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Comment by Lambdanaut | Hacker News Reader

> They are doing exactly what they were programmed to do.

Just like you are doing exactly what you were programmed to do by your DNA.

The self-awareness is a strange loop where the program itself encodes a simplified model of itself within itself.

That's all self-awareness is. Meta-information. Humans just have REALLY GOOD meta-information that rolled off the evolutionary assembly line over billions of years.

It almost sounds like you're positing a magical `soul` that comes in at some point, and for some reason it will only inhabit squishy wet bio-machines like us but not hard metal-machines. You're not doing that, are you?

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I'm not arguing for a soul or any sort of emergent properties of self-awareness or consciousness even, I just believe that in our current state of AI/ML/neural networks/deep learning, all of these techniques and algorithms simply optimize for some goal (or reward function like the author stated). Maybe one day we'll build a self-aware AI within a "hard metal-machine" but in my opinion we're far off from that.

If we build something one day that acts like a philosophical zombie [1] for example, then yes topics like self-awareness, consciousness, theory of mind will all be at the forefront of conversations regarding AI. But right now all we have are algorithms that optimize towards a goal and we have journalists jumping in on the hype talking about robots inventing languages, the desires these robots have, and robots teaming up to destroy humans [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

[2] https://www.maxim.com/news/elon-musk-artificial-intelligence...

Since you're someone that ponders philosophical problems, at least a little bit, then I ask you to consider this. Whether you come up with an answer or not is irrelevant, and I myself have no point other than to get you to question consciousness BEFORE we've built the thing ourselves, which is a very real potential in the coming decades, and something we should consider and take care to avoid pitfalls beforehand.

Here is my problem:

I am defining consciousness here as a feeling of existence. It does not necessarily entail strong self-awareness to the extent that humans have.

You have this kind of consciousness. Correct?

If you have consciousness, then we can assume I have consciousness as well. That is something I hope we can agree on, unless I am one of your philosophical zombies, in which case you are a solipsist and a true hardcore Empiricist, which is completely fine, but in that case we can unfortunately move no further.

Assuming I have consciousness, I ask you, does the average intelligent primate have consciousness?

Assuming so, does the average dolphin have consciousness?

Assuming so, does the average sheep have consciousness?

Assuming so, does the average rat have consciousness?

Assuming so, does the average lizard have consciousness? Do we lose consciousness here?

Does the average insect have consciousness?

Does a tree?

Does my houseplant?

Does a microbe?

Does my computer?

Does my thermostat?

Does a home?

Does a lake?

Does the universe?

Is there a line somewhere here that separates the conscious from the unconscious?

If there is, can we prove it, or is it as elusive as Bigfoot?

If we can't prove it, and the burden of proof lies on the thing being posited, then I have one final question: Why believe in the line at all?

I agree with what you said at the beginning of your comment, and what I think you're getting at is something like panpsychism [1], where consciousness is an inherent property in the universe, as opposed to an emergent view where at some point there is no consciousness in a given system and once it becomes complex enough consciousness emerges or develops.

I don't necessarily have an argument for either of them right now. But you asked me "why believe in the line at all?" -- I'm not making an argument for what consciousness is, I'm only claiming that the current state of the art algorithms we have developed and AI we currently build have nothing to do with topics like self-awareness, consciousness, theory of mind, etc. One day we'll get there I'm sure.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism

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