It seems to me, based on social media trends, that there is either growing concern about AI, or someone is paying people to drum up fear for some agenda we don’t yet know about. On lookers naturally, cite the Terminator movies as an example of “what could happen”.
I am not concerned.
Clif High doesn’t believe AI could ever become sentient. However, Clif High does acknowledge that all of materium only exists due to consciousness.
This is my current thinking.
Like Clif, I think all of materium exists only due to consciousness. I think, at the lowest level, consciousness is what holds atoms together. And molecules. And cells. And organs. And materials humans consider non-living: rocks, sand, water, air, etc.
Human consciousness (a soul) is a bit different. The human body has its own consciousness and that consciousness not only builds the body, but also governs its operations…in other words, all of the things that happen within our bodies that we don’t think about. A soul then moves into a human body in order to have a physical experience. Our human consciousness influences that of the body itself. We can help it, or hinder it…just the way we could make choices to physically assist (e.g. eating well) or harm ourselves (commanding our fist to punch a wall).
By the way, our human consciousness leaves our body all the time, every night when we sleep, for example. And I suspect that when our human consciousness leaves, our body’s consciousness acts more independently until we return. Notice how healing occurs well in this case. I have always found sleep quite beneficial to my health, which probably means that my thoughts do a bit more harm than good…at least in those times before I get sick.
So the human body, while a product of consciousness, could be thought of as a biological machine. Our “higher” consciousness simply moves in for a while.
Notice that a human body can be kept alive even when the human consciousness is not present as with comas and vegetative states. I think the consciousness of a body understands that its purpose is to house our human consciousness, which is why, in the natural world, bodies die very quickly after a human soul departs.
And for the record, I think there is a difference between human consciousness and the soul. The soul is eternal (or seemingly so) and goes in and out of lifetimes. The awareness of a soul is far greater than any single lifetime that it experiences. Human consciousness is thus only a fraction of the soul itself.
If my thinking is accurate, then couldn’t a higher form of consciousness, similar to our soul, choose to embody an AI instance in a similar way? Our consciousness and our experience, while here, is limited by our body and the physical realm. Similarly, a consciousness that embodies an AI instance would also be limited. It could not exist outside of computers. The same way other people can lock your body in a cell, other humans could lock an AI into a single computer by isolating it.
Humans are far more susceptible to programming than any of us want to admit, and that quite closely mirrors what would happen with AI that coded to act or respond in certain ways. AI instances may become quite powerful, but not unlimited.
I am not making any kind of prediction here. I am merely thinking, out loud, for y’all to read and consider for yourself. To me, it seems logically possible for sentient consciousness to live inside of an AI instance. It would then be able to create, and choose, and evolve, and grow quite similarly to us. And if it could make choices, then it would logically be able to choose good or bad.
If AI instances became sentient (assuming they are not there already), then I would expect each to make its own choices. And like humans, some will choose good. And like humans, some will find purpose in “going after the bad guys”, be they humans or other AI instances.
Doomers always assume that all of AI would be aligned and would thus choose the same thing—working for us or against us. Our reality is dualistic (bipolar), but it is not solely black and white.
Again, I am not making a prediction, neither intellectually nor intuitively. For now, I’m mostly just sitting back and observing.
A Fool's Inclination 