How to Build Self-Conscious Artificial Intelligence

Hugh Howey – Wired

The title of this article is a bit of a false flag, since it could easily have continued ‘… and why that would be a really bad idea’. It is though an interesting – though considerably longer – complement to the argument that the idea of general artificial intelligence is based on a false analogy between human brains and computers. This article takes the related but distinct approach that self-consciousness exists as compensation for structural faults in human brains, particularly driven by the fact that having a sophisticated theory of mind is a useful evolutionary trait and that it would be pointless (rather than impossible) to replicate that – because perhaps the most notable thing about human introspection about consciousness is how riddled it is with error and self-contradiction. That being so, AI will continue to get more powerful and sophisticated. But it won’t become more human, because it makes no sense to make it so.

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