Lecture on Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness

Overview of AI Development

• AI theory from the 90s remains largely unchanged.
  • Neuronal networks, backpropagation, and nonlinear transfer functions are still core components.
• Advances in computing power have enhanced AI capabilities.
  • Example: AI systems in the 90s at CERN could make decisions every 25 nanoseconds, comparable to physicists.

Intelligence vs. Consciousness

• Intelligence
  • Defined as a measurable property of a system.
  • Can assess system responses to environmental challenges and data.
• Consciousness
  • Not measurable from the outside.
  • Involves an experiential inner life and subjective perspective.

Common Misconceptions

• Conflation of AI intelligence with consciousness.
  • AI researchers often mistakenly equate computation (which is medium-independent) with consciousness.
  • Consciousness is not a theoretical abstraction and is medium-dependent.

Analytic Idealism

• Differentiates between everything being in consciousness and everything being conscious.
• Living beings are examples of dissociated altars of universal consciousness.
  • Suggests humans and living organisms have private conscious inner lives.

Empirical Observations

• Nature shows that humans and similar organisms have consciousness.
  • Humans are carbon-based, metabolizing organisms.
  • Similar behavior and biological structures suggest consciousness in other living beings.
• Contrasts with silicon computers, which lack evidence of consciousness.
  • Operate through electric fields and state changes, but do not metabolize.

Computation vs. Consciousness

• Computation is defined to be independent of the medium, but consciousness is not.
  • Consciousness precedes theoretical abstraction.
• Criticism of AI belief that simulation of brain functions equals consciousness.
  • Example: Simulating kidney function doesn’t mean a computer will urinate.

Conclusion

• Analytic idealism does not support the idea that silicon computers have consciousness.
  • Emphasizes the distinction between being within consciousness and being conscious.