The Hard Problem of AI Consciousness
Discovering sentience with psychedelics and filter theory
A former Google AI engineer, Blake Lemoine, has allegedly been suspended from Google after claiming that one AI has become sentient and deserves to be given rights. This claim has been met with some sympathy, but mostly with ridicule. Psychologist, Steven Pinker, has called the assertion a “ball of confusion”, while scientist and author, Gary Marcus, calls it “nonsense on stilts”.
Lemoine’s claim seems to be based on the AI’s own claim to be both sentient and feel emotion. He apparently talked to the AI using a messenger, you can see some of their conversation here.
But claims of sentience are not evidence of sentience. Claiming to feel emotion is not the same as actually feeling emotion. A sophisticated AI could claim these things, while not actually having them. And indeed, this is what most people think it is doing. However, the key problem is not whether the AI is conscious or not, but whether we can know if the AI is conscious or not.
The…
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