[warent]

The number of comments here of people fearing there is a ghost in the shell is shocking.

Are we really this emotional and irrational? Folks, let's all take a moment to remember that AI is nowhere near conscious. It's an illusion based in patterns that mimic humans.

[isbvhodnvemrwvn]

Look at an average reddit thread and tell me how much original thought there is. I'm fairly convinced you can generate 95% of comments with no loss of quality.

[artursapek]

This is not a coincidence, it's increasingly evident that roughly 90% of humans are NPCs.

[warent]

This is the classic teenage thought of sitting in a bus / subway looking at everyone thinking they're sheep without their own thoughts or much awareness.

For everyone who we think is an NPC, there are people who think we are the NPCs. This way of thinking is boring at best, but frankly can be downright dangerous. Everyone has a rich inner world despite shallow immature judgements being made.

[labrador]

Exactly. Most people aren't good at communicating their thoughts or what they see in their mind's eye. These new AI programs will help the average person communicate those, so I'm exciting to see what people come up with. The average person has an amazing mind compared to other animals (as far as we know)

[callwhendone]

I'm not seeing as much fear about a ghost in the shell as much as I am job displacement, which is a real scenario that can play out regardless of an AI having consciousness.

[HaZeust]

Why is the barrier for so many "consciousness"? Why does it matter whether it's conscious or not if its pragmatic functionality builds use cases that disrupt social contracts (we soon can't trust text, audio OR video - AND we can have human-like text deployed at incredible speed and effectivity), the status quo itself (job displacement), legal statutes and charter (questioning copyright law), and even creativity/self-expression (see: Library of Babel).

When all of this is happening from an unconscious being, why do I care if it's unconscious?

[Method-X]

AI doesn't have to be conscious to cause massive job displacement. It has to be artificially intelligent, not artificially conscious. Intelligence and consciousness are not the same.

[bottlepalm]

We have no idea what consciousness is. Therefore we have no way to determine if AI is or is not.