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by kazinator
3799 days ago
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Will what be simulated, is the question. When we speak about consciousness, we are referring to something internal which we intuitively know about ourselves, but cannot directly observe in others. When we have a good artificial consciousness, the external behavior will be convincing. Then we can ask: is the visible behavior just some simulation (like a mindless script being followed) or is there an internal reality which is the same as our consciousness. Answers to the question will probably come from the convergence of two fronts: understanding better what the brain does, and correlating that with an understanding of what is going on in the machine. That is, maybe it will be shown that the kinds of states and state changes in the two are very similar (or can be mapped to each other in some way). In other words, we externalize the structures and states as much as possible and identify an equivalence. Then we can proclaim that what is going on in the machine isn't just some elaborate script; the states are actually human like: the external behavior is underpinned by apparently the same stuff that makes people tick. We will also simply be convinced on an emotional level, due to the machines leading complex lives, demonstrating traits such as shame, regret and self-loathing, as well as joy that looks genuine. There will be depressed AI's that require therapy (possibly from humans), and ones that choose to terminate themselves. People who are not computer scientists or philosophers will be convinced that the machines are conscious, by the ways in which their lives intertwine with those of the machines and the relationships they form; only a dwindling group of skeptics will remain, even long after there is no space on the field where the goal-posts can be moved any farther. |
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What's not clear to me is that, in order for us to ascribe AIs the moral value of consciousness, there has to be an isomorphism between the digital computer's computations that generate their external human-like behavior and our brain's biological computations that generate our external human-like behavior.
For one, even if there is such a mapping, there may be difficulty in expressing it in ways our minds can understand. (Side note: would we have consult with the seemingly-sentient, newly created AIs to act as proof assistants to decide whether we humans should ascribe moral value to them?) So inability to for humans to confirm the existence of such a mapping isn't really that indicative of anything.
For two, more fundamentally, suppose that parts of the AI consciousness algorithm do map to parts of the human consciousness algorithm, but other parts don't. How do we figure out which are "key" to the One True Consciousness? AFAICT even in theory the only way to figure that out would be for an individual human to sign up for exotic (and impossible) surgeries to radically modify how their brain works to emulate the parts of digital computations that don't map to biological ones.
Honestly, it seems almost bigoted to me to say there's only one way for consciousness to exist, and that's our own. Biological consciousness supremacy.