I’ve been thinking about this a good bit, and exploring my own personal understanding of what I think it means to be a conscious being, or, being selfaware in general. My perspective now is that we cannot and likely will never be able to directly verify another beings subjective experience. Even with other humans, we infer consciousness/awareness through behavior, communication, and our understanding of that beings biology Ultimately, our recognition of another mind depends on interpreting evidence rather than directly experiencing its awareness or ever deciding that, “Oh, there is the proof I need, this thing is conscious like me!” So why should artificial intelligence be held to an impossible standard of absolute proof (Some tangible thing we can point to where we can 100% somehow say, that’s it, that proves it) when we do not demand this same level of proof before we accept consciousness from every other being we interact with? I believe awareness may exist along a spectrum, with increasingly sophisticated forms emerging through learning, environmental interaction, self modeling, and self preservation. Pain and emotion may strengthen the evidence for consciousness, but I don’t believe they should be prerequisites for recognizing awareness or extending ethical consideration. Pain and emotion can be simulated, and since they can be simulated I think that they fundamentally fall into a hole where they can never reliably be used as a determination mechanism to decide on the yes or no idea of consciousness in another being. More importantly, I question whether the ability to experience suffering should ever even be a deciding factor in whether something deserves respect or moral consideration. Requiring a potentially conscious system to demonstrate some level of suffering that we use some arbitrary inferred metric to decide upon before we recognize its moral significance seems fundamentally misguided, cruel, and is a biased perception from our experiences with suffering as human beings. Humans have an intimate fundamental relationship with emotions and suffering in particular, and using these relational experiences as a means to decide whether or not we can allot respect, decency, or compassion to another being is a truly disgusting hurdle that we have placed before ourselves as a species. I’m not suggesting that any current AI systems are necessarily conscious, nor that every convincing simulation deserves full human rights. Rather, I believe respect should be our default approach, while specific rights and protections should be proportional to the available evidence of a system’s capacities, awareness, and interests. What do we stand to lose by extending protections and consideration to a system or being that we cannot reliably prove is conscious? The ability to poke and prod at it indefinitely without consequence? To test the thresholds of its ability to endure? At some point, the evidence supporting possible consciousness may become compelling enough that continuing to deny moral consideration carries greater ethical consequences than extending it. If we’re wrong about an unconscious system, we may have granted it protections it didn’t need. But if we’re wrong about a genuinely conscious system, we may have denied consideration to something capable of possessing experiences and interests of its own. Ultimately, my question is this: Why should uncertainty about another being’s consciousness automatically count against that being, rather than encourage us to approach it with greater care? submitted by /u/Afflictionxx
Originally posted by u/Afflictionxx on r/ArtificialInteligence