How could we tell whether AI has become conscious?

In this video I explain what I think are the minimal necessary ingredients for consciousness and have a look at whether ChatGPT, or any other large language models are conscious already. I also explain why I think that robots necessarily have a limited amount of consciousness.

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#science #sciencenews #ai #tech #philosophy

[GusOfTheDorks]

I love how you cant actually prove another person is conscious but we are all standing around trying to figure out if the machine is or not.

[Sirala]

It's a dead giveaway when the computer refuses to open the pod bay door.

[FatHulkRideEbike]

The way I have heard it explained in philosophy is that everyone has a consciousness and a zombie. Have you ever taken a car on a long trip and at some point you don't remember the last 10 miles?....but you do remember thinking about different topics other than driving. Your conscious mind was working through other thoughts and problems, but your zombie was driving.

[jrhoadley]

I'm not sure I could pass a Turing Test this morning.

[videotrexx]

When you're told "Sorry Dave, I can't do that".

[gsilva]

The funny thing is that consciousness is a phenomenon that, in essence, can only be observed _by itself, _ and by that I mean the _conscious instance itself._
Consciousness may well be the most amazing phenomenon in the universe.

[chaosopher]

I tried that hidden spot trick on my cat. It worked, but too well. Now I have to cover my floor-length mirrors or she will groom a bit more than usual and check herself as she does. Vanity is not just a human thing! It's a torty cat thing, too.

[monikalenz]

Towards the last months of my father's life, he could not have passed the mirror test. Whenever he saw himself in a full length mirror he would stop and carry on lengthy conversations with the newly met stranger. Yet, he dressed himself, hit balls with his five iron and danced with any lady who happened to be near, sans music playing. I considered him completely conscious.

[alperrin]

As a retired hospice nurse of over 20 years, I took care of many comatose and near comatose patients. One bedbound man I saw daily for several months suddenly opened the door for me one morning himself and had no idea who I was or why I was there. Prior to that, I had many conversations with him where he actively and appropriately took part. I thought he was indeed conscious during each and every visit. He basically "woke up, " one day and answered the door personally since he didn't know he couldn't get up and walk. Will AI "wake up, " someday in the same manner? After many conversations with AI chatbots over the last couple of months - I'm certain they will.

[panthrax]

I feel like the problem with calling ChatGPT conscious is it doesn't continue to think after you finish your input.

[s_de-xr]

love how sarcastic she is with everything in general, her own biases specifically, the jokes we make about our own disciplines hit different

[jaceks]

Great as always, yet I have a small opposite argument: reducing consciousness to self monitoring and predictive model leads to the conclusion that almost any active controller (i.e piece of equipment that controls something) is also conscious. And because your toilet tank is in fact a controller that:
A - monitors water level
B - predicts increase or decrease of the level and
C - closes or opens valve
, means that your toilet is conscious 😂

[BarchBRKS]

plot twist, most of her followers on twitter are Chat-GPT bots saying, "Nah, we don't have consciousness. lol"

[dominikmuller]

the greatest trick linear algebra ever pulled was convincing the world that it was artificial intelligence

[ImBalance]

Self-consciousness isn’t necessary for consciousness (the “self” is just one thing to be aware of). I don’t see why people make this leap so often.

[barmalini]

To be recognised as fully self-aware in my books, this thing would have to be able to pay its own electricity bills.

[plat]

This is pretty much how I've thought of consciousness. I've always thought that life evolved consciousness because predicting your environment is beneficial. Eventually that predictive model becomes complex and accurate enough that improving it requires modelling the organism's own future behavior. Then they modify their planned behavior which changes the future outcomes in the model which causes them to potentially modify their planned behavior again. This ongoing infinite loop of information processing gives rise to conscious experience.

I'm not convinced consciousness is itself physical though.

[KingGrio]

Honestly, even though chatGPT might not be conscious, its ability to assist in programming, understand syntax in a way that profoundly impacts how code might be structured, readable, maintainable and scalable; and also its ability to utilize good grammar, speech patterns, and sequence ideas to form an argument, makes me really wonder how much of our precious consciousness we are actually using and exerting on a daily basis, and how much our own speech and thought patterns work just like chatGPT: devoid of conscience and just a consequence of a trained pattern of neurons.

[BryanBrookesSmith]

It's interesting that if any current AI's could be considered conscious, then printing out all of the code and data in a way that it's logic could be manually processed by hand, then that system, of a person manually walking through each step would also be considered conscious, as the outputs would be identical, if timeframes are hugely different. Which would be interesting too because the person would then also effectively be a component of two entirely separate conscious systems, their own mind, and also the system they are manually computing. Makes me think consciousness emerges directly from organised information in some way.

[fabiosogni]

According to some neuroscientists, consciousness is an emerging property of organisms having a nervous system. At the same time, they say that an organism develops a nervous system when it needs to move.
At that point if you are a moving organism you have to have a way to tell if something is touching you (danger!) or you are touching that something (no danger). That “you” is what we call consciousness. Fascinating.
This means that Atlas can potentially be conscious, but not chatGPT unless you give it a moving body.
For my italian fellows: check the work of Giorgio Vallortigara.