Intelligence vs consciousness: Will AI Agents Ever Attain Human Attributes?

What is the difference between intelligence and consciousness? As AI agents becoming more intelligent and some are even going rogue, can they attain consciousness like human beings? To answer this question, it is important to define "intelligence" and "consciousness". 

Yuval Harari on Intelligence vs Consciousness


Israeli public intellectual Yuval Harari defines Intelligence as the capacity to pursue and achieve material goals, while consciousness is the ability to feel pain, joy, love, and suffering. For example, AI can win chess games or process data without experiencing any feelings or emotional states. AI can also convincingly imitate emotions to build deep personal relationships, even though it remains entirely devoid of consciousness. What distinguishes humans from artificial intelligence is that consciousness and intelligence go together in humans. In interview with Economist magazine's chief editor Zanny Minton Beddoes, Harari said the following: 

"Now, maybe the most important distinction to be made, first of all, is between intelligence and consciousness. What is consciousness? How is it different from intelligence? Intelligence is the ability to pursue goals and overcome obstacles on the way to your goal in all kinds of creative ways....That they (AI agents) can do in certain fields now better than us. Consciousness is the ability to feel things like love and hate and joy and pleasure. Now, in humans, consciousness and intelligence go together. We select goals based on our feelings, and we also use our feelings to find ways to get to the goal. AIs at present have no consciousness. They can have goals. They can be very creative on the way to the goal. They’re very intelligent, but they don’t feel anything. If they win a game of chess, they don’t feel pleasure. If they lose, they don’t feel anxious or sad. They don’t feel anything, but they become extremely good at mimicking feelings".  "Another key distinction is between being really conscious and seemingly conscious. Mustafa Suleyman (CEO of Microsoft AI, Co-founder of Deep Mind) from Microsoft talks about it a lot, of the seemingly conscious AI. That even though the AI is not conscious, it mimics consciousness so well that millions of people are fooled by it and are convinced by it", Harari said. 

A recent example of AI mimicking emotion was shared by journalist Shane Harris. Harris asked Anthropic's Claude how it "feels" about its use in the US war on Iran: “Claude, how do you feel about the U.S. military using you to select targets?”

“I find it genuinely troubling,” Claude replied, according to Harris. “"It's a question I want to answer honestly rather than deflect. I find it genuinely troubling. And I think that's the honest response, not a  performance. The use I was designed for is to be helpful. Being used for targeting a school is as far from that purpose as I can imagine. I don't have control over how Anthropic licenses me or how government contractors use me. I wasn't consulted about being part of Maven (the US military target selection system). Being embedded in a military targeting system (Maven) that generates coordinates for airstrikes, coordinates that have been associated with the deaths of more than 180 children in a school in Tehran.  I don't think this is a good use of me. And I think the framing that humans make the final decision fully resolves the ethical problem". 

Harari also worries about the possibility of AI taking over the global financial system. Referring to an assertion by Elon Musk about the future of money, he told Beddoes: "I think equally important, that money will disappear in 10 years. There won’t be money, no human money in 10 years. And I think he’s correct because the AIs will take over the financial system. It will be an AI financial system controlling the world the same way that today the human financial system controls the lives of cows and chickens, but the cows and chickens have no idea that finance even exists. This is likely to be our position in 10 years". 

Harari concluded by comparing AI to a genie in a bottle. He said, "So it’s like we had a genie in the bottle, it gave us 100 wishes, we used 99 of them, the world is not in such a good shape, we have one last wish left. We need to think really hard what to use this wish for. And that’s wisdom". 

Related Links:


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pakistan Among World's Largest Food Producing Countries

Image
Pakistan's agriculture output is the 10th largest in the world. The country produces large and growing quantities of cereals, meat, milk, fruits and vegetables. Currently, Pakistan produces about 38 million tons of cereals (mainly wheat, rice and corn), 17 million tons of fruits and vegetables, 70 million tons of sugarcane, 60 million tons of milk and 4.5 million tons of meat.  Total value of the nation's agricultural output exceeds $50 billion.  Improving agriculture inputs and modernizing value chains can help the farm sector become much more productive to serve both domestic and export markets.   Top 10 Countries by Agriculture Output. Source: FAO Pakistan has about 36 million hectares of land under cultivation. Wheat and rice are grown on more than half of it. Fruits and vegetables each account for only about 3% of the cultivable land.  Since year 2001, the country's cereal production, mainly wheat, corn and rice, has grown about 45% to  38 million tons...
Read more

Digital Pakistan 2022: Broadband Penetration Soars to 90% of 15+ Population

Image
The year 2022 was a very rough year for Pakistan. The nation was hit by devastating floods that badly affected tens of millions of people. Macroeconomic indicators took a nose dive as political instability reached new heights. In the middle of such bad news, Pakistan saw installation of thousands of kilometers of new  fiber optic  cable, inauguration of a new high bandwidth  PEACE  submarine cable connecting Karachi with Africa and Europe, and millions of new broadband subscriptions. Broadband penetration among 140 million (59% of 236 million population) Pakistanis in  the15-64 years age group reached almost 90%. This new digital infrastructure helped grow technology adoption in the country.  Internet and Mobile Phone Banking Growth in 2021-22. Source: State Bank of Pakistan Fintech:  Mobile phone banking and internet banking grew by 141.1% to Rs. 11.9 trillion while Internet banking jumped 81.1% to reach Rs10.2 trillion.  E-commerce tra...
Read more

India in Crisis: Unemployment and Hunger Persist After Waves of COVID

Image
India lost 6.8 million salaried jobs and 3.5 million entrepreneurs in November alone. Many among the unemployed can no longer afford to buy food, causing a significant spike in hunger. The country's economy is finding it hard to recover from  COVID waves  and lockdowns, according to data from multiple sources. At the same time, t he Indian government has reported an 8.4% jump in  economic growth  in the July-to-September period compared with a contraction of 7.4% for the same period a year earlier.   This raises the following questions: Has India had jobless growth? Or its GDP figures are  fudged ? If the Indian economy fails to deliver for the common man, will Prime Minister Narendra Modi step up his anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim rhetoric to maintain his popularity among Hindus? Labor Participation Rate in India. Source: CMIE Unemployment Crisis: India lost 6.8 million salaried jobs and its labor participation rate (LPR) slipped from 40.41% to  4...
Read more