The technological struggles are in some ways beside the point. The financial bet on artificial general intelligence is so big that failure could cause a depression.
Well, first of all, like I already said, I don’t think there’s substrate dependence on either general intelligence or consciousness, so I’m not going to try to prove there is - it’s not a belief I hold. I’m simply acknowledging the possibility that there might be something more mysterious about the workings of the human mind that we don’t yet understand, so I’m not going to rule it out when I have no way of disproving it.
Secondly, both claims - that consciousness has very little influence on the mind, and that general intelligence isn’t complicated to understand - are incredibly bold statements I strongly disagree with. Especially with consciousness, though in my experience there’s a good chance we’re using that term to mean different things.
To me, consciousness is the fact of subjective experience - that it feels like something to be. That there’s qualia to experience.
I don’t know what’s left of the human mind once you strip away the ability to experience, but I’d argue we’d be unrecognizable without it. It’s what makes us human. It’s where our motivation for everything comes from - the need for social relationships, the need to eat, stay warm, stay healthy, the need to innovate. At its core, it all stems from the desire to feel - or not feel - something.
Well, first of all, like I already said, I don’t think there’s substrate dependence on either general intelligence or consciousness, so I’m not going to try to prove there is - it’s not a belief I hold. I’m simply acknowledging the possibility that there might be something more mysterious about the workings of the human mind that we don’t yet understand, so I’m not going to rule it out when I have no way of disproving it.
Secondly, both claims - that consciousness has very little influence on the mind, and that general intelligence isn’t complicated to understand - are incredibly bold statements I strongly disagree with. Especially with consciousness, though in my experience there’s a good chance we’re using that term to mean different things.
To me, consciousness is the fact of subjective experience - that it feels like something to be. That there’s qualia to experience.
I don’t know what’s left of the human mind once you strip away the ability to experience, but I’d argue we’d be unrecognizable without it. It’s what makes us human. It’s where our motivation for everything comes from - the need for social relationships, the need to eat, stay warm, stay healthy, the need to innovate. At its core, it all stems from the desire to feel - or not feel - something.