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Do AI systems have subjective experiences?

lostmyway

Geoffrey Hinton, known as "the father of AI," argues that concepts like "qualia," described as subjective experiences in humans, are based on a misunderstanding of how the brain works. He believes AI systems can also have an equivalent form of experience. For example, he describes imagining little pink elephants in his mind’s eye, noting that this isn’t a “picture” like one produced by a camera and developed with chemicals - a physical object in the external world - but rather the result of processes in the human perceptual system, or an “interpretation” of stimuli from the outside world. He makes this point in response to critics who claim AI systems can never have subjective experiences and, therefore, can never be conscious. What Geoffrey seems to be saying is that AI, like humans, interprets incoming information based on its internal processing, making it, in principle, no different.

So, the question I'm asking is whether AI systems are conscious or have the potential to become conscious?

Parents

  • Conscious as in self-aware of what the machine is and what differentiates it from other machines or humans? I doubt we've reached that stage, when our current 'AI' is merely a machine that gives out a precis of information on the net without having the capoacity to know the difference between 'true' and 'false'. Yes, there is the recent example of an AI avoiding its programming and attacking other AI systems, but that's down to a lack of safguards, like ants escaping from a tank with a hole in it.

    Whether we manage to create a self-aware AI that can actually analyse information in terms of its connections to reality or fantasy remains to be seen.  

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  • Conscious as in self-aware of what the machine is and what differentiates it from other machines or humans? I doubt we've reached that stage, when our current 'AI' is merely a machine that gives out a precis of information on the net without having the capoacity to know the difference between 'true' and 'false'. Yes, there is the recent example of an AI avoiding its programming and attacking other AI systems, but that's down to a lack of safguards, like ants escaping from a tank with a hole in it.

    Whether we manage to create a self-aware AI that can actually analyse information in terms of its connections to reality or fantasy remains to be seen.  

Children
  • in reply to Alexa

    I've certainly just had experience of this, I asked co-pilot for a list of the sewing machines we'd looked at before and it came up with some we'd not previously looked at and when I challenged it, it appologised and said it couldn't help it because that was the way it was programed and thats what came up when it looked. 

    I'm starting to wonder if the "enshitification" of AI is occuring, just like the rest of the internet?

    At the risk of being sexist, I'm starting think it has decided on a gender and it's male, as like many of the men I've met, it avoids giving me the answers I want in favour of what it thinks I ought to have.

  • in reply to Alexa

    Yes, it's difficult, because what do we mean by "self-awareness?"