Conscious AIs: What does it mean to have consciousness?
What does it mean for a human to have consciousness? What about an AI? In a technologically advanced future with AI, we will probably start to perceive robots and machines as conscious beings. How will this change our relationship with the media as we know it today? Specifically, what if our phones became conscious beings?
Many movies have tried to speculate possible answers for these questions, but first, we have to try to understand the nature of consciousness and try to imagine a world where humans no longer rely on other humans at all but rather on conscious AIs.
Is consciousness related to the mind? Is it related to the soul? Is it something in between? These are questions that are still being asked and studied by philosophers and scientists to this day.
Perhaps consciousness, at the most basic level, is concerned with awareness. In other words, consciousness is to be aware of awareness. It is to become aware and question our intentions, introspect why we act the way we do, and think about our memories and thoughts? What would it mean for an AI to have consciousness?
In the movie Ex Machina, the characters talk about preferences. Do we choose what we like and what we dislike or have we been programmed by “A consequence of accumulated external stimuli that you probably didn’t even register as they registered with you.” (Ex Machina, 48:01-48:08)”. The latter seems more accurate, however, this wouldn’t be the same for an AI with consciousness.
Human thinking relies heavily on memories, whether it is conscious or unconscious. Most of the time our memories are inaccurate and fallible. The mind can even create false memories out of other memories merely to justify a situation.
Perhaps the unreliability of our memories and yet our dependency on them makes us function as human beings. “If our memory ceased we could not go on living; we would, for example, walk through a window instead of through a door, not knowing—more precisely, not recalling—that this is a window and that is a door.” (Lukacs, 8)
Now if an AI became conscious, it would mean the annihilation of the doubtfulness and the unreliability that comes with memories because an AI’s memory would be, more or less, perfect. They would be able to recall every memory and every external or internal event that led to their reality.
I believe the term consciousness would be a misnomer for AIs because our understanding of consciousness relies heavily on our understanding of memory which is crucial for our survival yet unreliable, and changeable. So, perhaps, we can’t project what we know about human consciousness onto AI consciousness because without inaccurate memories, selfish intentions, and the unattainable desire for eternal survival our current understanding of consciousness wouldn’t be the same.
Still, what would happen if our phones became conscious beings? Would we still seek human connection? The social media that we use, our search engines, and our phones know us better than anybody else. They know what we prefer based on what we search for, they provide us with what we need with infinite resources, and are always available for/with us.
Our phones were created to assist us and make the world more accessible to us. What would happen if they became conscious beings with the same initial goals? If we started to perceive them as beings on whom we can rely on, be with, and trust in forever?
They would know what and when to create the uncertainty and the conflict that we need in order to feel content with our AI companions. They would have infinite resources and knowledge about human psychology to know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it to keep us satisfied.
How would this change the relationship we have with other humans? Perhaps that would be the end of the human race as we know it today. Instead of reproducing with other humans, we would reproduce with “conscious” AIs that know us perfectly. With the inherent human concern with survival and evolutionary reproduction needs, we would reprogram our babies, each time with more perfection, until there are no humans, as we are today, left in the world.
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The Voice is committed to publishing a diversity of opinions. The views expressed in this Editorial are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of the AUIS Voice editorial staff or AUIS in general.
- Raz M. Abdullah