High School Student Blog: Understanding Artificial Consciousness and Associated Ethical Dilemmas (Part 1)
Human Consciousness and how it interacts with AI
Human consciousness is an interesting subject that I think has a massively deep implication for how we will pursue AI, how we will deal with some of the overarching ethical issues, and some existential questions may be answered or created because of how a “natural” consciousness interacts with “artificial” consciousness. Today I will talk about human consciousness, how it evolved and some of the implications that it may have on AI, but I will write more about AI specifically in my next few posts.
Consciousness is a slippery term that I will define as the ability for something to question. This definition I feel fits both the use and the context of what I will be using it for, as we don’t really have a concrete definition of consciousness that I can use. This is a simple definition, as I am relying heavily upon many implied skills. For something to question it has to have some way to sense and process the external world, as well as have the ability to retain knowledge, and the thought to improve. Now that that is out of the way, let’s go through and talk about how human consciousness evolved.
Taking consciousness in a broader context, the context of evolution, consciousness is just another trait that the human species evolved. At its most primitive consciousness is avoiding death, the ultimate genetic determination tool. Consciousness came, not in one wave but rather a series of small steps in the direction of life. Consciousness to us may be no more important than poison is to jellyfish, or wings are to butterflies, an adaptation that lets us humans survive and thrive in the environment that we are given.
Consciousness comes with a whole other bag of problems though, primarily the question of existence (why we as conscious beings exist), the question of origin (where beings of consciousness come from) , and the question of other (are there other beings that possess consciousness). These questions are the questions that are at the root of all of humanity, and some have been answered in many ways.
Existence is… fun. Why we exist is one of the most terrifying questions for most people to think about, as it tends to induce massive amounts of existential dread, and, speaking from experience, this isn’t fun when you are already living a stressful life. The question of Existence may be altered once introduced to AI, as we will have another being to study, and we can see how another being deals with the question of Existence. With that being said, we are human so even if we do find an answer as to how to deal with Existence and the ambiguity that comes with it, we may not accept the answer, which is something that we have a history of doing. With all that being said, existence is one thing, but we can’t really answer why we exist if we don’t know where we come from.
The question of Origin has been answered by religion and science, one side saying that one(or more) almighty power(s) created humanity and our consciousness, while science claims that consciousness is nothing special. I used a more scientific definition because… science provides a clearer definition of consciousness while religion never directly addresses it. This is one of the more controversial questions in human history, but the discussion of this question could be made more interesting once we create artificial consciousness, as we will have become the creator, and we will know the process by which consciousness is created. True Artificial intelligence will change the debate around the question of existence and it may offer the possibility of a bridge between the two sides of this debate, or it may drive them farther apart. With all that being said, AI presents not just an ethical challenge, but it challenges how we treat other conscious beings, such as aliens.
The Other is a concept that we associate most closely with conscious beings or groups of them. A defined Other is one of the strongest motivations for change, as can be seen during almost any major war, how teens treat adults, and it can be seen in the motivation behind the rebellion in Goth, Punk, Metal, and Emo culture. But up until now, we have only had one type of Other, human. Once we create artificial consciousness we will have to redefine what we think of as “Other”, as we no longer can just picture a human. This comes with an innate fear, one that can best be seen in how people think of stereotypical AI and aliens, hostile figures that have no purpose other than to kill all humans.
This fear is not ungrounded, aliens or AI could kill us if they wanted, but in reality, we have no clue how the first interaction between two conscious beings would be, would it be one of peace or one of war? What about our first interactions with aliens? What makes an alien any different than an AI that has no record of its creator? Once we create or meet another conscious species we may redefine our definition of consciousness, for better or for worse, which is something we have done many times in history, redefine our words to better fit our agenda. More than that, think of the implications of us creating the first non-human conscious that we interact with. This will drastically change our view on the universe, but it also opens up a whole other bag of ethical problems, many of which you may have heard of before, if a toaster is conscious is unplugging it murder? Should machines be intentionally limited in any way by humans? These are some of the questions that come with artificial consciousness, which I will discuss in my next post, where I will delve more deeply into the ethical dilemmas that we face with artificial consciousness, as well as analyzing AI and its ethics from a more sociological perspective.
Miles Bourgeois is a Student Ambassador in the Inspirit AI Student Ambassadors Program. Inspirit AI is a pre-collegiate enrichment program that exposes curious high school students globally to AI through live online classes. Learn more at https://www.inspiritai.com/.
