[ExI] Seemingly Conscious AI Is Coming

[spike at rainier66.com]

...> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat

Subject: Re: [ExI] Seemingly Conscious AI Is Coming

>...Spike, ... I have to ask: does this thread's title inspire any thoughts
for getting funding and user adoption to develop seemingly conscious AI, or
the specific path by which the first such AI might emerge?
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Adrian I had a chance to ponder and I have an idea.

You are one who goes back nearly as far as I do on this list, 30 years, so
you may recall us kicking around the idea of conscious AI, or failing that,
seemingly-conscious AI that long ago.  It feels to me as if we are already
there on seemingly-conscious AI.  It fools people.

Consider actual conscious AI however.  That question goes back thirty years.
When it was posed, it took approximate 17 minutes for us to get right to the
critical path: is human intelligence, as we know it so well, substrate
dependent?  

At the time, I answered we don't really know, but I can't think of any
reason why it should be.  Looks to me like that process could be simulated
in an alternative format or substrate, on silicon rather than in carbon.

Well it has been thirty years, and I still can't think of any reason why the
process which creates this possible illusion of consciousness should be
substrate dependent.  If human-like thought processes can be simulated in
silicon, they will be.  If anyone can build it, someone will eventually.  If
human thought is not substrate dependent, human thought will reside in a
processor of some kind, eventually.

When or if that happens, we don't know what happens next.

spike