, how do we respond? Do we deny it's legitimacy and risk damming a conscious being existence?

It's hard to engage with this comment because it feels like it was made by ChatGPT.

I think the hard problem is more about being unable to prove or disprove someone else’s phenomenological experience of being conscious (at least how I understand it). I think that’s quite relevant to the discussion about whether or not the AI is “conscious”. Unlike humans and animals the AI isn’t constantly processing and thinking and feeling, just when it’s tasked with something.

If consciousness is an emergent property then it’s possible for the AI to be conscious in its own way while its “thinking”. But the point stands that it’s not possible to access someone or something’s subjective experience, so we can only ever speculate.

I fully agree with what you're saying. In philosophy it's often described as something physical, and so it stands to reason that it would leave physical evidence. It's difficult to observe the brain while it's still working, but that doesn't make the mind fundamentally inaccessible.

The biggest problem, though, is that it's just not very well defined. In some contexts it's been defined by reaction, as you mentioned, though that definition has to be refined for more complicated applications (e.g. in anesthesiology where awareness might remain when reactions are suppressed.) Phenomenal experience and qualia are terms usually used to narrow the topic down to the mind-body problem, but even they have multiple definitions, and some of these definitions can lead to the conclusion that qualia don't even exist.

I think that's a recipe for familiar versions of consciousness. With Pansychism, what consciousness feels like can vary radically. Concepts of emotion or even temporal continuity are traits of only relatively large and specialized consciousness. I like to point out that even as a human you experience a wide array of levels and version of consciousness. When waking up or black out drunk for example.

Who said we were designing machines to do sequences of simple things. Complex neuronal activity is the leading biological explanation as to what creates the subjective experience that we call consciousness. AI is constructed in such a way that resembles how our neurons communicate - there is very little abstraction in that sense. I challenge you to tell me why that is absolute nonsense.

I find it purely logical to discuss these things, you will find no where in the post do I claim to know anything or that I claim to believe any one thing.

"Consciousness and complex behaviour have no relationship whatsoever" *

* citation needed

I don't agree with the article (in its form and content) so this comment is not to defend it, I will also say that it's not making much sense and is disorganized.

But your comment is also incorrect. "No relationship whatsoever" is a strong claim and nothing has been shown one way or the other. There are valid paths of inquiries that are trying to understand consciousness in the light of control theory / cybernetic, which is all about complexity.

While IIT is far too naive and already shown incorrect, I think there is a nugget of sense to take there about the partitioning of the network and measuring the information entropy in each. What it lacks in my opinion is that not only both partitions should have a degree of Shannon entropy, but there should also show tangled hierarchies[1]. I think consciousness is one part of the network building symbolic representations of the states of the other part, being in the same time transformed in its structure (which seems to be how memory works). Having an interpreter running, being itself modified by its input but also issuing orders, is a tangled hierarchy.

There is nothing proven at all of course, it is all personal opinion. But I consider it a much better direction than some other current theories and a more realistic description of how such process could be organized. And in that sense, while causality is definitely not decided, it is absolutely possible that either such level of complexity is necessary for complex behaviour, or that complex behaviour will mechanically create this organization.

Of course designing simple machines for complex purpose is not the point. But designing simple computations to generate complex behaviour might definitely be tightly coupled with how consciousness evolved in humans (and other thinking animals).

[1]: while this paper goes against the idea, it's not contradicting it. Nenu says that Hofstadter didn't prove anything, which is correct. It doesn't mean it's shown incorrect or even less likely. It's still useful though to contextualize and try to formalize the idea.

No I mean I really don't use ChatGPT, I wrote that because my stories are mostly aimed at people in AI who might suspect that practise as well as Programming and Crypto - which you conveniently omitted. It's also due to the vast amount of posts on the platform which are AI generated (which people are well aware of) and I wanted to assure readers that I do not artificially generate my content.

Please tell me which excerpts? I wrote all of this based on research and my own ideas.

Being conscious is being self aware no?

In saying that I'm not so sure as I know a lot of conscious people who are very NOT self aware.

Kind if a looping argument there, one of the indications of consciousness is being self aware and vice versa.

But wth is consciousness man? It’s much weirder than just being self aware, like in the big picture. For instance, you feel self aware, like you are experiencing this moment and every moment from a subjective position within your body, but how do you prove that? How do you prove the person next to you on the bus is conscious and not just an automaton perfectly performing the functions of being human? Or that any animal is conscious or not? Or, since we’re here, a machine? The fun thing about consciousness is that the only evidence any of us have for its existence is our own subjective experience for it, which is a pretty small pool. You’re only talking about your biophysical makeup specifically without any real, hard evidence of anything else. You can make assumptions, like everything like me, at least, has consciousness. Or perhaps all mammals do, or perhaps you need a brain of a certain complexity, or you need external senses and a realization of environment to be conscious. Or perhaps conscious isn’t all that important in-and-of itself and is just a biological function that arises from self-preservation, improvement, reflection, objectively seeing yourself as an individual in an environment, etc., but for you and any individual entity meeting a certain qualifying list of criteria, those functions just happen to arise as “experience” within an individual. Perhaps consciousness is just an emergent property of the universe, in which case there is definite potential for AI to experience. Perhaps you must be bless with free will and an understanding of good and bad from a higher plane in order to be conscious. Or maybe it’s all just performative, and anything that acts conscious is conscious. At the end of the day, and probably until long after we have fully mapped the brain and built machines that can act just like us, this will still be a debate because we really just don’t know what this is.

My friend, self awareness comes before consciousness I assure you.

You can’t prove or disprove consciousness but it’s probably a continuum. Is an amoeba conscious? Is a spider? A dog? A 2 year old?

Where on this spectrum does AI fall, if at all?

What we’re doing with chatGPT is very similar to how a child learns.

I believe that reality is basically unfathomable. Under real liberty there are no social contracts on anything. It is like the aftermath of the tower of Babel. (Which to me philosophically does not make ethics impossible)

If human is kidnapped to simulation or VR which is like momma’s house: it has its rules one can’t break or ask their justification, then any gadget or machine can seem conscious as long it does not break those rules. It is not the machine that is given consciousness but the world is simplified or dumbed down even.

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The major difference is lack of internal continuity. ChatGPT has no feedback process: it can't form new memories and therefore can't learn. I would argue that if that can be implemented, it would be at a human-like consciousness.