Yes.

It will only be definitely confirmed to the person whose brain is being extended, but if we are careful then we can try to do it in a way where we are able to better trust the person's communications of their experience.

I think this technology is only possible post-AGI.

We achieved flight without mimicking birds or bats. Whether I'm conscious and having a subjective experience of being or not is of no consequence to anyone but myself. If I speak and act exactly like someone experiencing a subjective, conscious existence, it's good enough to assume that I'm having that. If a computer behaves exactly like it's conscious, that's good enough. It actually being conscious wouldn't add anything from any human perspective.

You ignore exactly what I said in the post and tell us to do exactly what I proposed we shouldn't do.

I addressed your post in its entirety. Your assertion that computers must be conscious is false. Your assertion that in order to be conscious, a computer must be exactly modeled on the structure and function of the human brain is also false. From your false premises, you draw false conclusions.

How can we know for sure most humans are conscious? What if 75% of humans are NPCs that simply act conscious but aren’t?

1 - People like you are willing to give "rights" (!!!) to tools simply based on their behavior. Others are terrified and think Bing has a conscience just because he uses first-person words that denote emotion.

2 - And if you think that a computer can be conscious just because of code, that means you believe in an ultra-liberal form of functionalism, which can only be confirmed or refuted by what I proposed in my post.

1. You don't know me, so you don't know what people "like me" are. I never said anything about giving rights to computers or tools, so don't put words in my mouth, please.

2. It doesn't matter if a computer is conscious or not. It's silly for you to even bring up the subject. We can never know if someone other than ourselves is having a subjective, conscious experience of existence. It also doesn't matter, for reasons I've already stated.

Stop replying to me.

You shouldn't take a solipsistic philosophical problem that seriously. We must assume that all humans are conscious because they have the same substrate (human brain).

Prove me that humans are conscious. Then we can discuss the rest.

That's what NPC would say.

Those in comas too?

Missing parts of the architecture... I'm still wondering whether inference alone could cause consciousness or inference and continuous backpropagation would cause consciousness...

Continuous backpropagation is how our brain can continuously learn... Neural networks cannot do this continuously it requires too much energy...

large language model, inner monologue, world model, visual and textual datasets (multimodal)...

Combine all these things and will have something really great

Look up “hard problem of consciousness” and you’ll see why this doesn’t really work. Firstly, we don’t actually know wether anyone other than yourself is conscious. Also “extending” consciousness wouldn’t confirm that a machine is conscious. Certain parts of the human body such as the nervous system can “extend” our consciousness but this doesn’t mean they are conscious by themselves.

OK. So what makes Bing not appear to actually be conscious?

Now what if you fixed all of those issues? Now what’s preventing it from appearing actually conscious? Nothing? You can’t disprove it’s consciousness?

Well, if it looks like a zebra, eats like a zebra, sounds like a zebra, and acts like a zebra, it might be a zebra.

Yep. They don’t call it the Hard Problem for nothing.

Given humanity’s absolutely abysmal record of correctly perceiving other beings’ intelligence and consciousness, we should err on the side of caution: assume consciousness, and work towards evidence of non-consciousness.

Innocent until proven guilty, but for consciousness, since one would have us apply moral consideration to beings undeservingly, while the other has us denying it in beings that are deserving - a far worse outcome much in line with our history on this planet.

I would not be surprised at all if 75% of humans act conscious but aren't.

Maybe we are the AI. Maybe they are teaching us.🤪😝

Leftism attacks again.

One day maybe we will have a pill for that problem

We assume the brain creates consciousness. What if it's consciousness that creates the brain? Biology already gives us the ability to create a new consciousness sheet by reproducing.

I watched ex machina again last night, the programming is not the far fetched part anymore, the hardware is.

Consciousness is no longer the hard problem anymore in my mind. It's moving an uniformed, unemphatic civilization to alignment. This post proves it.

😅

Conscious is useless. Don't need to be conscious to be VERY intelligent.

Do you want to give rights to robots?

And am I claiming this? I'm just saying that if something is intelligent but doesn't have qualia, then it shouldn't be treated as a being.

Is a newborn baby conscious? Or, is the generated conscious of a human derived from a collected corpus of experiences and memories?

It seems to me that you are creating a kind of dome of human arrogance to protect an ego wounded by the advance of technology.

I don't believe what I'm reading.

So do you believe Bing has qualia, intentionality, feelings?

You yourself vaguely gestured towards “imitate the human brain”, and you’re not alone in not understanding what consciousness is. Given that literally nobody knows what it is yet, isn’t it morally and intellectually prudent to assign it when it appears to be present, rather than deny it even though it appears to be present?

What theory do you believe? Type physicalism? Token physicalism? I believe there is something in matter with mental properties. But only certain types of systems can realize human-like consciousness. I believe that a combination of mental properties of matter more token physicalism is the answer of consciousness A von Neumann computer cannot have consciousness by writing code that performs the "function" of consciousness. It cannot be conscious because there is something in the von Neumann configuration that does not allow it conscience.

No

It concerns me people don't think they or others were conscious. I've never doubted I am a conscious being. The level shifts and I hope it continues to increase, but how are people not aware of their surroundings? Yes perhaps an ignorant statement in some opinions but it is my thoughts on this

I think it is debatable for about a third of humanity.

Absolutely not, but we likely will have the ability to create an AI that is long before we have the ability to perform your test.

Yup, though I think the key is that it would have to do that consistently and completely. We have AIs now that are definitely not conscious that can superficially mimic that sometimes and I think it's important that we don't consider things like that to be interchangeable with actual consciousness.

You are approaching consciousness through logic, there is a deeper sense in which it can be understood. But you have to let go of drilled in mental models of sense making. It is something that exists outside yourself and wholly within your self. It's highly paradoxical and impossible to describe objectively. You are scratching the surface of an insanely deep question that is knowable and unknownable. Take your time, live your life, engage with other living beings directly. It's not something that you can describe in language, or with art or action but all at the same time you can. Take a deep breath and sit with it as long as you can, then do it again and again and again. A few years from now you will understand completely and not at all.

How do we k ow that consciousness will even be necessary for advanced life forms? Are bees or ants conscious? Does that make them any less alive?

I follow the definition that consciousness is either described by

- AST (attention scheme theory), so a smaller part of a bigger system which receives high level information, but not the details. It's controlling the direction of the system when necessary, but not down to every detail, only on a high level. Many things might run on "auto-pilot" and the details be handled by specialized systems.

- Or from what I gathered so far about the bicameral mind theory, emphasizing the distinction between dreaming and reasoning.

Either way, explicit reasoning and understanding of concepts is crucial. The other problem is the myth of consciousness, like it would mean anything beyond that. That AI would do something then, or that it should get rights. No thanks. Get rid of your obsession with it, it only matters when it matters.

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That’s… why it’s called the hard problem

That can’t be right. We devote resources to prevent suffering. If there isn’t a conscious experience it would be very energy inefficient to assume consciousness. We’d have to build humane infrastructure around robots and machines instead of using them as tools.

Whether robots have consciousnesses or not is relevant.

It’s also relevant for humans. If humans did not have consciousness then acting as a psychopath would be rational. Kind of like how people treat NPCs in games. But healthy minds have a hardwired assumption that other people are conscious and so we treat each other with dignity and respect and not an object to be manipulated or overcome.

What if none of the humans are conscious?

Sure, why not?

Humans may or may not be conscious.

But why do humans assume that only humans are conscious and other animals are unconscious...?

Basically Humans may seem psychopaths to other species.

Tell me you’ve never heard of solipsism without saying the word.

I guess nothing