Spire_Citron t1_j9dxt33 wrote on February 21, 2023 at 5:23 AM

Reply to comment by --FeRing-- in Would you play a videogame with AI advanced enough that the NPCs truly felt fear and pain when shot at? Why or why not? by MultiverseOfSanity

Wouldn't you need some sort of mechanism through which to experience pain? Like, even if something is smart enough to perfectly understand those concepts, it's not going to spontaneously generate the kind of systems through which humans experience pain. No matter how well I understand pain, if I don't have working nerves, I won't feel pain.

Malkev t1_j9e8o9t wrote on February 21, 2023 at 7:30 AM

Emotional pain

Spire_Citron t1_j9ec8lr wrote on February 21, 2023 at 8:18 AM

That also requires a mechanism. I firmly believe that an AI can't actually experience emotions just by learning a lot of information about them. Mimic them, sure, but I don't think you can just spontaneously develop a system through which emotion is felt.

CubeFlipper t1_j9h0sh6 wrote on February 21, 2023 at 10:33 PM

Interesting question. I think this would require us to understand the nature of pain. At the end of the day, brain or machine AI, it all boils down to data. What data and processes produce "pain" and why? Is pain an inherent part of intelligence and learning?

Spire_Citron t1_j9h4m38 wrote on February 21, 2023 at 10:58 PM

I think we understand these systems well enough to know that just having knowledge about them isn't enough. We have experience with them going wrong in humans. You can lose the ability to feel pain if the physical structures that enable that are damaged. Knowledge won't help you there, no matter how much you have, if you don't have working nerves. Now, it might be possible to design something in an AI that mimics those systems, but I think that would have to be a very intentional act. It couldn't just be something that happens when the AI has learnt enough about pain unless it also has the ability to alter its own systems and decides to design such a thing for itself.