If you look far enough back in time, humans are are descended from animals akin to sponges that seem to me like they couldn’t possibly have experience. They don’t even have neurons. If you go back even further we’re the descendants of single celled organisms that absolutely don’t have experience. But at some point along the line, animals developed the ability to have experience. If you believe in a higher being, then maybe it introduced it, or maybe some other metaphysical cause, but otherwise it seems like qualia has to arise spontaneously from the evolution of something that doesn’t have experience—with possibly some “half conscious” steps along the way.
From that point of view, I don’t see any problem with supposing that a future AI could have experience, even if current ones don’t. I think it’s reasonable to even suppose that current ones do, though their lack of persistent memory means that it’s very alien to our own, probably more like one of those “half conscious” steps.
If you go back even further we’re the descendants of single celled organisms that absolutely don’t have experience.
My disagreement is here. Anyone with a microscope can still look at them today. The ones that can move clearly demonstrate acting on intention in a recognizable way. They have survival instincts just like an insect or a mouse or a bird. It’d be completely illogical not to generalize downward that the ones that don’t move also exercise intention in other ways to survive. I see zero reason to dispute the assumption that experience co-originated with biology.
I find the notion of “half consciousness” irredeemably incoherent. Different levels of capacity, of course, but experience itself is a binary bit that has to either be 1 or 0.
If bacteria have experience, then I see no reason to say that a computer program doesn’t have experience. If you want to say that a bacteria has experience based on guesses from its actions, then why not say that a computer program has experience based on its words?
From a different angle, suppose that we have a computer program that can perfectly simulate a bacteria. Does that bacteria have experience? I don’t see any reason why not, since it will demonstrate all the same ability to act on intention. And if so, then why couldn’t a different computer program also be conscious? (If you want to say that a computer can’t possibly perfectly simulate a bacteria, then great, we have a testable crux, albeit one that can’t be tested right now.)
If you look far enough back in time, humans are are descended from animals akin to sponges that seem to me like they couldn’t possibly have experience. They don’t even have neurons. If you go back even further we’re the descendants of single celled organisms that absolutely don’t have experience. But at some point along the line, animals developed the ability to have experience. If you believe in a higher being, then maybe it introduced it, or maybe some other metaphysical cause, but otherwise it seems like qualia has to arise spontaneously from the evolution of something that doesn’t have experience—with possibly some “half conscious” steps along the way.
From that point of view, I don’t see any problem with supposing that a future AI could have experience, even if current ones don’t. I think it’s reasonable to even suppose that current ones do, though their lack of persistent memory means that it’s very alien to our own, probably more like one of those “half conscious” steps.
My disagreement is here. Anyone with a microscope can still look at them today. The ones that can move clearly demonstrate acting on intention in a recognizable way. They have survival instincts just like an insect or a mouse or a bird. It’d be completely illogical not to generalize downward that the ones that don’t move also exercise intention in other ways to survive. I see zero reason to dispute the assumption that experience co-originated with biology.
I find the notion of “half consciousness” irredeemably incoherent. Different levels of capacity, of course, but experience itself is a binary bit that has to either be 1 or 0.
If bacteria have experience, then I see no reason to say that a computer program doesn’t have experience. If you want to say that a bacteria has experience based on guesses from its actions, then why not say that a computer program has experience based on its words?
From a different angle, suppose that we have a computer program that can perfectly simulate a bacteria. Does that bacteria have experience? I don’t see any reason why not, since it will demonstrate all the same ability to act on intention. And if so, then why couldn’t a different computer program also be conscious? (If you want to say that a computer can’t possibly perfectly simulate a bacteria, then great, we have a testable crux, albeit one that can’t be tested right now.)