We know remarkably little about how AI systems work, so how will we know if AI becomes conscious?
Many people in AI will be familiar with the story of the Mechanical Turk. It was a chess-playing machine built in 1,770, and it was so good its opponents were tricked into believing it was supernaturally powerful. In reality, the machine had space for a human to hide in it and control it. The hoax went on for 84 years. That’s three generations!
History is rich with examples of people trying to breathe life into inanimate objects, and of people selling hacks and tricks as “magic.” But this very human desire to believe in consciousness in machines has never matched up with reality.
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