Am I missing something here? How is it possible, by definition, for a not living object to be sentient?
Edit/disclaimer/tip: look at the dictionary and think a little bit, just a little.
Edit/disclaimer/tip: look at the dictionary and think a little bit, just a little.
Do you mean that for something to be sentient, it must be a biological organism? When do you start counting something as one of those that are allowed to be "sentient" according to your definition, and not? Do you distinguish between the matter used in biological organisms vs other objects? Can no human made object ever achieve, sentience-wise, that what biological organisms of Earth managed to do, in your definition? Where do you see the fundamental difference in the process that turned into biological creatures on Earth, and things humans may possibly be able to create?
> Edit/disclaimer/tip: look at the dictionary and think a little bit, just a little.
A dictionary can answer deep philosophical questions? Do you assume a dictionary definition is used when talking about sentience in AI?
Sentience seems to be the ability to experience, for there to be 'something that it is like' to be you. Life is pretty difficult to define, but generally has a lot more baggage than would be expected of something that could be a minimum requirement for the ability to experience.
I find it very likely that networks that have a "what it feels like to be the network" have already been created, and that even relatively simple recurrent models have something akin to this, increasing with the complexity and size of the network. What is pain but an error signal?
Put another way, why are we so arrogant that we assume our capabilities transcend that of a universal turing machine? I for one can barely do linear algebra :D
I tend to gravitate towards the occam's razer, boring answer, and with consciousness, the boring answer has always been "no, there is no quantum soul organ, you literally just need more wiring".
The debate is about our labels and definitions not about how the world works. Basically it's useless.
The patronizing tone adds little to the discussion.
Unless you're postulating a divine immaterial soul. In that case, God or the Universe or whoever can use their own logic to decide whether AIs get to have souls.
It’s pretty clear the matter that I am compromised of has very different properties.
The matter I am made of let’s me move to a new place, dance, and seek necessity. A computer is only aware of what we program it to do. I can see blue without having a word to describe it. Very unlike a computer stuff.
Go put a Thinkpad in a jungle hut on battery power. Come back after a month. It will be dead and not have even tried to survive.
Your conceptual model is way too vague.
We are from being just like a computer. Frankly I think you should probably shut yours off for a while.
Same can be said for you? A "Thinkpad" is nowhere near as sophisticated as a human. Your challenge equates to something like "Go put a human pancreas cell in a jungle hut in a bath of nutrients. Come back in a month. It will be dead and not have even tried to survive."
At a certain level of abstraction, the matter you are comprised of is indistinguishable from a computer, while still being a useful comparison: despite the means, circuits and cells both take signals, process and return modified signals. Likewise, we can compare both of these things to a member of a colony organism, such as an ant.
Though each element has different levels of sophistication the actual "sentience" occurs at a higher level... a sum of all the signals leading to a decision. For a human, whose thoughts surf over a network of squishy cells, this decision might lead to something like movement or dance. To an ant colony - movement or dance is not really an option... it is a big deal to move the colony, no matter how much movement any given ant might display.
For an AI - well it would entirely depend on attached mechanisms. Have you not seen humanoid robots move or dance? Given enough circuits in an appropriately sophisticated arrangement, could we conceive of a robot that observes visual signals, makes decisions about the information, and subsequently changes it behavior in response? That sequence alone qualifies that mechanism as "Sentient", though we might not be able to declare that it is "Sapient" or has "Consciousness".
> Frankly I think you should probably shut yours off for a while.
Frankly, I think you should read something like a basic text describing these issues. A simple primer to give you at least a basic footing in this conversation. The concepts I've just described are decades old and have been continuously poured over by thousands of people much smarter than you or I.