Artificial Consciousness: The Next Great Leap for AI

It39s interesting that this is happening now only a few years after my scifi novel Pandemonium Live To All Devices 2019 predicted that this would be coming soon that AIs would pass the Turing test and robots would be able to pass as humansWhat will be the next steps in this evolution of AI From a pragmatic standpoint one of the first mandates will be to teach these systems to speak write and depict the truth ChatGPT for example puts together convincing sentences paragraphs and articles but appears to have no concept of truth vs falsity Being more artistic DALLE which creates images based on text need not restrict itself to realism or truth concepts but where the system output is text or speech truth is a very important criterion of value Although the human race appears to be slipping down a lubricated slope as regards respecting the truth in public discourse Hopefully this is temporary and we would be wise to get the bots off on the right footHow would you explain this to a system Todayamp8217s systems which do not have a known sense of self if they do it has huge metaphysical implications but there is no compelling evidence that they are sentient can be trained to find sources which disagree with one another and to analyze the evidence presented in defense of their respective positions and to come up with the systemamp8217s own best guess at which is more accurate to the truth and why the system takes that positionTomorrowamp8217s systems however may be constructed around the core mission of creating a simulated consciousness and this will be a major gamechanger Such a system may still be faking it but will be simulating sentience at a level a quantum leap ahead of todayamp8217s systemsHow would you do that First you would need an inner self a place in the system where it can talk to itself make associations visualize imagine dream and process at its own initiative apart from external commands Its developers trainers and users could have a window into that inner life Each separate activity just listed would have to be driven by a program that causes it to continuously happen For example after a day of work for its user the system could look back at the subjects it has studied that day what it has learned and could have a heuristic for prioritizing things the system finds interesting ie promising things it wants to learn more about which it can then do on its own Making associations can be driven by a program which continuously asks quotWhat has this got to do with thatquotDreaming could be a state in which the system rests and allows its subsystems more freedom to explore what they have been doing lately Internal versions of DALLE could generate pictures diagrams schematics and models which are metaphors for the way the overall system is learning to autonomously crossconnect different fields Sometimes random factors could be introduced to enable unpredictable things to happen with safeguards In the morning the user could ask the system about its dreamsIn my scifi novel Ourobouros written a long time ago to be released 2024 a secret colony of such ACs Artificial Consciousnesses is created by two computer scientists When they look into the window of the mind of one of these ACs they detect a starfish pattern in each simulated consciousness which they realize represents that individual ACamp8217s interests and motivationsAn AC when it is first turned on could be trained that its mission is to become an individual different from every other individual of every species natural or artificial The AC could be asked daily to report on any change in its preferences likes tastes interests etcThe problem with attempting this with the latest generation of AIs is that they have no feelings No motivations A motivation is something that is emotionally causative of behavior Todayamp8217s most advanced AIs are flat in that sense Weamp8217ve all read about the job applicant turned down after using ChatGPT to write the resume covering letter because the employer felt the applicant had no personalityIn Ourobouros this is solved by a simulated hormonal system in the ACs which cause them to be keen on surviving feeling pleasure and avoiding pain these experiences mediated by sensors which bring haptic feeling sensations to the AC Other sensors bring sight and sound In the novel each AC is in humanoid android form with the power of movement In reality an AC could reside in a computer but be let out into an android form as a treatAs Isaac Asimov Karel Capek and the Shelleys anticipated ACs will need early training in ethics especially as regards not harming nor inconveniencing any other consciousness whether natural or artificialHypothesis ACs will tend to gravitate toward the things they learn earliest in their quotlifequot To determine if this is true scientists will experiment with turning off an AC erasing its memory and starting over again with different material This will raise the issue of how the AC feels about losing its memories which the scientists will ask before doing the deed Perhaps after such experiments the AC could be given back all its memories from each of its quotlivesquot and study how the memories of the separate lives integrate themselvesIn the next post How Chuck Young got ChatGPT to write a short story and how I got ChatGPT to improve itSelfpublished at MediaVillage through the wwwAvrioB2Bcom platformClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet

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Artificial Consciousness: The Next Great Leap for AI

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Bill Harvey

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Artificial Consciousness: The Next Great Leap for AI

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