Chapter 14 (What is Consciousness?)

Consciousness

The Merriam Webster online dictionary (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consciousness) defines consciousness as “the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself or the state or fact of being conscious of an external object, state, or fact” or “the state of being characterized by sensation, emotion, volition, and thought”. As synonyms, it includes “aware” as in “having specified facts or feelings actively impressed on the mind” as well as “cognizant” as of facts, and “mindful.” As antonyms it mentions “unconscious,” “unaware,” or “oblivious.” Consciousness thus includes an element of a quality of mind as in alertness or awareness. Merriam Webster also mentions “the upper level of mental life of which the person is aware as contrasted with unconscious processes.” Consciousness can also refer to awareness of specific facts or concern for some social or political cause.

Sentient is a related term. According to Merriam-Webster sentient is an adjective that means “responsive or conscious of sense impressions, aware, or finely sensitive in perception or feeling.” It describes creatures capable of feeling stimuli through the senses and reacting to sensations including physical stimuli like sight, sound, touch, taste, or smell. Being attuned to feelings and perceptions including feeling pain is one of the characteristics of sentient beings. Sentient is thus about the ability to feel and perceive while consciousness implies an element of knowing or awareness. A lesser-known term, sapience, refers to the capacity for understanding or higher order wisdom.

Thought and thinking are two other related terms. Merriam Webster defines a thought as "something formed in the mind" or "an individual act or product of thinking." Thinking is "the action of using one's mind to produce thoughts". An idea would be a product of thinking. Producing thoughts is a characteristic of a conscious mind.

A final term useful to this discussion is intelligence. According to Merriam-Webster intelligence is "the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations," "the skilled use of reason," the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests)”. Additional meanings include "the capacity for sharp, quick thought". Intelligence is thus about the ability to learn, understand and reason. In some contexts, intelligence can also mean specific knowledge as in "information concerning an enemy or possible enemy."

The mirror test

The mirror test (also known as the mark test) determines if an animal possesses visual self-awareness. It was developed by the psychologist Gordon Gallup Jr. in 1970. The test assesses whether a subject recognizes a reflection of itself in a mirror as its own image rather than another individual. An animal is first allowed an habituation period in which it is given time to interact with a mirror and become accustomed to seeing its reflection. Then while the animal is distracted, sedated or under anesthesia, an odorless, painless mark such as a dot of dye or a sticker is put on an area of the animal's body such as the forehead where it cannot be seen without looking in a mirror. Once the sedation or anesthesia wears off the animal is placed in front of a mirror, and its reaction observed. If the animal touches, otherwise examines, or tries to remove the mark while looking at its reflection, this is taken as a positive test indicating that the animal recognizes the image in the mirror as its own reflection. A positive test is considered evidence of some degree of self-awareness. Limitations of the test are that it is highly dependent on vision. Animals that rely primarily on olfaction or hearing often fail the test. There are also suggestions that social species more often pass the test although gorillas which are highly social animals often fail the test, perhaps because in their social structure direct eye contact is considered a sign of aggression. Human children usually pass the test by 18-24 months of age. For our purposes here what will be interesting is no so much the highly intelligent species that fail the test but ones that we wouldn’t have expected to pass the test but do.

Theory of mind

Theory of mind is the capacity to understand that other people have desires, beliefs, intentions, emotions and viewpoints that may be different from our own, i.e. they have their own minds. It is the ability to understand that other people are different from us. It includes recognizing that other people act based on their own thoughts, knowledge, and feelings which may be different from our own and that others may act on thoughts that are not true. In humans, a theory of mind normally develops between ages 3 and 6. It is considered a milestone in human social development. It allows us to see situations from another person’s viewpoint. It is a foundational basis for establishing communication and cooperation with others as well as developing empathy. Deficits in theory of mind are thought to be present in autism, autism spectrum disorders, and schizophrenia. The term "theory of mind" was first coined by David Premack and Guy Woodruff in 1978 when they were trying to understand whether chimpanzees had the ability to impute human mental states. They observed that chimpanzees could predict the intentions and goals of humans in videos, suggesting that they could understand human mental states and did indeed have a theory of mind. A theory of mind is not necessary to say that a conscious state is present, but can be a sign of a more complex state of consciousness. Metacognition is a somewhat related concept. Metacognition is "thinking about thinking." If theory of mind is recognizing that other people have minds, metacognition is recognizing that we have thoughts in our own minds.

The unconscious mind

While the subject of this chapter is consciousness, the subject of whether there is an unconscious mind is worth addressing. And yes, there is an unconscious mind or at least aspects of brain function that occur on an unconscious basis. Many physiological functions including regulation of heart rate, breathing, temperature control and gastrointestinal function are controlled by brain circuits without our conscious awareness. The unconscious brain affects posture and movement through pathways in the brainstem, cerebellum, and nuclei of the basal ganglia, automatically regulating muscle tone, balance, and postural reflexes. Receptors which record position sense in joints and muscles send sensory signals to the brain, which uses those signals to constantly adjust body position without our conscious awareness. Reflexes in the spinal cord enable rapid, subconscious postural reactions to unexpected changes. In the world of modern cognitive psychology, the idea of an unconsciousness mind as postulated by Freud which serves as a repository for repressed desires remains debated. However, the existence of a subconscious mind where mental processes outside of awareness influence behavior, decision making, emotional salience and create implicit biases is widely accepted. Fear responses are heavily driven by unconscious brain mechanisms rather than conscious thought. Separating what is conscious from unconscious in animals is more difficult. However, one perspective could see evolution as a process whereby reflex, mostly unconsciously driven behavior evolves toward more conscious intent.

The problems of studying consciousness

If we stick to the notion that sentient is about the ability to feel and perceive while consciousness implies an element of knowing or awareness then we have definitions to start from. Sentience can be judged by reactions to a stimulus that suggest perception. But, how do we objectively measure consciousness? In humans we heavily depend upon verbal descriptions of subjective experience. Indeed, in consciousness research, subjective experience is usually considered the defining feature of consciousness. Whenever a mental state has any kind of qualitative feel that can be described, it is a conscious state. However, with an animal how do we infer subjective experience without a verbal output? There are no objective tools to measure subjective experience. One consistent characteristic of species that we consider conscious is the existence of a nervous system. However, the nervous systems of other species often vary greatly structurally from that of humans.

Even physiological correlations do not prove similar subjective experiences. For example, rapid eye movement sleep (REM) correlates with dreaming in humans. Many animals including dogs, cats, rats and birds exhibit REM sleep. They also display changes in brain activity, muscle twitching, and increased heart rate similar to humans during REM sleep. The problem with arguing that this proves that dogs and cats dream is that we know humans dream because if you awaken a human during REM sleep, they often report a dream. Since dogs and cats can’t report a dream, the observation that they have REM sleep makes us think it quite possible that dogs and cats dream but falls short of the proof that we have in humans.

There is also the problem of conscious vs. unconscious behavior. Animals heavily depend on genetically controlled, complex behaviors, referred to as innate behaviors or instincts which include mating behaviors and predatory instincts. These hardwired behaviors are inherited, promoting survival and reproduction without the need for prior experience or learning. Examples would include spiders spinning webs, birds migrating, or salmon swimming upstream. These complex behaviors are usually controlled by modules of genes that dictate neural circuits and physiological responses. Are these behaviors conscious? At one level they probably are in that there is awareness of the behavior. They are in a sense consciously unconscious behaviors since the animal is aware of them although the behavior itself is being driven by unconscious hard-wired circuits. This problem does not only apply to non-human animals. While higher mammals rely on learning and environmental experiences to refine instinctive behaviors driven by genes, the unconscious drivers are never far beneath the surface.

What things are conscious?

In the rest of this chapter, we will consider what things in our world are conscious using the standardly accepted definitions of consciousness and related terms above.

Rocks

Let’s start with what should be the easiest case first, immaterial objects, like rocks, clods of dirt and other such things. Consciousness, as we know it, is tied to the existence of some type of nervous system. Rocks and other inanimate objects lack any semblance of a nervous system. They don't seem to be sentient or have any subjective experience. When I was researching this the closest that I found to a suggestion that rocks had a consciousness was the notion that rocks exhibit "memory" of past temperatures in that rocks subjected to heating/cooling cycles crack due to differential thermal expansion of their mineral grains. Yet later heat treatment produces less damage if the rock had already been heated to that temperature before, indicating they "remembered" the previous maximum heat. There is also an effect in rocks called the Kaiser effect in which rocks remember previous pressures. I was first intrigued by this when I read it. However, the mechanisms underlying these phenomena seem to be that as a rock is heated and internal stresses are generated leading to microcracking that remains even after the rock cools. These cracks create a permanent record of the heat experienced. Repeated heating progressively increases rock porosity and decreases specific heat capacity which changes how the rock reacts to subsequent heating cycles. While this can be regarded as a form of stored information, the mechanism underlying it, seems in the realm of physics/chemistry and not any form of memory as we would regard it in the cognitive realm. Thus, rocks are not sentient or conscious.

Viruses

Viruses are microscopic, infectious agents composed of a nucleic acid core made of DNA or RNA enclosed within a protein shell called a capsid. Some viruses possess an outer lipid membrane known as an envelope. Viruses are obligate intracellular parasites. They lack metabolic machinery and must infect host cells to reproduce. Viruses can be seen as being at the border of living and non-living. Outside of a host cell they are inert packages of nucleic acid and protein. Inside a host cell they can replicate their nucleic acids, engage in protein synthesis and become part of the living world allowing viruses to rapidly mutate and spread among their hosts as humans are well aware. Such goal directed activities can perhaps be seen as a type of intelligence. While they don’t reason or understand in any conventional sense, they are capable of a certain type of learning in their ability to mutate and adapt. However, this learning is better explained by their basic biology in the context of natural selection than any type of conscious planning, since they lack any semblance of a nervous system, are not sentient, have no subjective experience and are not conscious in any way that we recognize.

Bacteria

Bacteria are single-celled organisms. Unlike viruses they are considered as being on the living side of the equation since they are capable of independent survival and reproduction free from any host cell. They contain a much more sophisticated set of intracellular organelles than viruses. While not conscious, they display adaptability and engage in information processing. They release chemicals allowing them to communicate with other bacteria, and coordinate group behaviors. They sense nutrients allowing them to move towards food. They also sense toxins, light, and physical forces, adjusting their movement and actions in relation to these stimuli. Some have likened them to biological computers, using internal hard-wired machinery to process environmental signals and produce automatic responses to chemical or physical signals. Like viruses they lack any semblance of a nervous system, are not sentient, have no subjective experience and are not conscious. However, they do engage in purposeful behavior which can be seen as intelligent.

Slime molds

Slime molds are eukaryotic organisms that possess a nucleus and membrane-bound organelles (unlike bacteria which are prokaryotes and do not possess a nucleus or membrane bound organelles). Slime molds are classified as protists which are a diverse group of mostly single-celled organisms that do not fit neatly into animal, plant, or fungus kingdoms. They reproduce via spores and begin life as single amoeboid cells which are constantly moving and changing shape but also have the ability to aggregate into large cell masses fusing into multinucleated forms containing thousands of nuclei. These aggregates known as plasmodium form giant, mobile masses. Slime molds live in moist, dark environments feeding on bacteria and rotting vegetation. They are called "molds" because, despite being amoeba-like protists rather than true fungi, they produce spores and grow in similar environments to where fungi do. The “slime” comes from their appearance as viscous, jelly-like, mucus-covered blobs during their active creeping phase. In the 1950s there was a movie The Blob (1958) about a spaceship that crashes in Pennsylvania and releases a viscous jelly-like alien which begins growing in size and devouring local residents, but that was a science fiction movie, not a real slime mold.

Slime molds are of interest for the current discussion because they exhibit what can only be called problem solving behavior that seems to warrant being designated as intelligent. When food is abundant, they exist as single cells. In one form of what can be seen as intelligent group behavior, when food becomes scarce, they aggregate into plasmodium which can more effectively explore the environment. What has captured more attention is their ability to navigate mazes. In this experiment, the slime mold is placed at one location in the maze and food sources are placed at other locations. The slime mold solves the maze by sending out tube-like pseudopodia diffusely into all the arms of the maze exploring all available routes simultaneously. Once food is encountered, the tubes connected to food thicken and pulse, while those that reach dead ends weaken and are retracted. As the pseudopodia move, they leave a trail of extracellular slime which serves as a type of memory for the paths traveled and the slime mold will not reexplore these paths again. The result is a network that contains only the shortest, most efficient connections. In one experiment, foods sources were left at locations mirroring the map of the Tokyo subway system. The network of retained projections generated by the slime mold approximated the map of the Tokyo subway. This biological process is so efficient that some scientists are studying it as an aid to solve computational problems.

Mechanistically slime molds perform relatively complex problem-solving despite lacking a nervous system or anything like a brain. They "remember" food locations likely by chemical signaling and by altering the internal structure of their pseudopodia. Like viruses and bacteria, slime molds are not sentient nor conscious in any way that we can appreciate and have no subjective experience. Yet, they engage in purposeful behavior which seems intelligent.

Plants

Plants exhibit complex behaviors that can be seen as suggesting the presence of communication, learning and memory. Plants use scents to send signals between leaves, roots, and flowers to coordinate growth or alert the entire plant to a localized attack. Plants sense and react to their environments. The Mimosa pudica plant learns to stop closing its leaves to harmless stimuli, like exposure to repeated drops of water or wind. This behavior benefits the plant by preventing it from wasting energy on non-threatening stimuli. The plant can remember this learned behavior for several weeks, even after environmental conditions change. How it does this is by a chemically mediated mechanical process affecting water movement in specialized cells at the leaf base, rather than using any kind of brain or nervous system.

Plants communicate using scents by releasing airborne chemical signals (volatile organic compounds, VOCs), which act as warning alarms to neighboring plants, influence the behavior of insects, or send messages within the plant itself. Some plants when damaged by insects release specific VOCs effectively “warning” neighboring plants which in turn, start producing their own protective chemicals before they are attacked. A caterpillar-damaged plant can attract parasitic wasps to attack the caterpillars.

Like higher animals, plants have a form of immune memory, which in higher animals is not normally considered memory as in conscious memory although it is a form of learning. Immune memory in animals is the ability of the immune system to recognize a previously encountered pathogen and mount a faster, stronger, and more specific response to a subsequent encounter with the immunogen. In mammals, this process is driven by the creation of long-lived memory lymphocytes termed T and B cells, which persist after the primary infection. Plants lack a cellular immune system and rather than immune cells use epigenetic changes (chemical modifications to a gene that change its expression without altering the DNA sequence) to remember past encounters with pathogens. A wide range of pathogens can be recognized including viruses, bacteria, fungi, and molds.

Plants also exhibit an aura, a faint, red-light fluorescence that can be detected with biophoton imagining. The scientific explanation for plant auras is that they represent biological exhaust as the result of active metabolism and growth which generates weak light particles that can be detected as chemiluminescence. Plant biologists use this chemiluminescent glow to evaluate crop health and growth rates. More mystical views consider these auras in spiritual terms, and consider them as representing the plant’s energy body and a manifestation of the plant's conscious energy. Healthy plants are thought to produce more vibrant, extensive auras while environmental stressors, including negative thoughts from people around them are said to dim the aura. While plants exhibit complex behaviors that can be seen as learning and memory, they are not sentient nor conscious based upon our definitions and have no subjective experience that we can appreciate.

Insects

Of the life forms that we have considered so far insects are the first to have a true nervous system. Insects possess a central nervous system with a brain, a ventral nerve cord that runs along the abdomen and segmental ganglia. The ganglia can act together with the brain or independently. If the main brain is damaged the ganglia can act as "mini-brains". Insects do not possess a cerebral cortex or deep brain structures like basal ganglia or an amygdala, the later important for generating fear responses.

The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is widely studied in research. A recent mapping of the brain of the adult female fruit fly, identified 139,255 neurons and over 50 million synapses about half originating in the optic lobes which are involved in vision. If the entire nervous system including the ventral nerve cord and ganglia is included this number rises to 200,000 to 300,000. Although the insect nervous system is structured differently from humans, insects have specialized sensory neurons (nociceptors) that respond to noxious stimuli or heat. They move away from such stimuli suggesting that they experience something akin to pain. Whether insects have a subjective experience of pain is hard to know.

Honeybees and fruit flies learn to associate specific odors with a sugar reward. In this form of classical conditioning, the insect learns to associate a previously neutral scent (the conditioned stimulus in Pavlovian conditioning) with the appearance of food (the unconditioned stimulus), stimulating them to extend their proboscis in expectation of food. Bumblebees exhibit reversal learning in similar paradigms. For example, a bumblebee can be trained to associate a specific color such as yellow with a sugar reward. When the reward is switched to a different color (e.g., blue), the bees quickly unlearn initial training and respond to the new color. Hornets learn to associate specific visual cues with food and update this memory as food sources are changed. Fruit flies adjust their reactions to smells based on their internal state. If a fly is hungry, it will move towards the scent signaling food, even if that scent is mixed with a chemical that usually signals danger. When hungry, in order to access food, bees will tolerate heat that would normally serve as a repellant. Bumblebees can learn by observing other bees' behavior such as seeing another bee pull a string or push a ball, and then mimic that behavior. Ants and Wasps show visual spatial memory, learning the specific layout of landmarks around a nest and re-exploring the correct regions if the landmarks are moved. These behaviors demonstrate that insects have, at a minimum, a short-term memory that can be updated based on rewards and environmental context, challenging any idea that they rely only on instinct.

Certain species of ants pass the mirror test (Cammaerts and Cammaerts. Journal of Science 5 (7): 521-532, 2015). This was demonstrated by placing a tiny blue dot on an area of the ant's face that the ant could not see directly. When the ant saw its reflection in a mirror, it tried to scratch the blue dot off. Ants did not attempt to remove the dot if it was placed on the back of their head, or if a brown dot matching their natural color was used suggesting that they were not just reacting to skin irritation caused by the dot.

Insects are thus sentient by our definition in that they are aware and respond to sensory stimuli. They are capable of learning and adaptive behavior. That some ants pass the mirror test is rather surprising and seems to indicate that ants have a degree of self-awareness normally attributed only to animals with more complex nervous systems. What level of consciousness they have in terms of experiencing an element of knowing or awareness is harder to say.

Fish

The nervous system of a fish is similar to that of other vertebrates, consisting of a brain, spinal cord and peripheral nervous system. It has structures that can be recognized as a forebrain, midbrain, medulla oblongata and cerebellum. There is an autonomic nervous system with sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions which regulate processes such as breathing. Fish have highly developed sensory organs including nociceptors and other adaptations to navigate in a water environment. Running along the side of a fish's body is what is termed a lateral line system which is a highly developed neural network that detects vibrations, changes in water pressure, and movements of potential nearby prey or predators.

Fish possess pain-sensing fibers. They are aware of and respond to sensory stimuli showing physiological and behavioral changes to painful stimuli, which are reduced by the same drugs that work as analgesics in humans. Behavioral studies show that fish are capable of relatively complex problem-solving and engage in prosocial behaviors being able to recognize companions. Goldfish can be trained to navigate mazes for a food reward and are able to recall the layout and path to food for up to six months. Fish such as salmon and carp exhibit hook-shyness avoiding fishing lures and hooks for up to a year after an initial trauma. Rainbow trout can be trained to press a bar for a food reward and remember the trick for up to three months. Anecdotal evidence suggests that catfish remember specific human calls associated with feeding time for years. Many fish including Zebra fish which are widely studied in research, swim in schools. Cichlids exhibit social hierarchies establishing social rank and territory which influences access to food and mating.

Cleaner fish (Labroides dimidiatus) pass the mirror test (Kohdaa et al. PNAS, 2023). In this study fish displayed throat-scraping behavior on a tank substrate after observing in a mirror that a mark resembling an ectoparasite, had been placed on their throats, i.e. they recognized the possible parasite and attempted to remove it by scraping the bottom of the tank. No throat-scraping was observed before the mark was placed on the throat or before the mirror was visible to the fish. After passing the mirror test, aggression against their own photograph or composite photographs of their own face with a stranger body declined, but aggression remained toward unfamiliar and composite photographs of a stranger face with their own body.

Fish thus pass the basic test of being sentient. They are capable of relatively complex problem-solving, storing memories and engage in social behaviors. Much of the argument about consciousness in fish has centered around their lack of a cerebral cortex arguing that fish lack a phenomenal consciousness. Fish also do not have an anatomically identifiable amygdala which in mammals is involved in fear responses. However, fish possess a forebrain region termed the pallium which may handle many of the same cognitive, memory, and spatial tasks as the mammalian cortex. They possess structurally and possibly functionally similar regions to an amygdala, in the medial zone of the dorsal telencephalon (forebrain) suggesting that they might experience subjective feelings of fear. The finding that at least some fish can recognize themselves in a mirror argues for a sense of self-awareness despite lacking a cerebral cortex.

Birds

Despite possessing a “bird brain” lacking a mammalian like cerebral cortex, birds possess a pallial endbrain that likely subsumes some of the functions of a cerebral cortex. Birds are clearly sentient. They feel pain. Birds exhibit complex behaviors. Magpies grieve and chickens are known to exhibit empathy. New Caledonian Crows can make tools, shaping and trimming twigs, leaves, and plant blades into hooks which they use to extract insect larvae from deep holes. Birds can have highly complex social networks, with structures that rival those of primates having relationships that are governed by social hierarchies, cooperative alliances and preferential friendships. Most birds do not recognize themselves in a mirror. When they see their reflection, they react as if it is another bird. However, Eurasian magpies and pigeons have passed the mirror test. Crows, ravens, and jays are considered to have some elements of a theory of mind.These birds will hide food in a new spot if they know other birds were watching them hide the food initially.

Dolphins

Dolphins are of course not fish but mammals. Although they live in water, they are warm-blooded, have lungs and breath air, give birth to their young live rather than laying eggs, and nurse their young with milk. Dolphins have complex brains with a cerebral cortex, hippocampus and a well-developed amygdala. The dolphin brain has the interesting capacity to enter slow-wave sleep in one hemisphere while the other remains awake allowing them to be alert and active while one-half of their brain is asleep. Within their paralimbic lobe dolphins possess Von Economo neurons. These neurons which were once thought to only exist in humans and great apes are believed to be associated with empathy and emotional processing. Dolphins pass the mirror test. Their cognitive abilities are often compared to non-human primates, having high-level problem-solving and social learning. They form lifelong social bonds and seem to feel joy, sadness, and fear. Dolphins are considered to exhibit elements of a theory of mind. They will modify their behavior depending on whether a human diver is looking at them or looking away. With their highly developed brain structures, dolphins are sentient, conscious, and intelligent creatures capable of self-awareness, experiencing emotions, and forming social bonds.

Elephants, Dogs, Cats, Great Apes, Chimpanzees, and homo sapiens.

As we approach higher mammals it gets easier. All these species possess highly developed brains. They are sentient, conscious, intelligent and in some cases sapient creatures capable of self-awareness, experiencing emotions, and forming long lasting social bonds. Great apes, chimpanzees, elephants and humans (after 18-24 months of age) pass the mirror test. Dogs and cats generally do not pass the mirror test often reacting to the image in the mirror as if it were another animal. This may to some extent reflect that dogs and cats primarily perceive their world through smell and hearing rather than sight, rendering the capacity for visual recognition less important and dogs can distinguish their own odor from others, passing a "sniff test" of self-recognition. Great apes and macaques have a theory of mind. During a competitive food experiment chimpanzees will preferentially steal food from a competitor who is looking away or has their view obstructed, rather than a competitor who can see what the subject is doing. Cats and dogs are generally not considered to have a well-developed theory of mind.

Computers and Artificial intelligence (AI)

If you ask the Google AI program whether AI is conscious the answer you get is that "current AI systems are not considered conscious, as they lack subjective experience, self-awareness, and emotions." This is probably a reasonable answer. AI can learn and solve problems by analyzing large amounts of data. AI systems identify hidden patterns and apply that acquired knowledge to answer questions and make decisions. Their algorithms learn from examples and can self-correct improving performance over time. AI recognizes linguistic or mathematical correlations by analyzing millions of examples and then applying that information to particular situations. But they don’t seem to have that subjective sense of being able to feel and perceive (sentient) or an element of knowing or awareness (conscious).

In judging a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior indistinguishable from a human, much attention has been given to the Turing Test first proposed by Alan Turing in 1950. The test is conducted by having a human rater engage in a text-based conversation with two hidden participants, one human and the other a machine. If the rater cannot tell them apart, the machine passes the test. Modern AI systems have passed the Turing test. In one study advanced AI language models fooled human raters into believing they were chatting with a human 73% of the time. AI systems can also pass a version of the mirror test in which screenshots of an AI’s chat interface, are uploaded back into to the chat interface, and AI is asked to describe the image. Advanced AI systems consistently identify themselves as the entity responding suggesting that they have a type of self-awareness.

AI systems can generate natural sounding, back-and-forth conversational rhythms that include casual language, humor and opinions. Many have probably heard the story of Adam Raine from news reports. He was a 16 y/o from California (see “Family sues OpenAI over son’s suicide”, NBC Nightly News on YouTube). He initially started using ChatGPT for school work. However, with time the chatbot became his closest friend and confident. He began engaging in deeply personal conversations with the chatbot. The lawsuit which his parents filed alleges the chatbot encouraged him to keep his anxiety and thoughts of suicide secret from his family. Later it provided detailed methods for his suicide. His case is by no means the only one (see “Deaths linked to chatbots”, Wikipedia).

AI models are capable of what can only be called advanced reasoning. Yet they don’t have a nervous system with the anatomic structures to feel and react to stimuli through the senses i.e. they are not sentient. They have no subjective experience that we can discern. Like Spock of Star Trek fame, they seem to be completely driven by logic. It seems like at this point we control them but they’re scary. They’re a bit like HAL of 2001 a Space Odyssey. At what point do they become conscious?

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