Recently, one of the smartest conferences of modern times took place. It was a deliberate discussion about artificial intelligence among some of the greatest minds and owners of leading technologies in today’s world.
The conference offered a range of opinions from a variety of experts, including Elon Musk, futurist Ray Kurzweil, Demis Hassabis of Google’s DeepMind, neuroscientist and author Sam Harris, philosophers Nick Bostrom and David Chalmers, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, as well as computer scientists Stuart Russell and Bart Selma.
They debated about the risk of artificial superintelligence, the direction of technology and the future of the world. They all agreed that it’s only a matter of time before AI becomes paramount in our lives.
Elon Musk, for one, thinks it’s rather pointless to be concerned as we are already cyborgs, considering all the technological extensions of ourselves that we depend on a daily basis.
However, David Chalmers, an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist, raised a brilliant point saying that there is a difference between Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness, especially human consciousness.
He is worried that consciousness is not something that develops through intelligence but through subjective experiences, that possibly come out of having a soul.
What if we create AIs, who are REALLY intelligent, but we fail to create consciousness. We might be ending up with a soulless world of machines.
Having consciousness, and a subjective experience, is what gives meaning to our lives. We can all agree to this.
Creating a world without consciousness, therefore, could not possibly be a good outcome. It would not necessarily be terribly negative, it would just be an outcome. It might even have its own perks. However, it would sure transform or eradicate what we consider as human.
These people are convinced that AIs are inevitable. They say there are 3 scenarios considering the rate of advancement in all fields: we destroy ourselves; we create super intelligence; or we are already living inside a simulation created by a super intelligence;
Here is a video for those who want to watch whole conference:
Source: Big Think;
