[nnq]

> could develop emergent qualia

If we were to admit there really is such thing as "qualia", there's not reason you wouldn't ask the same question about non-biological software or hardware systems... electronic hardware or biological hardware can have same computational qualities.

But since OBJECTIVELY there's no such things as qualia (the concept only exist SUBJECTIVELY), it could only exist by definition for "a person/subject" eg., in this context, a neural network large and complex enough to get close to a human-like intelligence level!

A dragonfly nervous system is probably simpler than some of the the largest artificial neural networks models...

[MaxBarraclough]

I'm inclined to agree. To put it another way, then: what matters isn't the substrate (neurons vs transistors), but what you do with them.

Going this route, we'd have to say that if you wrote a program that perfectly simulated the human brain, you've built a conscious system running on transistors.

It also means that if you built a RISC-V processor based on a large number of neurons (say, as many as are in a human brain), you haven't built a conscious system, despite that it's neuron-based.

I'm ignoring the obvious problems with building a RISC-V using neurons; they strike me as incidental detail, for our purposes here.

[h0l0cube]

I've answered to these points in another comment. But I'll emphasize, that I know (and presume you know) within some minimum epistemic bound^, that we can suffer pain and that arises from our neurological systems. It can't be known what other systems/substrates could experience qualia, and even if they have the outward markers of consciousness, they could be 'zombies'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

^ i.e., not in some adversarial simulation etc.

[eyeundersand]

> A dragonfly nervous system is probably simpler than some of the largest artificial neural networks models.

I would be extremely surprised if that were the case. Behavior of a single cell alone is unimaginably complex. Let alone an organ system, let alone the nervous system.

I will agree with your Qualia point.