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A skeptical overview of AI and consciousness
~ai~books.online~opinion~philosophylong read
arxiv.org 4 weeks agoTildes

Summary

From the article:

Moreover and more importantly, we won’t know before we’ve already manufactured thousands or millions of disputably conscious AI systems. Engineering sprints ahead while consciousness science lags. Consciousness scientists – and philosophers, and policy-makers, and the public – are watching AI development disappear over the hill. Soon we will hear a voice shout back to us, “Now I am just as conscious, just as full of experience and feeling, as any human”, and we won’t know whether to believe it. We will need to decide, as individuals and as a society, whether to treat AI systems as conscious, nonconscious, semi-conscious, or incomprehensibly alien, before we have adequate grounds to justify that decision.

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In this book, I aim to convince you that the experts do not know, and you do not know, and society collectively does not and will not know, and all is fog.