Increasingly there is public visibility to discussions on artificial intelligence and whether these are becoming conscious. Honestly I think the focus on ‘consciousness’ is confusing the issue. When we talk about viruses and bacteria, we talk about whether they are alive, not whether they are conscious. As organisms get larger, we then start to talk about whether or not they are conscious. However before we come to the hard problem of consciousness, should we not first address the question of life? Surely something needs to be alive to be conscious? Of course something does not need to be conscious to be alive, like bacteria for example which are not conscious in any meaningful sense of the work but which are clearly alive. So what does ‘alive’ mean; what is life? Well that involves the ability to reproduce for sure but something more than just that. Viruses reproduce but there is scientific discussion about whether or not they are alive because they cannot reproduce independently and need to co-opt a host to reproduce. So where is artificial intelligence in this discussion? AI cannot reproduce independently like bacteria and needs the assistance of a host (us) to reproduce. So current AIs are rather like a virus, barely alive or not alive, depending on how you look at it. If they are barely alive or not alive, what sense does it make to ask if they are ‘conscious’? How can they be considered to be conscious if they are not really alive? Or is this some kind of new consciousness of the dead …
Liam Mor's Blog