[ExI] More thoughts on sentient computers

[Ben Zaiboc]

bill w asked:

 >Three silly questions: how would you know if you had created a 
conscious mind? Why do you want to do that? What makes that necessary? 
bill w


I like silly questions! (some of them anyway)

1) How would you know?
Probably you would never know for sure, just as you don't know for sure 
that I'm a conscious mind. But I'd say we'd use the same criteria as we 
do with each other, or for the existence/non-existence of gods, so while 
we never absolutely know for sure, we can make a damned good guess, 
based on the evidence at our disposal.

2) Why do it?
Because we're transhumanists, and want the sum total of self-awareness 
and intelligence in the universe to increase. Because we recognise the 
severe limitations of biological life, and if we can create artificial 
minds, we can overcome these limitations. Because we know that humans 
have a limited lifespan, both as individuals and as a species, and this 
is a way of going way beyond that.

3) What makes it necessary?
Well, that depends on your priorities. People who think that humanity is 
a stain on the world and things would be better without it, probably 
think it's not only not necessary, but undesirable. I think it's 
necessary because we are tragically weak, fragile and confused, and 
anything we can do to correct or side-step that is a good thing. 
Artificial minds are our chance to pass down our most significant 
quality to the future, in a form that has a chance of surviving and 
thriving in the long-term (very long-term, as in billions of years and 
more).

Oh, and it may be the only realistic way to achieve mind uploading. We 
probably aren't capable of figuring it out, or at least of actually 
doing it, by ourselves.

And it may be the only way we're going to get out of the many pickles 
we're getting ourselves into, too. Maybe we need a non-human perspective 
to solve the various seemingly unsolvable problems we've got. I don't 
need to make a list, I'm sure you can think of plenty.

Ben