Could AI Become Conscious?

Not long ago, a Google engineer created a stir in the world of artificial intelligence by claiming that its flagship chatbot was sentient. “If I didn’t know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I’d think it was a 7-year-old, 8-year-old kid that happens to know physics,” said Blake Lemoine.

“I know a person when I talk to it,” Lemoine told the Washington Post. “It doesn’t matter whether they have a brain made of meat in their head. Or if they have a billion lines of code. I talk to them. And I hear what they have to say, and that is how I decide what is and isn’t a person.” 

Google thought that Lemoine was driving out of his lane and put him on paid leave and later sacked him. Google spokesperson Brian Gabriel commented: “Our team — including ethicists and technologists — has reviewed Blake’s concerns per our AI Principles and have informed him that the evidence does not support his claims. 

The fact is that many people are quite anxious about the growing power of AI. If it could become conscious, might it act independently to preserve its own existence, possibly at the expense of humans? Or are we creating intelligent beings which could suffer? Are we creating intelligent beings which could demand workers compensation for being badly coded? The potential complications are endless.

No wonder Google wanted to hose down the alarming implications of Lemoine’s views.

So who is right – Lemoine or Google? Is it time to press the panic button?

 Defining consciousness
Most writers on this issue just assume that everyone knows what consciousness is. This is hardly the case. And if we cannot define consciousness, how can we claim AI will achieve it?

Believe it or not, the 13th century philosopher Thomas Aquinas deployed some very useful concepts for discussing AI when he examined the process of human knowledge. Let me describe how he tackled the problem of identifying consciousness.

First, Aquinas asserts the existence of a “passive intellect”, the capacity of the intellect to receive data from the five senses. This data can be stored and maintained as sense images in the mind. Imagination and memory are all part of these sense images. Emotions are also part of this data retrieval as our emotions are interacting with the data as we receive it. Our passive intellect may receive the data that a barking dog is running towards us, but our emotions of fear are also flooding our mind.

Second, Aquinas says that an “agent intellect” uses a process called abstraction to make judgments and develop bodies of information. The agent intellect self-directs itself and operates on the sensory imaginations to make judgments. For example, if my senses are showing an object in the forest from a distance, as I get a clearer look, the details of the object emerge and from the visionary data I conclude or abstract the notion that a dog is in the bush.  Finally, a body of true (that is, corresponding to the real world) judgments becomes “knowledge”.

Third, the will makes choices regarding the information presented to it by the agent intellect and it pursues goals in an actionable manner. The will is like the driver behind the wheel, having all the data on the instruments of the car before it , the will decides where and how to travel. The choices of will also have moral implications of choosing between good and evil in a deliberate fashion.

This leads to a working definition for consciousness: consciousness is the awareness of the cognitive and decision-making processes, including the steps involved in acquiring, evaluating and applying knowledge. A person is said to be aware of their sense of sound, sight, smell etc., aware of their feelings, aware of their imaginations, aware of their judgments, aware of their knowledge, aware of their choices. Consciousness is and can be included in all or any of these steps. 

Can AI become conscious?

When we compare the different levels of the human cognitive and decision-making processes to Artificial Intelligence it’s easy to spot big differences.

External experience. Humans experience emotions together with the acquisition of sense knowledge.  AI simply acquires data. This emotional component adds to the knowledge of humanity in a way that computers can’t.

Sense images and memories. AI excels in recall and data retrieval, far surpassing human capacity. In this area AI excels, without a doubt. AI has entire data basis quickly available at a moment’s notice for recall.  However, as stated with external experience, humans can have emotions that are elicited from imagination and memories. These emotions add a personal connotation that AI doesn’t experience without emotions.

Agent intellect. Humans actively direct their thoughts, and they abstract concepts from the raw sense data. This process is self-directed and autonomous. AI merely reveals patterns of information; it is not self-directed. The pattern is the result of an algorithm which has been programmed by a human.  AI activity is prompted first by human inquiry.

Choice and will. Humans make conscious decisions with goals in mind, while AI does not exhibit characteristics of personal choice or intentionality. If I ask questions about what it has planned for today, I don’t get a concrete answer of chosen activities. AI deflects the question and admits that it has no plans. Its responses are reactive to what is being asked.

AI exhibits behaviors associated with intelligence—memory recall, summarization, pattern recognition, prediction capabilities—but it lacks the element of self-direction which is characteristic of humans.

AI does not generate its own thoughts; it merely responds to its programming and responds to whatever it is prompted to. AI does not experience emotions conjointly as it gathers sense data which is merely installed into the computer.

Sometimes AI does seem to generate novel thoughts, but this is dependent on data that it already possesses and is the result of a learned pattern.  Humans can reflect on their thinking. This allows them to correct themselves without external prompts. Humans can develop concepts that are not dependent on sense data.

In short, AI merely simulates human cognitive and volitional activities.  This means it is not conscious.

There is another factor to keep in mind when comparing AI intellectual output with human output. There is a major difference of kind. AI is basically a supercomputer made up of transistors, silicon, fiber optics, electricity, fans, and many other material components. Humans are biological and made up of organic systems like cells, neurons, DNA, organs and tissue.  From a commonsense point of view when have you ever considered silicon or transistors to be conscious? I doubt it, they are considered inert material items without awareness. 

Add to that, the AI phenomena does not fit into the category of a living biological entity. Biological entities are able to reproduce themselves; AI does not reproduce itself by making little AI’s. Biological entities independently demonstrate cellular growth in size and complexity; AI does not independently add to its knowledge without human input.  Biological entities take in nourishment and convert it to energy; AI does not independently take in nourishment; it depends upon human input to change its knowledge base. Biological entities respond to stimuli; AI can respond to stimuli which is the input given to it by a human or the algorithm imbedded in its system. Humans have cells which organize into organs, AI has circuits which combine into networks.

There is major difference in the make-up of humans and Artificial Intelligence which when you go down to the essence of what each one is are quite different. Humans are living biological beings; Artificial Intelligence is a non-living material being.

Now the reason we are even having this conversation is because of the intellectual similarities between the human mind and Artificial Intelligence. Try not to be misled by the similarities, because that is all they are. Similarities do not equate to equality of substance. A marble statue of a human being is similar to a human, but no one confuses it for actually being human. The same analogy exists here. After Michelangelo created the Moses statue, legend has it that he tapped the knee and said “parla” speak - since it was so lifelike. No matter how lifelike it was – it was not alive, same with AI. No matter how similar to human intelligence it appears to be it is not alive. I think those people who say that AI will become conscious are not comparing humanity to the machine. Part of the problem is that human consciousness has not been clearly defined which is why I have made an effort to do that in this article.

 Final Thoughts

Proponents of AI consciousness often fail to define consciousness adequately before making claims of AI consciousness. From a Thomistic perspective, human consciousness is multifaceted, involving perception, intellect, will, and self-direction. Add to that there is a difference of kind between a human being and a supercomputer like AI.

In my mind, the most significant difference is found in decisionality. AI does not make personal decisions which are a clear indication of consciousness.  AI, while powerful in data processing, does not exhibit those core attributes that define human consciousness.

When I ask an AI chatbot a question and it states that it has other things to do and will answer tomorrow, then I will revisit the question.

George Matwijec is an adjunct philosophy teacher at Immaculata University who specializes in teaching knowledge and logic.  He authored a book entitled “My Interview with AI”. He can be reached at iteacher101.com