Haven’t yet read the paper but based on your post, I completely agree that the “C” words tends to be polarizing. Also agree that the relevant conversations around consciousness, sentience, sapience, self-awareness, meta-cognition, subjective experience etc. etc. are overly entrenched.
However, to be honest making statements like “These forms of consciousness, if they are there at all, will be of a profoundly alien, radically un-human-like kind.” lack the humility we need in the area and effectively perpetuate these sorts of polarized positions. In truth, there is little evidence either way and we simply do not know. Yes, it is entirely feasible that this is true, It is also feasible that it is not. It seems to me it will largely depend on the developmental route that leads to AGI (and there will certainly be more than one).
There are reasons to think that human-like ‘consciousness’ within AGI/SI may be highly beneficial to long-term safety (not to trivialize the profound moral, ethical and legal implications). IMHO, Limited ‘forms’ or aspects of consciousness are clearly already here, particularly within some multi-modal systems that have integrated modes of visual and auditory perception but these existing forms are so limited and rudimentary that they do not deserve much moral consideration.
Again, just my $0.02 but embodied systems with more broadly integrated modes of perception, memory, attention etc will continue to push us further up the spectrum that is colloquially known as ‘Consciousness’. We have to keep in mind that consciousness, for lack of a better word, is not a single thing but rather a highly multi-faceted mutli-dimensional collective phenomena.
Haven’t yet read the paper but based on your post, I completely agree that the “C” words tends to be polarizing. Also agree that the relevant conversations around consciousness, sentience, sapience, self-awareness, meta-cognition, subjective experience etc. etc. are overly entrenched.
However, to be honest making statements like “These forms of consciousness, if they are there at all, will be of a profoundly alien, radically un-human-like kind.” lack the humility we need in the area and effectively perpetuate these sorts of polarized positions. In truth, there is little evidence either way and we simply do not know. Yes, it is entirely feasible that this is true, It is also feasible that it is not. It seems to me it will largely depend on the developmental route that leads to AGI (and there will certainly be more than one).
There are reasons to think that human-like ‘consciousness’ within AGI/SI may be highly beneficial to long-term safety (not to trivialize the profound moral, ethical and legal implications). IMHO, Limited ‘forms’ or aspects of consciousness are clearly already here, particularly within some multi-modal systems that have integrated modes of visual and auditory perception but these existing forms are so limited and rudimentary that they do not deserve much moral consideration.
Again, just my $0.02 but embodied systems with more broadly integrated modes of perception, memory, attention etc will continue to push us further up the spectrum that is colloquially known as ‘Consciousness’. We have to keep in mind that consciousness, for lack of a better word, is not a single thing but rather a highly multi-faceted mutli-dimensional collective phenomena.