objective vs. subjective rabbit hole

Don't know how or why this discussion got off onto this particular set of rails, but hey: this is my wheelhouse, actually.

I've done a lot of thinking recently about AI and "consciousness." The new GPT-3 AI program is formidable; what it can do led to these reflections. I'll try to be brief.

For one thing, I don't think it's killer robots we have to worry about. Rather, it's that, little by little, AI is taking over the various cognitive tasks we used to perform for ourselves. Our cars decide when to turn the headlights on, when to lock the doors, when it's wet enough for windshield wipers...they even park themselves now, and drive themselves for a while. Our refrigerators decide what food we need to buy, and will even order it for us. GPS guides us to our destinations. But as a result, no one has a sense of their own physical geography anymore, no one knows where north is or how to read a map. The human brain is the most astonishingly capable problem solving technology ever developed by evolution; why would we willingly give up exercising it? The machines will take over not by force, but because we've gradually ceded control over our own lives to "labor saving devices" that do supposedly trivial chores better.

Anyway, GPT-3 is so damn good at, for example, writing creative texts that it has made me wonder if we're posing the problem in the wrong way when it comes to the "Turing Test" and the questions about artificial "intelligence." Maybe the question is not "Can machines think?" but rather: "Do we really do anything more than manipulate language when we 'think'?" Maybe a machine can be structured to manipulate a complex sign system, a language, in "creative" ways. But...I don't believe a machine can be structured to CARE about the result. The human experience, then, is perhaps not to be located in the creative act itself, but in the response to it—in the reader instead of the writer or, better, in the interaction between them. GPT-3 can even compose music "in the style of" whoever you like. But does GPT-3 enjoy music, listen to music?

Great post thanks...

Your reflection complete mine...

The human brain is the most astonishingly capable problem solving technology ever developed by evolution; why would we willingly give up exercising it? The machines will take over not by force, but because we've gradually ceded control over our own lives to "labor saving devices" that do supposedly trivial chores better.

You could argue that it opens up limited brain capability to more artful and altruistic or even scientific pursuits as opposed to drudgery, just like automation did with manual labour. I for one don't lament using a shovel or even a ox to plow my fields.

Of course gradually less and less people will be able to contribute in meaningful ways to society as AI becomes more capable. The obvious outcome is machine/human integration and an even greater divide between have and have nots.

Of course gradually less and less people will be able to contribute in meaningful ways to society as AI becomes more capable.

Define capable. The prior paragraph does not support anything, it only asserts, or speculates. Then the prior words here may be examined.

The obvious outcome is machine/human integration and an even greater divide between have and have nots.

A non sequiter, methinks, in context. [some words striked out for interference]

Machine/ human integration with what kind of machine?

An A.I. ?

I just distinguish and separate in the above post conventional "artificial intelligence" using Bits and Q-bits and statistical methods in the general Turing paradigm with "conscious machine" as defined by Anirban Bandyopadhyay in a non Turing context of machine design ...

The integration with A.I. is a monstruous business who cut the rooted human of his link with Nature...This is doomed to begin with...This is Frankenstein business passed some limits, like entertain transhumanists cultists...

Interacting with "conscious" machine is completely different business...Because conscious machine are autonomous individuality even if artificial one...We will interact with them WITHOUT integrating with them...They are not a tool like A.I. but a new species of being...This conscious machine contrary to the integration with A.I. will not uproot humans from Nature...

And like i said we can mathematically distinguish the three beings: artificial intelligence is not rooted at all in a universe, it is limited to a " mathematically prepared" corner of this universe and interact in an external way with this universe...

A "concious machine" is rooted in one universe, by definition of his autoprogammed learning sets of time-like fractals set of clocks, it synchronize with a universe internally...

But this synchronization, unlike human spirit, make the machine captive of this universe and identical at the end with it, like my body is part of this universe...My body is a  kind of "conscious machine"  in a way i am not, as human...

Reality is so complex that monism and dualism are true at the same time at different ontological level...

Because  "conscious machine" cannot live simultaneously in many universes and reincarnate at will...Unlike human spirit consciousness , which advanced medical science research reveal now that it probably survive the death of the body then survive even the death of this universe....

i will stop here to not annoy some...