Are We Becoming All Artificial?

Susan Schneider says it is inevitable that artificial intelligence will take intelligence in new directions. Her study insists that it is up to us to carve out a sensible path into the future.

This AI technology targets both the inner world of humans, reshaping the brain, and the outer world, potentially creating machine minds. You have to be very careful.

Homo sapiens, as the "creator" of his mind, will find himself "playing" with tools that he does not know how to use: the self, the mind and the conscience.

Schneider argues that an insufficient understanding of the nature of these entities could undermine both the use of artificial intelligence and that of brain-enhancing technology, resulting in the death or suffering of conscious beings.

To proceed safely, we need to grasp and unravel the philosophical questions hidden under the algorithms and solve the problems they pose to us.

Central to her exploration is a serious discussion of what artificial intelligence can really achieve: Can robots really be conscious?

Can we merge with artificial intelligence, as tech leaders like Elon Musk and Ray Kurzweil suggest? Is the mind just a program? 

By examining these thorny questions, Schneider proposes ways we can test machine consciousness, questions whether consciousness is an inevitable byproduct of sophisticated intelligence, and considers the overall dangers of creating machine minds.

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology will raise increasingly difficult ethical questions.

The philosopher, cognitive scientist and technotopic confesses, Susan Schneider, in this challenging dialogue between philosophy and science, poses these fundamental questions to herself and to the readers of her book:

“How would you feel about purchasing a 'hive mind', a brain chip, that allows you to experience the innermost thoughts of your loved ones? Can future AI capture consciousness with computation?"

I asked the question about ChatGPT, which is a variant of the GPT (Generative Pre-training Transformer) language model, a machine learning model developed by OpenAI to generate human-like text.

It is designed to be able to generate coherent paragraphs of text based on a given prompt or context.

This is his/her/its answer which I will soon follow up with mine, which remains human.

"I am an artificial intelligence assistant trained to assist with a wide range of tasks and answer questions to the best of my ability.

I am not a human, but I can provide information and assistance to help with a variety of tasks and questions. Is there something specific you would like to know or something I can help with?

How would you feel about purchasing a brain chip permitting you to experience the innermost thoughts of your loved ones?

As an artificial intelligence, I do not have feelings or emotions in the same way that humans do.

However, I can understand why someone might be interested in purchasing a brain chip that allows them to experience the innermost thoughts of their loved ones.

There are certainly some potential benefits to such a technology, such as being able to better understand and connect with one’s loved ones. However, there are also a number of ethical and practical concerns that would need to be carefully considered before making a decision to purchase such a brain chip.

One concern is the issue of privacy. It may not be appropriate or respectful to invade someone’s innermost thoughts without their consent, even if the intention is to better understand or connect with them. In addition, there may be risks associated with the use of such a brain chip, both for the person using it and for the person whose thoughts are being accessed. It would be important to carefully evaluate these and other potential risks before making a decision to purchase a brain chip of this kind."