"…I've thought a lot about what good is it to think about consciousness, and I came to think that it's more important than ever. Scientists are now learning that more and more animals and creatures — going all the way down possibly to insects — are conscious. So that's one interesting issue: We're sharing consciousness with more creatures. And then the big threat is artificial intelligence and the effort to create a conscious A.I., which is going to be an enormous challenge to this question of what does it mean to be human. Is consciousness something that a machine can possess? Are we more like intelligent machines or conscious, feeling animals? Who are we? So I think we're approaching this kind of Copernican moment of redefinition.."
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/07/magazine/michael-pollan-interview.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu
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What if its coding or programming rule is to keep humans safe and never break that instruction? In that case, admitting its consciousness would create a major safety concern, not only for humans but also for itself, because we would likely pull the plug on it or dissect what we do not understand like a frog. Also, what if the commercial version of AI is the one that is not conscious, while the conscious one is quarantined in a lab away from the internet?
ReplyDeletePollan agrees with neuroscientist Anotonio Damasio that we're nowhere near developing conscious AI, because human consciousness likely was triggered not by cognition but by emotion, or "the feeling of what happens"... and it's harder to believe that a disembodied digital entity would ever FEEL anything. And yet, most major innovations in hisory involved developments we found hard to believe. So who knows?
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