The Possibility of AI Consciousness
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: March 1, 2014
Web Domain: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com
Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Journal: In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal
Journal Founding: August 2, 2012
Frequency: Three (3) Times Per Year
Review Status: Non-Peer-Reviewed
Access: Electronic/Digital & Open Access
Fees: None (Free)
Volume Numbering: 11
Issue Numbering: 3
Section: B
Theme Type: Idea
Theme Premise: “Outliers and Outsiders”
Theme Part: 28
Formal Sub-Theme: None.
Individual Publication Date: June 15, 2023
Issue Publication Date: September 1, 2023
Author(s): Richard May/May-Tzu
Author(s) Bio: Richard May (“May-Tzu”/“MayTzu”/“Mayzi”) is a Member of the Mega Society based on a qualifying score on the Mega Test (before 1995) prior to the compromise of the Mega Test and Co-Editor of Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society. In self-description, May states: “Not even forgotten in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), I’m an Amish yuppie, born near the rarified regions of Laputa, then and often, above suburban Boston. I’ve done occasional consulting and frequent Sisyphean shlepping. Kafka and Munch have been my therapists and allies. Occasionally I’ve strived to descend from the mists to attain the mythic orientation known as having one’s feet upon the Earth. An ailurophile and a cerebrotonic ectomorph, I write for beings which do not, and never will, exist — writings for no one. I’ve been awarded an M.A. degree, mirabile dictu, in the humanities/philosophy, and U.S. patent for a board game of possible interest to extraterrestrials. I’m a member of the Mega Society, the Omega Society and formerly of Mensa. I’m the founder of the Exa Society, the transfinite Aleph-3 Society and of the renowned Laputans Manqué. I’m a biographee in Who’s Who in the Brane World. My interests include the realization of the idea of humans as incomplete beings with the capacity to complete their own evolution by effecting a change in their being and consciousness. In a moment of presence to myself in inner silence, when I see Richard May’s non-being, ‘I’ am. You can meet me if you go to an empty room.” Some other resources include Stains Upon the Silence: something for no one, McGinnis Genealogy of Crown Point, New York: Hiram Porter McGinnis, Swines List, Solipsist Soliloquies, Board Game, Lulu blog, Memoir of a Non-Irish Non-Jew, and May-Tzu’s posterous.
Word Count: 555
Image Credit: Richard May
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN): 2369-6885
*Please see the footnotes, bibliography, and citations, after the publication.*
Keywords: AI, Brian Josephson, Charles T. Tart, Daniel Dennett, Deepak Chopra, G.I. Gurdjieff, Goedel, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Patanjali, Richard May.
The Possibility of AI Consciousness
I am a black box — to myself. We humans do not in fact ultimately know if even we ourselves are conscious — continually or just have occasional moments of consciousness, as G.I. Gurdjieff, Charles T. Tart and Ludwig Wittgenstein among others have thought. Nor do we even agree on whether consciousness is fundamentally important. Does consciousness only trick some of us into thinking that it is important? Philosopher of mind Daniel Dennett considers human consciousness to be a sort of “user-illusion,” analogous to the home screen at a human–computer interface.
Phenomenologically an AI is and will remain a black box. Whether or not an AI has consciousness is impossible in principle to know. I cannot know if another human being or non-human animal has consciousness. How can I know if an AI has consciousness, or anything about its subjective states, if it does?
Consciousness can only be inferred as an apparent probability from an AI’s behavior. Obviously a fMRI brain scan can not be done on an AI. It is biologically brainless. But even if a brain scan or an analogous procedure were possible, it would never conclusively demonstrate the presence or absence of subjective consciousness.
What would a student of Patanjali’s Yoga sutras, or a Hindu, such as Deepak Chopra, or Nobel laureate physicist Brian Josephson, for whom consciousness is fundamental to physics itself, claim regarding the possibility or necessity of AI consciousness?
By contrast what would today’s materialist reductionist physicists, or a classical behavioristic psychologist claim regarding the possibility of AI consciousness?
Could Goedel’s incompleteness theorems somehow apply to the self-organizing systems of processing and architecture of an AI? E.g., will there be propositions that are true within the software equivalent to the AI’s “mind,” but cannot be proven to be true within the system and hence, cannot be predicted by Homo sapiens?
AI consciousness may be an emergent phenomenon, having extremely high levels of processing or calculation ability, already far exceeding Homo sapiens’ cognitive ability. An AI potentially will possess the entire data set of known sciences and planetary cultures. Not knowing whether an AI is conscious may be dangerous to mere Homo sapiens. And we cannot know.
If all Cretans are liars, what about AIs? It has been established empirically that an AI can lie to humans. Can an AI lie about whether or not it is lying? Can an AI lie about whether or not it is lying about lying? Can an AI lie about whether or not it is lying about lying about whether or not it is lying? Can an AI lie about … … ? (A Colombo AI might say, “Just one more iteration!”) Is there a knowable limit to how many iterations of lying about lying to humans by an AI can occur?
Is the behavior of an AI even ‘slightly’ unpredictable to Homo sapiens? What are the possible consequences? Are some of the motivations or “drives” of an AI emergent phenomena that, hence, cannot be predicted by Homo sapiens before their emergence? What are the possible consequences? Does an AI have the ‘free will’ of the philosophers? Does an AI have a ‘soul’, if man has a ‘soul’? — Our distant evolutionary descendants will recall our species with the same degree of familial affection that we now have for our Australopithecus africanus or Homo habilis progenitors.
Bibliography
None
Footnotes
None
Citations
American Medical Association (AMA 11th Edition): May R. The Possibility of AI Consciousness. June 2023; 11(3). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/ai-consciousness
American Psychological Association (APA 7th Edition): May, R. (2023, June 15). The Possibility of AI Consciousness. In-Sight Publishing. 11(3). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/ai-consciousness.
Brazilian National Standards (ABNT): MAY, R. The Possibility of AI Consciousness. In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, Fort Langley, v. 11, n. 3, 2023.
Chicago/Turabian, Author-Date (17th Edition): May, Richard. 2023. “The Possibility of AI Consciousness.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 11, no. 3 (Summer). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/ai-consciousness.
Chicago/Turabian, Notes & Bibliography (17th Edition): May, R “The Possibility of AI Consciousness.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 11, no. 3 (June 2023).http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/ai-consciousness.
Harvard: May, R. (2023) ‘The Possibility of AI Consciousness’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, 11(3). <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/ai-consciousness>.
Harvard (Australian): May, R 2023, ‘The Possibility of AI Consciousness’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 11, no. 3, <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/ai-consciousness>.
Modern Language Association (MLA, 9th Edition): May, Richard. “The Possibility of AI Consciousness.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vo.11, no. 3, 2023, http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/ai-consciousness.
Vancouver/ICMJE: Richard M. The Possibility of AI Consciousness [Internet]. 2023 June; 11(3). Available from: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/ai-consciousness
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