this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
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AI could already be conscious. Are we ready for it? (www.bbc.co.uk)
submitted 1 week ago by SleafordMod@feddit.uk to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Do you think AI is, or could become, conscious?

I think AI might one day emulate consciousness to a high level of accuracy, but that wouldn't mean it would actually be conscious.

This article mentions a Google engineer who "argued that AI chatbots could feel things and potentially suffer". But surely in order to "feel things" you would need a nervous system right? When you feel pain from touching something very hot, it's your nerves that are sending those pain signals to your brain... right?

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[–] MagicShel@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I said on paper. They are just algorithms. When silicon can emulate meat, it's probably time to reevaluate that.

[–] amelia@feddit.org 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

You talk like you know what the requirements for consciousness are. How do you know? As far as I know that's an unsolved philosophical and scientific problem. We don't even know what consciousness really is in the first place. It could just be an illusion.

[–] MagicShel@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I have a set of attributes that I associate with consciousness. We can disagree in part, but if your definition is so broad as to include math formulas there isn't even common ground for us to discuss them.

If you want to say contemplation/awareness of self isn't part of it then I guess I'm not very precious about it the way I would be over a human-like perception of self, then fine people can debate what ethical obligations we have to an ant-like consciousness when we can achieve even that, but we aren't there yet. LLMs are nothing but a process of transforming input to output. I think consciousness requires rather more than that or we wind up with erosion being considered a candidate for consciousness.

So I'm not the authority, but if we don't adhere to some reasonable layman's definition it quickly gets into weird wankery that I don't see any value in exploring.

[–] amelia@feddit.org 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

AI isn't math formulas though. AI is a complex dynamic system reacting to external input. There is no fundamental difference here to a human brain in that regard imo. It's just that the processing isn't happening in biological tissue but in silicon. Is it way less complex than a human? Sure. Is there a fundamental qualitative difference? I don't think so. What's the qualitative difference in your opinion?