Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Will any sufficiently intelligent system exhibit consciousness?

I have argued that A.s.a. H. exhibits machine consciousness. (See, for example, my blogs of 21 July and 19 October 2016.) The state of anything like a Moore or Mealy machine will develop sensitivity to unique temporal sequences of inputs and David Hume's view of consciousness was as "...a bundle or collection of different perceptions which succeed each other..." (A Treatise on Human Nature). For more demanding definitions of consciousness things are not so clear. Many embodied AIs might sense damage ("pain") and the need to recharge batteries ("hunger") and so exhibit Ned Block's "P-conscious" states.  Block's "A-conscious" states, things like "grass" having the feature "green" might depend upon how the AI organizes its knowledge base. Metacognition and Hobson's functional components might also be at issue. (Things like emotion.)

No comments:

Post a Comment