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by EasyMark 762 days ago
If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. I don't understand this "we have to understand consciousness first" stuff gets so much discussion. If it acts human, and is indiscernible from human or human like, it'll fit our definition. I don't understand why "organic machine" matters, it's the "machine" part that matters, and we are machines. I think all that needs to be seriously considered. Is it ethical to end such an intelligence because it could easily evolve far quicker than us and displace us? Do we just let "natural selection" happen? big questions, but I don't think we'll understand and have universal understanding of consciousness before we stumble onto the first AGI
2 comments

Something which pretends to be something else, no matter how convincing, is still essentially different. A deepfaked video could be bit for bit identical to what the genuine recording would have been and it still wouldn’t reflect reality if the content never happened.
But since we can't yet define consciousness, how do you know the AGI is just 'faking it' instead of being the real deal? What are human brains but a bunch of neurons pretending to be a person?
That’s fair, we can’t even prove humans aren’t like you say - although the brain is vastly more complex than a neural network analogy lets on. I suppose once these models become sophisticated enough we’ll have to treat them as conscious until it can be proven one way or another.
> That’s fair, we can’t even prove humans aren’t like you say - although the brain is vastly more complex than a neural network analogy lets on. I suppose once these models become sophisticated enough we’ll have to treat them as conscious until it can be proven one way or another.

I suspect that a lot of the complexity is legacy code and/or incidental to the implementation. Cells have to do a lot of things just to continue living. Likewise, a lot of what the brain does is just control the very complex biochemical reactor that it lives in. ie: whales have big brains relative to humans (though they are a much smaller % of their body).

I guess I just disagree with you. My background is neurobiology and biological systems are just so fundamentally different than conventional computing architecture in so many ways. I just don't believe that a true AGI is achievable as software alone. We might get something that "looks like a duck" but until it actually is a duck, I don't think it will be AGI.