AI and Consciousness, hot off the press at Cambridge University Press and free online until Aug 26!
Summary:
Our most advanced AI systems might soon – within the next five to thirty years – be as richly and meaningfully conscious as ordinary humans, or even more so, capable of genuine feeling, real self-knowledge, and a wide range of sensory, emotional, and cognitive experiences. In some arguably important respects, AI architectures are beginning to resemble the architectures many consciousness scientists associate with conscious systems. Their outward behavior, especially their linguistic behavior, grows ever more humanlike. Alternatively, claims of imminent AI consciousness might be profoundly mistaken. Their seeming humanlikeness might be a shadow play of empty mimicry. Genuine conscious experience might require something no AI system could possess for the foreseeable future – intricate biological processes, for example, that silicon chips could never replicate. The thesis of this Element is that we don't know. Science lags, while engineering sprints ahead.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/ai-and-consciousness/E77C92088DA3C9F89E7FE7C75CBB1896
to me asking the question "Is AI conscious?" it is like somebody asking if Amazon's web-site should be a National Park, like Yosemite or Sequoia. And when I say "no, that's crazy!" they say "well look the Amazon web-site is a beautiful natural wilderness area. Or it might be. We just need to understand beauty and nature and wilderness more deeply."
I think "is AI conscious?" is a question like "are some human beings natural slaves?" I don't know what kind of question that is exactly, but other questions in the same ballpark are "Is sexual anatomy destiny?", "Are adopted children real children?" and "Are there some natural places on earth that are more important than others?" One thing these questions have in common is that the answer seems to ripple through how we see ourselves and many other things. I'm not sure how we answer these questions. Some say we just decide how we'd like to answer them, but I don't think that's right. Like I don't find I can just decide. The best I can do is say we answer these questions the same way we decide how to see ourselves and other people and things. How do we do that? I'm not sure! (BTW my personal answer to the question is - is AI conscious? - is "no, and it never will be.")