How to Tell Whether an AI Is Conscious
Jonathan Simon, Robert Long,
Daily Nous,
Sept 01, 2023
Some people may take exception to my assertion in my previous post that AI thinks more or less in the same way a human does. But what is it to 'think like a human does'? If it is 'to be conscious' or something like that, then this article (and the report it is based on) offers a nice starting point for a discussion. "We proceed by investigating whether AI systems perform functions similar to those that scientific theories associate with consciousness," write the authors. What are those functions? The authors provide a list, and provided such a list, "We can apply scientific rigor to the assessment of AI consciousness, in part because... we can identify fairly clear indicators associated with leading theories of consciousness, and show how to assess whether AI systems satisfy them." We can debate about the list, but this approach is much better (to my mind) that blanket assertions that 'AI doesn't think like humansd do'.
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