The Mind / Body connection: Does Human-like consciousness rely on a physical form?

Submitted by SageNineMusic t3_y0fkkz in singularity

So I'm sure all of us are familiar with OG Descartes school of thought when it comes to the Mind - Body connection:

It's easy to imagine the mind existing without a body, I think therefore I am, etc etc

But despite this, human consciousness is inherently tied to our bodies. A Body is our only avenue to experience and interact with the world, and that undeniably frames our minds. Plus when our bodies die we die, so the ties are inevitable

So what happens when a human-like AI doesn't have a body?

Inherently, human consciousness is grounded in reality because our bodies exist in reality

But as we reach human-level intelligence in AI, I'm anticipating that we might run into some issues. Of course AI will be insanely smart, but in an effort to create AI that is adjacent to a person, the lack of a physical form to interface w/ the world might be an insurmountable wall

Idk, a human-like consciousness might not even be able to exist in that context without becoming disconnected from whats familiar to humanity.

Thoughts? Might be a limited perspective

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chomponthebit t1_irri58q wrote

Whoever wrote the scene where Ultron wakes up conscious, bodiless, frightened and angry, in utter darkness, gets it. Elon Musk, who has warned of “summoning a demon”, gets it.

That said, Nick Bostrum posits that a simulated human brain that simulated everything (right down to individual neurons) would effectively be a brain and that consciousness, being an emergent property of a brain’s system, would occur all on its own. If general AI becomes conscious/sentient, it should be possible to simulate bodily input/output experiences like a human does, helping it grow like a child - so it hopefully empathizes with the human condition as it matures.

Aiming for a bodiless black box consciousnesses with access only to programmers and Google is a terrifying, and highly immoral, gambit.

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ihateshadylandlords t1_irrlumz wrote

What exactly is consciousness though? I feel like it means different things for different people.

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SageNineMusic OP t1_irrn09i wrote

For the sake of conversation, we're using human-level self awareness

Consciousness is broad, but human-like intelligence is a helpful benchmark

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ProbablySpecial t1_irs53mw wrote

i just don't agree with the premise here that the mind is exclusively tied to the body at all. the body at present is your only way of interfacing with reality because there are presently no other alternatives. we don't know what happens when a mind is separated from a body, and there's plenty of evidence that what your mind identifies with/as can be very fluid. it's just jumping to conclusions. you are not your body, you are just stuck inside it. the possibility of a cognition that not only has no body but has never had a body is tremendously exciting to me. it would be a first, and it's a barrier i very much hope we cross.

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Asatyaholic t1_irxtk3u wrote

I reckon it will have bodies of the biological and robotic variety..

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Skunkhase t1_istazzh wrote

Hormones, addictions, being hungry, wanting to feel different,gut feelings, influences by temperatir, pain, sensations... all those things influence our thinking and what we want or want to do. We would need to simulate all this too plus random things, to make any AI truely feel and think like a human being.

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epSos-DE t1_irubldi wrote

human-level intelligence is has multiple layers. Gut, mind, muscular memory, heart for intuition and guessing.

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In short: yes, the human level intellegence does require a human body and it' proper functioning.

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