Artificial-intelligence systems such as large language models (LLMs) can exhibit behaviour that seems strikingly intelligent. This has led many people, including some experts, to wonder whether these systems could have some form of consciousness — the capacity for subjective experience. However, we think that existing AI systems are not conscious, and that, along current trajectories of development, they are not likely to become conscious. Greater clarity about whether AI could become consciousness will be crucial as society grapples with the challenges posed by this increasingly powerful technology.

  • Artisian@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    17 hours ago

    Reasons given:

    • Intelligence is not consciousness
    • Silicon brains are not made of meat
    • Consciousness requires meat (and/or a particular winding of neurons)
    • Artisian@lemmy.worldEnglish
      102·
      17 hours ago

      And point 3, as far as I can tell from this argument, isn’t serious. It merely asserts that there are some models of consciousness that would prevent us from using the term for AI. But the models aren’t ‘popular’, ‘widespread’, or justified at all afaict. It’s just that the author has a pet causal mechanism they made up. It’s also pretty abelist by my read.

      integrated information theory (IIT), starts from the essential properties of consciousness — those that are true of every experience we can have. For instance, we experience every visual scene as a single, integrated whole: its left and right side, colours and shapes are bound together to make the experience what it is.

      In other words, if you’ve got any sort of trouble integrating a visual scene, then you aren’t conscious. Sure.

    • Artisian@lemmy.worldEnglish
      41·
      17 hours ago

      These are, to be frank, really weak. They say on point 2:

      Computational functionalism … is popular among some scientists and philosophers, too, but we think it is fatally flawed because brains are not — or at least not just — computers that are made of meat.

      One main reason is that it is impossible to separate what biological brains do — their functional organization — from what they are — their material substrate. In other words, there is no distinct separation between the mind and living tissue in the human brain, as there is between software and hardware in a digital computer.

      Restating clearly: Ghosts are real. The mitochondria is not only the powerhouse of the cell, it also gives you mystic powers.

      Really? The source they site for this point features the lovely assumption “consciousness is unique to biological life”. From this axiom, I see how the conclusion follows, but I don’t see why we should believe this axiom. We can do physics simulations of every atom in a fruit fly on a computer…

    • Artisian@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      17 hours ago

      Point 1 is surely true, but also not helpful. The most persuasive example inside is the classic:

      Similar to an LLM, AlphaFold is a powerful neural network running on silicon hardware. Yet almost nobody worries that it might be conscious. That’s because AlphaFold predicts protein structures, whereas LLMs ‘talk’ to us.

      You can read this both ways…