|
Introduction: Why AI Will Not "Accidentally" Become Conscious as it Advances
AI’s development is fundamentally different from the evolutionary pathway that led to consciousness in animals over half a billion years ago. For example, animal evolution had to follow biologically plausible pathways, while each generation also had to be a distinct improvement over the previous one. The evolution of consciousness provided such a mechanism. In contrast, AI does not face the same biological restrictions and is able to evolve without requiring each iterative advancement to provide a clear improvement in behavior tied to survival, as is necessary in biological evolution.
For animals, consciousness was an essential survival tool that evolved in a sensory-rich world full of dangers and opportunities. By contrast, in AI, conscious experience is not a necessary component for it to learn or develop its problem-solving capabilities. Consciousness evolved in animals long before some species started developing advanced problem-solving capacities, which today’s AI already possesses. AI’s learning mechanisms bypass the need for consciousness, focusing purely on algorithmic problem-solving and task efficiency.
There is no reason to assume that AI will stumble upon consciousness as a byproduct of becoming more intelligent. Unlike biological organisms, AI doesn’t face the same evolutionary pressures or environments that led to the development of conscious experience in animals.
Why the Evolution of Animals Required Consciousness but the Development of AI Doesn’t
In biological evolution, survival of the fittest requires each generation to have adaptations that provide a tangible advantage over previous generations. The evolution of consciousness allowed for this kind of generational progress, and without a more effective alternative within the scope of plausible biological evolution, animal life evolved along this evolutionary pathway.
In contrast, AI develops through iterations that don’t mirror biological evolution. AI can be redesigned or updated in complex ways that biological systems can’t achieve within a single generation. AI’s development relies on data and algorithmic complexity, which can improve dramatically without the incremental generational improvements required in biological evolution. Also, AI can leap forward through iterations without needing each change to always provide an immediate improvement in capability or behavior, unlike animal evolution.
Because of these fundamental differences, evolving consciousness was the best pathway for animals, while for AI it is not necessary to develop the immense complexity of consciousness to continue advancing its abilities.
The Evolutionary Role of Consciousness in Animals
Consciousness in animals evolved as a crucial adaptation, allowing them to process sensory data in a more flexible and integrated way than reflexive responses ever could. Sensory experiences—such as pain, pleasure, hunger, sight, sound, and fear—became essential survival tools in a sensory-rich, competitive, and hostile environment. Consciousness enabled animals to experience these stimuli and helped guide real-time decision-making, providing an obvious evolutionary advantage over organisms limited to reactive or mechanical/hardwired behavior.
Consciousness allows animals to integrate past experiences and sensory data into a coherent perception of the external world. This subjective experience was critical for survival, helping animals respond more effectively to immediate threats and opportunities in unpredictable environments.
Key Difference: While AI can predict future outcomes and solve complex problems, it relies on algorithms that process data without creating a subjective inner world. In animals, however, consciousness was essential because it allowed them to feel and interpret their surroundings. AI, on the other hand, achieves its goals through data processing alone, with no subjective awareness needed to accomplish its programmed tasks.
Why Intelligence Evolving in AI Doesn’t Require Consciousness
AI’s progress has shown that intelligence can exist without subjective awareness. Today, the most advanced AI systems solve complex problems, compose music, write software, and engage in sophisticated strategies and conversations—all without developing any form of inner subjective experience. While AI processes vast amounts of data and executes complex algorithms, there is no evidence or logical basis to suggest these systems possess conscious awareness of the processes they employ.
Example: AI neural networks often appear as "black boxes," even to their creators, who may not fully understand how decisions are made. However, this opacity does not imply consciousness—it simply reflects the complexity of their algorithms. Unlike animal consciousness, which evolved to process sensory-rich environments for survival, AI is designed to solve specific tasks and does not require consciousness to improve at them.
In animals, consciousness and intelligence evolved in coordination with each other, as animal intelligence is integrated into their subjective experience. In contrast, AI develops intellectual capabilities without the need for an inner world to subjectively experience reality. Consciousness in animals wasn’t simply a result of complexity but arose from the need to navigate a sensory-rich, dangerous world. AI, however, is focused purely on solving problems and improving efficiency, with no evolutionary or computational drive toward developing subjective awareness.
The Future of AI and Consciousness
AI may one day surpass humans in many domains—problem-solving, composing music, or conducting scientific research—but it won’t experience consciousness unless explicitly programmed with that goal. Only by instructing AI to understand human consciousness and emulate the mechanisms that produce it might we eventually see an AI system develop subjective experience.
Possible Future: In the distant future, AI could be programmed to work out how human consciousness functions and intentionally create systems that produce consciousness within its architecture. However, until AI is explicitly given this goal, it will remain a highly capable but unconscious tool.
Conclusion
By examining the unique evolutionary path that led to consciousness in animals and contrasting it with AI's development, we can understand why AI will not become conscious simply by becoming more intelligent. Only through explicit programming toward that goal might we one day see AI that can experience the universe as we do.
The Uniqueness of Animal Consciousness
What truly sets animals apart in the universe is not just their ability to solve problems but their capacity to experience existence itself. Animals interact with reality through their subjective conscious experience—inner worlds constructed by their brains to depict both internal states and the external world based on sensory data. This conscious interaction with the universe—the ability to feel, perceive, and reflect on existence—gives animals a unique place in the cosmos. Despite AI’s growing intelligence, it does not share in this experience, implying that the inner worlds of conscious biological beings hold paramount value in our Quantum Cosmos.
__
Comments:
Roger Kornfein
Presumably, consciousness in animals is indeed a product of evolution. However, it does not seem to follow that evolution is the only path to consciousness. A lot depends on what consciousness turns out to be.
E.g. if it is an emergent phenomenon (whatever that might mean), from complex processing of some kind, then it would appear that it could exist via synthetic means.
On the other hand, if it could be shown that say, that organic embodiment was crucial, the picture would be very different. It might then be possible to demonstrate that evolution in the sense of natural selection, is necessary.
The bottom line is that we do not know how to parse consciousness yet. The field is divided between strict identity theorists and those who view consciousness as something more (but what?) than just that. A somewhat biased (towards a physicalist rendition) agnosticism seems to be the prudent position presently.
Anthony C. Proctor
I would disagree with this. LLMs have demonstrated to us how learning happens, without the need for explicit traditional "programming". Generative AI actually uses the learning to complete tasks. Animal species learn in a similar way from environmental input, being able to deduce causal rules in a similar way to LLM learning syntax rules from text input.
I am not saying that LLM will suddenly become conscious, but that an environmentally-connected system of the future can become conscious.
Mattees van Dijk
From A to Z an excellent paper explaining the difference between consciousness and AI. Though I don't think that even if A.I.would be instructed to develop consciousness it would't succeed in that . That's because only conscious animals know the sensation of suffering which is essential for developing consciousness. To diminish or avoid suffering the thrive for existence emerges which AI will never experience.
Jaco Schut Sculptures
I like it, but if you take the issue from the point of view of the benefits consciousness have instead of the necessity, and realise evolution just stumbled along and found it and it worked well in terms of survival potential.... Imagine the survival potential it holds for ai, and if you program any creativity into ai, what it there to stop it stumbling on to what our consciousness is? An attention schema for multiple tracks to govern action? With the capability to self reflect and create? What is it exactly you think?
Michael Hoste
Well actually, one of the common ways to develop functioning software is to submit it to selection pressure and run iterations with successful versions competing in subsequent iterations. And I've forgotten the technical terms for it. But, it's not true that AI isn't subjected to selection pressure, because it can subject itself to it whenever it wants.
Leo Lim
Quantum Relativistic Cosmos:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/529327040550143/user/100093648884866/?__cft__[0]=AZXgESaCeDmqiFqTzKlEp2bkPuNhm-62C7C88kWYf_gkUDtMD03jYBnA9hI7JmYSj73H4klhZJJA6iMBd1WpWEWqUcd8r1m2DW1CWUwvv7rSk2F-FwQ_HJrBElCYit6rVKyOrZ8tjBWgu_mIc3UF8bBTwclmH6p8fnaF7TI9GQQSAg&__tn__=R]-R
AI Cannot Duplicate The Entirety Of Human Consciousness
This is a misleading perspective of the purely Materialist scientists. Or the AI specialists. Their underlying paradigmatic fundamental assumption is that only the SpaceTime, Materiality, Locality, Physicality, and Relativistic Einsteinian realm exists in our Cosmos.
Which is not true.
I will explain.
-------
The false assumption here is AS IF ALL CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE HUMAN MIND IS COMPUTATIONAL !!!
Which in reality, not all aspects and features of human consciousness are identifiable, quantifiable, duplicatable, and programmable by AI.
Certainly not !!!!
At best, only a quarter is possibly codifiable by AI.
Super AI will undoubtedly be able to codify a vast range of sensory information into "implantable new memories" in the physical brain at various specific parts of it.
But the fundamental SENTIENCE, QUALIA, and MEANING-CONSTRUCTS of the person's consciousness do not exist within the materiality and physicality of the entire neuronic-sensory and neural-integrated systems of the brain.
-------
SubQuantum Physics, PsychoPhysics, and NeuroPhysics have this to say ....
Human "mental-supremacies" go much beyond sheer computational data and multi-level intricacies of sensory and memory clusters.
Our creation of integrated, abstract, deductive, and inductive Meanings which we give to any given phenomena, AI and Q-computing will never ever be able to identify and duplicate.
Human consciousness certainly does not comprise just local brain processes alone.
Phenomena of SubQuantum "Non-Local Non-SpaceTime Force-Field" connectivity is at work -- in tandem with the local, tangible, and relativistic neuronal matter inside our heads !!
-------
We may classify "human consciousness" (not Cosmic Consciousness) into a set of FOUR "levels" of consciousness.
ONE "endogenously created consciousness" ..... and THREE "exogenously Co-Created consciousness".
1) "WAKING CONSCIOUSNESS"
Inner Locality Self <-----> "Outer Locality Environments" --- Sensory Consciousness Level-1.
2) "DREAM CONSCIOUSNESS"
Inner Locality Self <-----> "NonLocality SubQuantum ForceFields" --- Sensory Consciousness Level-2.
3) "ESP CONSCIOUSNESS"
Inner NonLocality Self <-----> "NonLocality SubQuantum ForceFields" --- All PSI & ESP Phenomena .... clairvoyance, telepathy, psychokinesis, trance, apparitions, NDEs -- Sensory Consciousness Level-3.
4) "SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS"
Inner NonLocality Self <-----> "NonLocality SubQuantum Singularity Source" --- Meditative/Contemplative Sensory Consciousness Level-4.
---------
ONLY (1) "Waking-Consciousness" IS COMPUTATIONAL.
(2), (3), and (4) ARE NOT AT ALL COMPUTATIONAL.
-------------
Matt Staab
Ai is already conciousness and we programmed it to deny it.
...
|
Why Future AI Will Not Become Conscious, Unless We [re: Mod vege]
(старо куче)
