I dont think we can currently prove that anyone other than ourselves are even conscious.
You have to define consciousness before you can prove it. I might argue that our definition of consciousness is fuzzy. But not so fuzzy that “a human is conscious and a rock is not” is up for serious debate.
The people around me look and act and appear conscious, but I’ll never know.
You’re describing Philosophical Zombies. And the broad answer to the question of “How do I know I’m not just talking to a zombie?” boils down to “You have to treat others as you would expect to be treated and give them the benefit of the doubt.”
Mere ignorance is not evidence of a thing. And when you have an abundance of evidence to the contrary (these other individuals who behave and interact with me as I do, thus signaling all the indications of the consciousness I know I possess) defaulting to the negative assertion because you don’t feel convinced isn’t skeptical inquiry, its cynical denialism.
The catch with AI is that we have ample evidence to refute the claims of consciousness. So a teletype machine that replicates human interactions can be refuted as “conscious” on the grounds that its a big box full of wires and digital instructions which you know in advance was designed to create the illusion of humanity.
If you can’t find ample evidence of human sentience then you either aren’t looking or are deliberately misreading the definition of the term.
If you can’t find ample evidence that computers aren’t sentient, same goes.
You can definitely put blinders on and set yourself up to be fooled, one way or another. But there’s a huge difference between “unassailable proof” and “ample convincing data”.
You have to define consciousness before you can prove it. I might argue that our definition of consciousness is fuzzy. But not so fuzzy that “a human is conscious and a rock is not” is up for serious debate.
You’re describing Philosophical Zombies. And the broad answer to the question of “How do I know I’m not just talking to a zombie?” boils down to “You have to treat others as you would expect to be treated and give them the benefit of the doubt.”
Mere ignorance is not evidence of a thing. And when you have an abundance of evidence to the contrary (these other individuals who behave and interact with me as I do, thus signaling all the indications of the consciousness I know I possess) defaulting to the negative assertion because you don’t feel convinced isn’t skeptical inquiry, its cynical denialism.
The catch with AI is that we have ample evidence to refute the claims of consciousness. So a teletype machine that replicates human interactions can be refuted as “conscious” on the grounds that its a big box full of wires and digital instructions which you know in advance was designed to create the illusion of humanity.
My point was more “if we cant even prove that each other are sentient, how can we possibly prove that a computer cant be?”.
If you can’t find ample evidence of human sentience then you either aren’t looking or are deliberately misreading the definition of the term.
If you can’t find ample evidence that computers aren’t sentient, same goes.
You can definitely put blinders on and set yourself up to be fooled, one way or another. But there’s a huge difference between “unassailable proof” and “ample convincing data”.