Will AI ever become conscious - It depends on how you think about biology

Resumo

• Now, progress in artificial intelligence is transporting the debate over what minds can possibly be made out of from science fiction and hazy dorm rooms to the grandstands of mainstream attention.
• philosopher Thomas Metzinger has called a “suffering explosion” in a new species of our own creation, leading him to advocate for a global moratorium on research that risks creating artificial consciousness “until 2050 — or until we know what we are doing.”
• Researchers argue that there are no obvious technological barriers to building ones that do score high enough to be considered conscious; the road to conscious AI looks plausible. Inevitable, even.
• that “computational functionalism” is true, or the idea that consciousness doesn’t depend on any particular physical stuff. Instead, what matters for consciousness is the right kind of abstract computational properties.
• The decisive question is whether computational functionalism is true or not: Do you need meat to have a mind?
• It could at least bring some clarity to what we know — and don’t know — about the moral conundrum of building billions of machines that may not only be able to think and even love, but suffer, too.
• That’s a major point for the “biochauvinist” perspective, supported by philosophers like Ned Block, who co-directs the NYU Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness. They argue that the physical stuff that a conscious being is made of, or the “substrate” of a mind, matters. If biological substrates are so far the only grounds for thinking, feeling minds we’ve discovered, it’s reasonable to think that’s because biology is necessary for consciousness.
• Again, his conjecture rests on assuming that computational functionalism is true, or the idea that the substrate of a mind — whether meat, metal, or silicon — isn’t all that important. What matters are the mind’s functions, a position some experts call substrate independence.
• That detail aside, the main idea is that what matters for consciousness is the structure, or “abstract logic,” of the information processing, not the physical stuff that’s carrying it out.
• From some God’s-eye view, should someone or something have placed a moratorium on developing biological life on Earth until they figured out how to make things a bit more hospitable to happiness?
• We also don’t have a theory of life. At least not one that can differenciate between edge cases like viruses of red blood cells.
• As it happens, a school of cognitive scientists, “enactivists,” have been developing this argument since Chilean biologists Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana first posed it in the 1970s. Today, it’s often referred to as the life-mind continuity hypothesis.
• The enactivist framework has a whole bundle of ideas around what’s necessary for life — embodiment, autonomy, agency — but they all get wrapped up into something called “sense-making.” Thompson sums it all up as “living is sense-making in precarious conditions.”
• Living, sense-making beings create meaning. That is, they define their own goals and perceive parts of their environments as having positive, negative, or neutral value in relation to their goals. But that perception of value doesn’t follow an algorithmically locked protocol. It isn’t an abstract logical procedure. Instead, sense-making organisms detect value through the valence, or pleasantness, of their direct experience.
• If anything, Metzinger’s concern over developing a deeper understanding of what kinds of things can suffer doesn’t get washed away by the blurring of natural and artificial. It’s made all the more urgent
• Suffering might come in forms that we meaty humans cannot even imagine, making our attempts at preventing machine-bound suffering naive at best.

Minha Opinião

Um resumo das diferentes visões sobre a consciência é

• Biochauvinistas - Eles acreditam que os seres biológicos são os únicos capazes de ter uma mente, mas não conseguem dizer o que exatamente é a mente.
• Enativistas - Eles acreditam que a vida é o que permite uma mente, mas não conseguem dizer se apenas seres biológicos têm vida. (Vírus)
• Fundamentalistas computacionais - Eles acreditam que apenas a capacidade de processar informações abstratas é o que gera uma mente, mas não conseguem dizer quais processos geram consciência ou por que, até o momento, esses processos só foram encontrados em seres biológicos.

Não consigo dizer qual das propostas faz mais sentido para mim. Por um lado, entendo que processos abstratos podem ser replicados em seres ou máquinas, mas não sei dizer se a complexidade desse processamento cria uma barreira que, até o momento, apenas seres biológicos são capazes de superar. Digo isso porque a capacidade de abstração que os seres biológicos possuem é muito maior do que a capacidade das máquinas que criamos, mesmo que às vezes não sejamos capazes de interpretar o que a máquina está fazendo.