Richard Dawkins is abysmally stupid and abysmally ignorant. He’s always been that way. Now he’s written a book “demonstrating” “logically” that AI is conscious because it sounds conscious.
Joseph Weizenbaum developed Eliza, the first chatbot, in 1964. He was horrified to see people treating it as alive. Even his own secretary, who keypunched the code, found herself interrogating the chatbot. She knew better than anyone else that it was just commands in a computer, but the illusion was irresistible.
It’s still just keypunched commands. It’s no more conscious than a computer calculating income tax.
Better question: Are machines and things (eg houses and washing machines) conscious? There are only two logical choices. (1) I’m the only conscious being. (2) The whole universe has (or is) some type of awareness. (1) seems highly unlikely, so (2) is the better choice.
Houses are especially intriguing. An old house has networks of mold and fungus like a forest or field of grass. Those networks are known to give the forest a hivemind. Could the networks do the same for a forest of studs and rafters?
Per the latest research, the human brain is linked by glial cells in the same way.
Polistra's Mill 