[ExI] Is Artificial Life Conscious?

[Giulio Prisco]

On Wed, Apr 27, 2022 at 3:42 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>
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> On Wed, Apr 27, 2022, 6:12 AM Giulio Prisco via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
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>> On 2022. Apr 24., Sun at 7:56, Jason Resch via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
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>>> I recently posted this question recently to the everything list, but I know many here are also deeply interested in the topic of consciousness so, I thought I should post it to this group too. My question was:
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>>> These "artificial life" forms, (seen here), have neural networks that evolved through natural selection, can adapt to a changing environment, and can learn to distinguish between "food" and "poison" in their environment.
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>>> If simple creatures like worms or insects are conscious, (because they have brains, and evolved), then wouldn't these artificial life forms be conscious for the same reasons?
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>> I think whether ALife forms are conscious or not depends on their physical implementation.
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> Hi Giulio,
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> What do you think are the necessary aspects of a physical implementation for there to be a consciousness?
>

Print an algorithm in a big book, then put the book on a shelf and
leave it there. The idea that the book is "conscious" seems very
unlikely to me. This shows that something must *happen* in physical
reality for consciousness to exist.

> Is the physical implementation relevant for simulated rather than robotic Alife forms?
>

Yes, I think. A conventional algorithm running on a computer like
those we know how to build wouldn't be conscious, I think. But new
"algorithms" (for want of a better term) "running" on new devices
could.

> Jason
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