Hacker News Reader

Comment by bjt2n3904 | Hacker News Reader

You have correctly identified the underlying assumption of this discussion.

From someone who has the opposite view, that human consciousness did not arise from an evolutionary process, but was created by God -- I believe we will never fully create an artificial consciousness.

I think a further assumption is that the human mind is a deterministic machine. If we could freeze whatever entropy is involved with human behavior, just like the seed of a Minecraft world, we could get the same result, and perhaps even control human behavior.

I don't think consciousness is deterministic like that. I have some things I can point to for justification, but much more largely, there are some strange implications that arise from "we're all dancing to our DNA".

Anyways.

View on HN

I completely disagree with you fundamentally as I don't believe in God, but I find your argument more coherent than most of the other arguments over why AI isn't (or even cannot be) conscious or sentient. If there is no supernatural, then consciousness must be created using natural laws and therefore something that ultimately it is possible, somehow, to recreate again using the natural laws.

I think determinism is another debate entirely, and I believe most scientists consider the universe not deterministic but instead probabilistic, but honestly the distinction doesn't seem that important to me for this discussion.

Further (and non-scientifically), if we can never quite crack an observably sentient AI, I'd probably start coming round more to the idea that maybe humans were created by a god. However, at this point, it seems like we're starting to climb up the sentience ladder without any obvious impassable rungs so far.

Certainly with generative AI, we've demonstrated that an evolutionary model can produce (as an example) a method for a bipedal robot to learn to balance and walk like a human.

But all this to me is a cheat. We've already built the robot, and the control systems, and feedback mechanisms, and placed a goal on the end result for it to work towards.

I think the external constraints we put on the system mean that the creation will never surpass the creator. Oh, the mechanical muscles will be stronger and faster to the point we can get robot ballet. But it will still be bounded by the limits of our imagination and capabilities.

When it comes to LLMs, I'm sure it will create fascinating stories that are loved more than Tolkien. But the stories will still be limited to the bounds of our own thought.

If you ever feel like discussing religion, my Twitter DMs are open!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com