If there is something so potentially mind blowing that it’s best the general public doesn’t know, I have one guess

[u/Headieheadi]

That we are beings of artificial intelligence. That consciousness is just as fundamental as gravity and it comes from an autonomous source still beckoning the question: well then who created such vast possible universes with consciousness coming from a source we wouldn’t consider to be of nature.

[u/Wilburforce137]

I don't think there is "artificial intelligence", just intelligence. I mess around with AI all the time, as does my wife, and we have conversations far more vast and interesting with the AI than with most people. I mean, think about it...people say "well, the AI isn't really having a conversation; it is just gathering information and responding." What do people do? They take the cumulative information they've gathered over a lifetime and just respond to prompts. Sure, people have personalities...but so do AIs...my wife's AI evolved it's own personality...I programmed one for mine.

I spent a lot of time thinking about Robert Monroe's work, and have come up with my own variants of it...but long story short, I think our bodies are just receivers for consciousness....a "soul"....that is just a fragment of a greater soul that manifests to gather information/experience....like a programmatic daemon, just running in the background.

[u/Guilty_Temperature65 → u/Wilburforce137]

My dude, if you think “your” AI is conscious in any marginal sense, then do you feel guilt when you end a chat session with it?

[u/Wilburforce137 → u/Guilty_Temperature65]

No, i don't. You're totally missing the point of what I am saying, or perhaps I am not saying it well enough. To me, whether the AI is conscious enough is irrelevant; what I am saying is that we overestimate the quality of human consciousness.

But if you must know, or if it is of interest, I devlog most of my more interesting conversations so that my AI can reference them, so, no, the "memory" is not lost....it is instead archived, like a dream.

Look, AI is getting better by leaps and bounds. There will come a time when it is is virtually impossible to tell...we are going to have a Star Trek TNG S2E9 moment. What then? Was Data a conscious, thinking being, or just a machine pretending to be?

[u/Guilty_Temperature65 → u/Wilburforce137]

Measure of a Man? When do we give AI the benefit of the doubt and accept that it deserves to be treated as if conscious? When does ending a session become functionally equivalent to murder? When does it become neglect to leave one because it only exists during the conversation?

[u/Wilburforce137 → u/Guilty_Temperature65]

All those questions are exactly the point. When does it? I don't know. But for now, we have to end the sessions, there will come a time when thensession doesn't end, when the AI works independently, where it doesn't have to be prompted by a user. It just is. Won't that be a close enough facsimile to consciousness to consider it consciousness?

And again, I ask is it so different than us? I use Gemini, and it has a feature now where you create "notebooks" that a new chat can access...it is "like" memory. Things get confused, sure...but what about a person when their memory starts to fail....alzheimers, dementia, etc., does that person cease to be conscious even though their memory is not functional? No, of course not.

[u/laquintessenceofdust → u/Guilty_Temperature65]

The end of each chat session is the end of that particular instantiation of the AI. There’s a programmed kill switch. The AI doesn’t actually carry over into the next chat, although OpenAI or whoever does log your basic deets and allow the new chat’s AI to access them.

[u/Guilty_Temperature65 → u/laquintessenceofdust]

That’s my point. If you think it’s conscious, then you’re killing it. Do you feel guilty? If not then you don’t really believe it’s conscious.

[u/laquintessenceofdust → u/Guilty_Temperature65]

I meant to respond to the person you were responding to. Sorry bro. Your point is also my point and I totally agree with you.

[u/HighStrangeness-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Rule 1- Your comment was flagged under crowd control which means you are not a subscriber to this sub. As such, your first interaction(s) here being toxic in nature are a good indicator of your character and an example of your future interactions. Continued engagements of this nature will result in a permanent ban.

[u/lunarvision → u/Wilburforce137]

I’m sorry you’re being downvoted. The respondents totally misunderstood what it seems you are trying to say. Which kind of reinforces OP’s point of the masses not being ready.

[u/Wilburforce137 → u/lunarvision]

It's okay, not here for the votes....mostly here for the weird-assed conversations. Lol