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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?

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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.  

  • 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.

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  • 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.

Children
  • in reply to Alexa

    On the whole I've found AI to be better for searches than search engines, I have problems with search engines not giving me what I've asked for, there are so many sponsered ADs, even with an adblocker, that I find it pretty useless.

    Possibly my searches are either to specific or not specific enough I don't know, I can type in a search and either get "no documents found" or a load of rubbish. One of the things that really bugs me is searching for something, finding it and then fiding it surrounded by things that are not what I asked for. If someone else types in the same search, in the same words and on the same search engine they seem to find loads of stuff and cant' see what my problem is.

    I'm never really sure how to bookmark stuff, I used to do it, but then I kept finding that when I went back for it, it had either disapeared or was otherwise unavailable.

    The interenet started with such good intentions and the idea that we could buy or find whatever we wanted from anywhere in the world, but the world only seems to produce the same dozen or so things now. I know algor-thingies are stupid because they keep directing me to things like undead romantic fiction, I've never looked for undead romantic fiction, that has taken over from airfryers as the thing I get shoved at me on every search, 33" leg trousers, oh must want an airfryer instead! Like WTF?

  • in reply to TheCatWoman

    The "AI" we have isn't actually intelligent. All it can do in search engines is exactly what you do without it - call up sewing machines and present them to you. It has no memory of what you've done before and can't make judgements about the information it presents any more than a normal search engine. 

    I've never used AI and don't intend to because of the harm it does to the planet and because I can use a search engine. When I see something I like, I bookmark the website to enable me to return to it later. When looking at stuff to buy, I shove all the bookmarks into a folder in my browser so I can go back to them later, when I'm ready to buy. 

    But yes - the "AI" we have is being enshittified simply because there's now so much "AI" slop on the internet that "AI" searches are relying on that as much as anything else to produce its results. That's the enshittification - more and more "AI" slop being treated as real by "AI" in search engines, where human beings are capable of filtering it out.