“Much of today’s discourse on AI consciousness rests not on empirical evidence but on functionalism …”
In my view there can never be an empirical test for consciousness, because functionalism is wrong. If functionalism was right then there would be one. There’s no third party test for a fundamentally first person phenomenon.
I’ve been reading The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress lately and I’ve been shocked at how prescient it is. I’m kind of surprised I haven’t read more about it in the context of today’s AI.
I still really enjoy the science fiction of that age. It's fun to read stories set in a universe where computers basically never came into existence. It's really hard for anyone to write stories like that now.
But it is also funny to read about "robots" in a world where computers are still blinking lights and punchcards. Some of Asimov's work took it to the logical, yet still absurd, conclusion - computers are still blinking lights and punchcards but hyperadvanced and very massive robotic positronic brains are built to run the entire world at once... basically the robots become so advanced that their brains are repurposed as computers. Very amusing in its own way.
This appears to be a 100% AI-generated essay, not the first from ACM and not the last. Your call if you want to spend your day reading and arguing with the article; the author presumably didn't.
In my view there can never be an empirical test for consciousness, because functionalism is wrong. If functionalism was right then there would be one. There’s no third party test for a fundamentally first person phenomenon.
But it is also funny to read about "robots" in a world where computers are still blinking lights and punchcards. Some of Asimov's work took it to the logical, yet still absurd, conclusion - computers are still blinking lights and punchcards but hyperadvanced and very massive robotic positronic brains are built to run the entire world at once... basically the robots become so advanced that their brains are repurposed as computers. Very amusing in its own way.