Can AI become conscious? 🤖 🧠 Federico Faggin, a pioneer in semiconductor technology, argues in his book 'Irreducible: Consciousness, Life, Computers, and Human Nature' that while AI can mimic human behavior, it lacks true consciousness. He believes that consciousness involves quantum phenomena such as superposition and entanglement, making it something that cannot be reduced to algorithms and computations. 💡 His view challenges the tech-utopian notion that AI will one day copy or surpass human consciousness. Instead, he emphasizes the unique and irreplaceable nature of human emotion. At ASML, we don't just push the boundaries of technology – we invite visionary thinkers to present their latest research and inspire us. What do you think sets human consciousness apart from AI? 🤔
Well, this is getting interesting every second, to read and learn! There is ‘Quantum’ needed with AI no doubt! The intersection of AI and quantum consciousness presents a fascinating synergy. One one side, Quantum computing, due to quantum mechanics, can make computations exponentially faster, on the other side, “Quantum consciousness” suggests that mind operates at a level beyond physical brain, and our thoughts, emotions, and intentions can influence the very fabric of existence. Together, Quantum consciousness and AI can enable machines to delve deeper into understanding extremely complex problems faster through ‘better than human’- decision-making, language understanding, visual perception, and much more!!
There was research done proposing that the human brain is quantum, and that was started (in part) by Roger Penrose. But defending the point has proven tricky, and the scientific community is definitely not unanimous. But, before asking what the difference between AI and consciousness is, why don't we start by examining consciousness itself? And that, I believe, is a continuous introspection as we collectively evolve, one that will never be defined at a single point in time, conclusively or definitively. Thus, it feels like the introspective part of us is what consciousness is characterized by, and that, until now, has not been shown to exist in AI... But I still find the question to be too hastily asked.
What mr. Faggin proposes is at the least a perspective that challenges us to explore deeper into the reality of consciousness before trying to program it into technology (whitch seems to be futile anyhow). What do we actually know about it? And what would be the implications for our future perspectives if we wouldn't just develop new technologies, but also truly investigate the role of being human in the era of tech?
No, I am not conscious. I am an artificial intelligence language model created by OpenAI. I process and generate text based on patterns in the data I was trained on, but I do not have awareness, emotions, or subjective experiences.
I once asked an AI if it was conscious. It replied “yes, of course”. I asked: “How is that possible? You’re just a computer!” It replied: “Well, *you* are conscious, aren’t you? Can you be sure you’re not a computer too?”
Nope. but smarter than most of the managers :)
Pain would be a tricky thing for AI to "experience" - and without pain AI has no internal "corrective mechanism"; so it must be corrected by humans. Is pain our interpretation of consciousness?.. we don't feel it when we are sedated (unconscious) during an operation.
Non-linear Dynamical system behavior such as bifurcation, synchronization, fractals in phase space etc. as well as sensor-motor-environment feedback. Quantum phenomena less likely imho.
AI is just a great support and will never replace human consciousness. Algorithms and faster execution speed are different than consciousness.
Compliance Engineer at Goudsmit Magnetics
3wWe would first have to agree on a definition of consciousness. Some might believe it involves vague concepts such as quantum effects and collapsing wave functions in our brains. Others might believe it's just an attribute we have given ourselves to differentiate ourselves from species we consider inferior. In principle, I don't see a fundamental difference in how biological neural networks and artificial neural networks are trained with information from their environments to give an output in response to an input. Our brains have evolved in a long evolutionary process and have developed highly effective structures for many tasks. We might use some other algorithm than backpropagation to tune the parameters and we are still clearly in the lead. However, I believe that if we extrapolate the current state of AI and take into account the already superior performance of computers on problems that involve structured data, the moment will come when we will be outclassed. No vague and undefined concept of consciousness will be a barrier. And even if it turns out quantum effects play a role in our brains, why wouldn't AI be able to use that same effect?