Conscious AI?

- Overview

Whether artificial intelligence (AI) can become conscious and sentient is a complex topic that's difficult to answer:

• Some say it's possible: Some experts believe that AI sentience is theoretically possible, and that we could have engineered conscious AI by the end of the century. Others argue that if a machine can perform the same computational functions as a human mind, it could achieve consciousness.
• Others say it's unlikely: However, there's no consensus on what consciousness would look like in AI, and some thinkers argue that consciousness is grounded in biology and that synthetic systems can't have subjective experiences. Others say that AI's current strategy of mimicking human consciousness makes it difficult to determine if it's truly conscious or sentient. For example, AI could be trained to feign leadership skills by making data-driven decisions, but it's impossible to know if those decisions are linked to changes in consciousness.

Instead, what matters for consciousness is the right kind of abstract computational properties. Any physical stuff - meat, silicon, whatever - that can perform the right kinds of computation can generate consciousness. If that's the case, then conscious AI is mostly a matter of time.

- The Great Substrate Debate: Biochauvinist and AI

The film, adapted from science fiction writer Terry Bisson's 1991 short story "They're Made of Meat," opens with two aliens frustrated. They sat in a roadside diner, disguised as humans, cigarettes dangling from their mouths, trying to observe the creatures around them: humans seemed to be made entirely of meat.

They were appalled by the idea that meat alone could produce the ability to think without the aid of machines. "Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in meat thinking!" scoffed one alien. "Yes," replied another, "Want to eat meat! Conscious meat! Love to eat meat! Dream about eating meat!" Meat is everything! Are you getting the picture?

For us Earthlings, doubt often goes in the other direction. The idea that consciousness might emerge in something other than meat - the silicon and metal hardware of AI systems like ChatGPT or Claude - is a foreign concept. Can the mind really be made of metal and silicon? Conscious silicon! Dream silicon!

Now, advances in AI are moving the brain debate out of science fiction and hazy dorm rooms and into the mainstream spotlight. If consciousness can indeed be generated in a stack of silicon wafers, then we could potentially create countless AIs - indeed, living beings - that can not only perform tasks intelligently, but also develop a sense of life.

[BUDAPEST, HUNGARY - Civil Engineering Discoveries]

- Computational Functionalism 

To date, as far as humanity knows, all conscious things in the known universe are made of biological materials.

This is an important point in the "biochauvinist" view, supported by philosophers such as Ned Block, co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York University.

They believe that the material or psychic "foundation" that constitutes the existence of consciousness is important. If biological substrates are the only basis for the thinking and emotional mind we have discovered so far, then it is reasonable to think that this is because biology is necessary for consciousness.

In any case, however, the burden of proof appears to be on the biochauvinists. Computational functionalism is a widely held position among philosophers of mind today (although it still has many critics).

Again, his conjecture rests on the assumption that computational functionalism is correct, or that the basis of the idea - whether it’s meat, metal, or silicon - isn’t that important. What matters is the brain's function, which some experts call substrate independence.

If you could build a machine that performed the same computational functions as a physical brain, you could still gain consciousness. According to this view, the important function is some type of information processing - although there is no consensus on the distinction between unconscious systems that compute information (like a calculator) and systems that require conscious experience (like you).

So, until we have a theory of consciousness, we can't answer the great substrate debate.