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Neurogence t1_irrxqso wrote

Reply to comment by sumane12 in Why does everyone assume that AI will be conscious? by Rumianti6

We can tell that animals are sentient. Do you seriously believe that current AI is conscious? GPT-3 is smarter than an elephant in some ways. But do you seriously believe that a system like GPT has anything approximating to consciousness at all? These systems have 0 consciousness.

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sumane12 t1_irs8f2w wrote

How can you tell animals are sentient? Personally I don't know enough about consciousness to make either of those calls. Are trees sentient? What about stones? What about individual atoms?

I find it fascinating that people can judge this with such authority because they equate consciousness with agency, but if we can imagine a system of agency without consciousness, can it be possible for consciousness without agency? Can you prove your personal consciousness is not just the result of a network of smaller consciousness of individual neurons, which is in turn a network of consciousness of individual atoms which is a network of consciousness of subatomic particles?

Seems silly, but it's impossible to prove one way or the other. We have no idea what consciousness is so I think it represents extreme hubris, and is potentially dangerous to think something can't be conscious, just because it doesn't seem conscious.

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