Article AI will seem to be alive (part 2 of "Will AI be alive?")

[Syne]

"As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear-headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force is the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.”----Max Planck

So your excuse for being duped by AI is panpsychism?

Like I said earlier: "Might as well be a pet rock for all the good it will do."

Panpsychism applies to both equally, but that doesn't mean a rock is conscious any more that it does AI.

[Magical Realist]

“How Smart Is a Rock? To appreciate the feasibility of computing with no energy and no heat, consider the computation that takes place in an ordinary rock. Although it may appear that nothing much is going on inside a rock, the approximately 10 to the 25 (ten trillion trillion) atoms in a kilogram of matter are actually extremely active. Despite the apparent solidity of the object, the atoms are all in motion, sharing electrons back and forth, changing particle spins, and generating rapidly moving electromagnetic fields. All of this activity represents computation, even if not very meaningfully organized. We’ve already shown that atoms can store information at a density of greater than one bit per atom, such as in computing systems built from nuclear magnetic-resonance devices. University of Oklahoma researchers stored 1,024 bits in the magnetic interactions of the protons of a single molecule containing nineteen hydrogen atoms. Thus, the state of the rock at any one moment represents at least 10 to the 27 bits of memory.”
― Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

[Syne]

When you've reduced yourself to defending how smart rocks are (probably pretty smart relative to yourself), you've lost all semblance of credibility.
Like I said elsewhere, no wonder people who have no idea what consciousness is want to attribute it to all kinds of stupid stuff.

[Magical Realist]

When you've reduced yourself to defending how smart rocks are (probably pretty smart relative to yourself), you've lost all semblance of credibility.
Like I said elsewhere, no wonder people who have no idea what consciousness is want to attribute it to all kinds of stupid stuff.

So tell me what consciousness is oh wise one. Enlighten us on this special knowledge you have that you belittle others for not having.

[Syne]

If it includes a rock, it's meaning is so broad that it includes everything. Do you think that is a proper definition? That "consciousness" is basically used as a synonym for "everything?"

The origin of the modern concept of consciousness is often attributed to John Locke who defined the word in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, published in 1690, as "the perception of what passes in a man's own mind". - wiki

There is no "perception of what passes in a rock's own mind," because a rock has nothing analogous to a mind. Neither does AI.

The mind is that which thinks, feels, perceives, imagines, remembers, and wills. - wiki

While AI computes (an analogue of thinking), it doesn't feel, perceive (in any subjective sense), imagine, or have a will.


As you can see, no special knowledge. Just bothering to read, and understand, simple definitions that are widely available.
You know, instead of making up your own vague self-serving bullshit.

[Magical Realist]

No one said a rock is necessarily conscious. Just a computational entity. It receives information inputs from its environment, processes it, and outputs certain states. Everything does this. A river or a volcano or thunderstorm are all processing systems that solve problems that are inputted to it. All driven by certain unvarying and innate molecular algorithms and emergent properties. But that doesn't mean they are conscious. At least not in any sense we are used to. We are swimming in intelligence.

[Syne]

So your "How Smart Is a Rock?" post was completely irrelevant to the discussion of consciousness. Got it.
That also makes your panpsychism argument (your appeal to the authority of Max Plank) irrelevant as well.

[Magical Realist]

The distinction between consciousness and intelligence is part of this topic. Deal with it you anal prig..

[Syne]

From the OP: “intelligence is nothing without delight.”
AI fundamentally cannot do delight, or any other right-hemisphere capacities.

Since we don't know of anything except consciousness that has these capacities, we are reduced to talking exclusively about consciousness. It's trivial that AI has a form of computational intelligence, and that doesn't contribute to it "seeming alive" unless you're ignorant or gullible. It's worse anthropomorphism than people do to pets, since animals might have some capacity for a rudimentary consciousness.

You can either defend your irrelevant and ad hoc arguments or not. Don't whine about it if you can't.

[Magical Realist]

From the OP: “intelligence is nothing without delight.”
AI fundamentally cannot do delight, or any other right-hemisphere capacities.

The very fact that AI is intelligent but lacks the experience of delight itself proves intelligence without consciousness. Unless you're claiming AI is not really intelligent because it lacks the subjective experience/enactment of it. Is that what you're claiming?

Since we don't know of anything except consciousness that has these capacities, we are reduced to talking exclusively about consciousness.

We don't just "know" consciousness. We also "know" unconsciousness as well, as when we fall asleep and wake up. But it might be more accurate to say that in most cases of being unconscious, we infer it instead of knowing it. But inferring is knowing too.

We also have experience of unconscious intelligence in the form of programmed routines we can go thru without consciousness. Like driving while thinking about a movie we saw last night, and then "waking up" to find we successfully drove without consciousness for a minute. Or speaking words without consciously controlling our mouth, tongue, and larynx movements in the process of speaking. Or how an autistic savant can calculate large numbers with lightning speed. Or how a skilled piano player can play music without consciously pressing the right keys on the piano, or how a gymnast can go thru her routine perfectly without consciously moving the required muscles of her body. And all of these examples show we have unconscious sentience as well, or those actions we are going thru could not be coordinated and responsive to the environment.

Another good example of this is when we sleep at night. We shift positions while we sleep many times thru the night. We do this unconsciously in response to the discomfort of one position. But that is unconscious too. And so we shift positions purposefully to remedy the discomfort, all the while remaining unconscious. Some people even sleep walk. This is all amazing in that it shows us being sentient and taking purposeful and guided action all without any consciousness. There is, iow, a vast substrate of unconscious zombie-like intelligence going on underneath our consciousness at all times. We wouldn't last a day without it. We thus have far more in common with AI than you know.