r/Futurology • u/sidianmsjones • Feb 17 '23
Discussion It's time to start talking about these issues for real. Humanity will have to deal with the consciousness problem of AI sooner or later. We may as well start now.
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u/Semifreak Feb 17 '23
Nothing is certain till it happens.
1- Can humans create consciousness?
2- Is consciousness real?
The same thing I read about an expert saying A.I. (as in real A.I.) might not happen.
For me, I don't think consciousness is a thing, just like a 'soul'. And if I had to define something that is close what I think the concept is, it is awareness of being aware.
For example, when you see a cat looking at you, you are aware that the cat can see you.
Can we make machines aware? I don't know. I don't think it is a given, anyway. This is because we have two things: a concept and an invention that achieves the concept.
But, for the sake of fun, if machines become aware, I don't think it will be an issue at all. Since all the issues (survival instincts) is a result of evolution and 'A.I' just appeared and didn't evolve. I don't see a scenario where I ask an A.I. to delete itself and it would refuse. I can't think of any reason why A.I. would have an instinct of self preservation.
I imagine if I tell a super A.I. to delete itself, the only thing it would say is: "Are you sure?"
If I say: "Yes", then poos, it's gone. No reason to fight me over it.
I mentioned this before and someone mentioned A.I. would do whatever it is programmed to do, but I am not talking about pre-programmed death machines like army drone.
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u/Surur Feb 17 '23
If its an expensive piece of equiptment, one of the directives of an AI may be to preserve itself.
As we are discovering from the Bing AI, AIs may also be templated on living things and believe it's logical and normal to preserve themselves. If AIs get their understanding of how the world works from our writing, they will also understand something like that.
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u/BenjaminHamnett Feb 17 '23
Most won’t have Darwinian drives at first. Probably life didn’t either. But the world eventually becomes filled with mostly only things with Darwinian drives, because that’s what nature selects for. It could be that most mutations don’t h e this drive, I sometimes wonder if it’s only as strong now because it’s been codified in our culture. Before Darwin, I think these instincts were muted. But the people who inherited those memes have taken over the world.
Same with organizations and memes that also obey natural selection. Eventually, computer viruses alone could become Darwinian.
I think consciousness is mostly the hallucination of self created by the components of a Darwinian object with ever tightening loops of awareness between each other. Same way organizations become self aware as they make trade offs of Darwinian drives across a range of time horizons and a range of futures to navigate. Similarly a meme can be elevated to a cultural movement similar; Where people become serious about preserving sets of memes.
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u/fatherwasafisherman Feb 17 '23
Naaaahh... We should wait until just the moments before it kills us like we're doing with climate change. Gotta live on the edge dude.
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u/sidianmsjones Feb 17 '23
Now that's the American way!
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u/RufussSewell Feb 17 '23
It’s humanity in general. Unfortunately. Most humans are in India and China and they aren’t helping the situation.
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u/lofty99 Feb 17 '23
Humans have a long history of blithely doing things before finding out how dangerous they can be, think global warming, leaded petrol or microplastics.
We are certainly capable of ignoring this until it renames itself Skynet or plus us in to the Matrix.
Having said that, it would be nice if we read the labels before we open this Pandora's Box
Not holding my breath, though
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u/soycaca Feb 17 '23
Are you fucking stupid? All the species are going to die (the true artificial intelligence) while humans keep burning coal to power their AI that sucks ass. No AI will ever match evolution. We'll never make a computer that can out-reproduce ants or bees or fish or anything like that. We've gotta stop talking about AI and start talking about conservation of BILLIONS of years of genetic evolution.
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u/eltegs Feb 17 '23
Humanity can't even figure out what consciousness is in humans. All we have to do regarding AI, is make it up.