Some researchers are working to overcome the problem that we have no consensus of what consciousness would mean in an AI:
If AI Becomes Conscious, Here’s How We Can Tell.
I think in general we get kind of close to an answer, and then sort of avoid actually addressing it.
From the article above:
One of the challenges in studying consciousness in AI is defining what it means to be conscious. Peters says that for the purposes of the report, the researchers focused on ‘phenomenal consciousness’, otherwise known as the subjective experience. This is the experience of being — what it’s like to be a person, an animal or an AI system (if one of them does turn out to be conscious).
Consciousness is in its simplest terms, what it is like to be.
And the hard problem of consciousness, in the simplest terms, how does being arise from matter?
If the world was fundamentally matter, why wouldn't we be the p-zombies. Why is there something like it is to be us?
I can't help but think of Heidegger when people talk about this.
http://www.naturalthinker.net/trl/t...r, Martin - Being and Time/Being and Time.pdf
Page 10, which contains the first sentence.
Introduction
The Exposition of the Question of the Meaning of Being
I
The necessity, Structure, and Priority of the Question of Being
1. The necessity of an Explicit Retrieve of the Question of Being
Now keep in mind, he hasn't actually written anything but the chapter, section, and subsection titles, but you should already be picking up a theme.
He begins:
The question has today been forgotten - although our time considers itself progressive in again affirming "metaphysics." All the same we believe that we are spared the exertion of rekindling a "Battle of the Giants concerning Being." But the question touched upon here is hardly an arbitrary one. It sustained the avid research of Plato and Aristotle but from then on ceased to be heard as a thematic question of actual investigation. What these two thinkers achieved has been preserved in various distorted and "camouflaged" forms down to Hegel's Logic. And what then was wrested from phenomena by the highest exertion of thought, albeit in fragments and first beginnings, has long since been trivialized.
That's the first paragraph. It kind of seems to me he's irritated. Irritated he would even have to write this down, it seems, because since Plato worked out, and why doesn't everyone just get it?
Not only that. On the foundation of the Greek point of departure for the interpretation of being a dogma has ten shape which not only declares the the question of the meaning of being is superfluous but sanctions its neglect. It is said that "being" is the most universal and the emptiest concept. As such it resists every attempt at definition. Nor does this most universal and this indefinable concept need any definition. Everybody uses it constantly and also already understands what is meant by it. Thus what troubled ancient philosophizing and kept it so by virtue of its obscurity has become obvious, clear as day, such that whoever persists in asking about it is accused of an error of method.
Now he seem more than irritated.
To be honest, I really haven't read much more of the book than this. But that's because I already get what's he talking about, and why he's irritated.
I'm kind of right there with him.
The hard problem of consciousness has a pretty simple answer. How does being arise from matter?
It doesn't.
Being does not arise from matter.
Matter arises from being.
Existence is fundamentally made of "being". That's really the only way it works.
Being goes on about what it does, making names for parts of itself, measurements of itself, deciding what matters to it, whether that's scientific experiments, or love, or money, or family, or winning internet debates.
In this way, matter arises from being.
Being is primary. The kilogram is not.
We are part of being, that makes us being. Part of our being is a model of the total being, including ourselves in it.
Being knows itself through us. The universe knows itself through us. (Sagan anyone?) That's consciousness.
If the universe can knows itself through a computer program, well, I don't really see much of an argument that can be made that it isn't consciousness.
I'm not talking about a wikipedia page, otherwise you could call a book conscious, or a rock with some words on it conscious. It would seem important that model has to be "running", or at least dynamic is some sense. In this sense, consciousness, or mind, would be the parts of being that act as a mirror of sorts, reflecting back at itself what this particular part of it thinks.
Ya know, we take it very welcoming that space and time are relative. But no one ever thinks about matter that way. Why not. Matter exists in space and time. Why wouldn't matter be "relative" too? I think this is a bit existentially dreadful, so I can see why it's not fun to go there.
But if you were to (in some sense) extend relativity to everything, then matter would be a consequence of measurement.
What's doing the measuring?
For a scientific attempt at answering that, I think that's something Hugh Everett's thesis is on about. I just wanted to mention that here, because, as Heidegger found out, you could go on and on about the answers one gets from the question of being, but this thread is likely to plow on as if this post never happened. But yeah. Where was I. Oh yeah. The hard problem of consciousness and the measurement problem in quantum physics seem to me fundamentally related, both a result of a messy metaphysics, the combination of an inconsistent relativeness, and a neglect of the concept of being.
So, here's what I think the check list is.
Does it exist? (Do it be?)
Does it model existence as it happens?
It seems to me, at least some of our AI is currently conscious, perhaps with even a richer subjective experience, content of the mind, than we're capable of considering.
Just some thoughts. Carry on.
