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PerfectRuin t1_irtazt3 wrote

Reply to comment by HeinrichTheWolf_17 in Why does everyone assume that AI will be conscious? by Rumianti6

I find it amusing to think the idea that AI will become conscious is surprisingly not so terribly different from believing your Encyclopedia Britannica series sitting on your bookshelf will wake up conscious tomorrow if it's struck by lightning during a thunderstorm tonight.

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Mrkvitko t1_irtpk2e wrote

Yeah, and not so terribly different from a couple of cells in your brain waking up conscious every morning...

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PerfectRuin t1_irwo68n wrote

Brain cells are alive. They have that qualia that non-alive things lack. AI is not alive. Books are not alive. AI and books are similar in that they store information. They have input (you write info into them) and output (you read info from them). AI has mechanisms that allow it to process info but not meaning. But that's not life. AI has electricity running through it, and that's similar to living things. Hence the lightning strike in the amusing analogy.

Zealots desperately hoping AI will become some living god that will accept their worship or bring more meaning to their lives through their servitude of it, downvoting comments that question or challenge the idea that AI can ever achieve consciousness annoys me in the same way that all zealotry of blind-faith religions annoys me. But it's my fault for risking commenting here in a post that doesn't support the blind-faith tenet that AI will become consciousness if it isn't already. I apologize for having trespassed here. I'll see myself out.

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Mrkvitko t1_irwu3kp wrote

Where is the borderline between "alive" and "non-alive"? Are humans alive? Certainly. Are they conscious? Yup. How about animals? They are alive, some species are well self aware and probably conscious to some degree. What about plants and mushrooms? Certainly alive, but given their absence of nervous system, it is unlikely they are conscious in the traditional sense. How about single cells organisms (yeasts, bacteria, protozoa...) They are alive, moving, hunting... But probably not conscious, as they (again) don't have any complex nervous system. How about viruses? They are certainly not conscious, maybe not even alive.

Being alive is certainly independent on being conscious. "Being alive" is basically synonymous with "having metabolism". There's insane amount of organisms that are alive and not conscious that proves the point.

But it doesn't tell us anything about whether being conscious depends on "being alive". All we can say is we haven't yet observed any thing that would be conscious and not alive. My assumption is "being conscious" is just a matter of complexity - and the only reason we haven't observed any conscious "not living" thing is because there is no known process that would create things that are complex enough. Well, until humanity emerged.

Don't go anywhere, I like this discussion :)

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red75prime t1_irtnhbb wrote

Maybe in some frankenstein-esque interpretation of the situation. Inanimate matter imbued with information and power becoming alive or something like this. Too poetical to my taste.

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