Do computers have consciousness?

[Rayaan]

I don't think that a program or a machine could ever be self-aware or have a consciousness in the same way that we do. Maybe you can make them conscious to a certain extent (by programming them with recursive algorithms and whatever), but the consciousness won't be anything near to human consciousness. As a whole, I think that the level of complexity and self-referentiality that exists in the human mind is too deep and complicated to be accurately replicated in our artificial intelligence designs.

Interestingly, however, I've read in a few articles that a computer program can be thought to have consciousness - or a mind of it's own, so to speak - depending on how you define the word "conscious". There are certain definitions of consciousness in relation to computational properties that, when applied to the behavior of a computer program, the program itself can be considered to be "conscious" or "self-aware." You can see some of those definitions and their applications on page four in the link below:

Conscious Machines and Consciousness Oriented Programming


Edit: Moved this thread from Religion to Philosophy.

[The Reality Salesman01]

If you have an iPhone, ask Siri what July 27th 2014 is....her response is very strange.

[Tea Earl Grey Hot]

If you have an iPhone, ask Siri what July 27th 2014 is....her response is very strange.

"Opening Gates of Hades" wtf?

[LostLocke]

If you have an iPhone, ask Siri what July 27th 2014 is....her response is very strange.

I don't have one. What does she say?

But yes, I firmly believe computers have a conscious.
All I know is that every time I'm playing an MMO and I'm anywhere near a location with a large drop, my HDD consciously decides to become active just long enough to lag me off the edge.

If I listen close, sometimes I think I hear my computer laughing at me after that....

[Tonus]

I don't know if we can or cannot. I suspect that we will continue to work at mimicking the human mind in limited and controlled conditions. A chess computer doesn't work anything like the human mind does when playing chess (unless they've become that much more sophisticated in the last dozen years) but the end result may be convincing, because it's a single circumstance with controlled variables. Though to be fair, the computer would need additional modules to mimic the psychological nuttery that Kasparov and Fischer displayed at times.

I think we will be able to really play with advanced AI after we figure out quantum computing. As one of the articles Napoleon linked explains, the human nervous system isn't a gated on/off system running at XX GHz. You can't really mimic how it works until you can, uh... mimic how it works. But hey, unreachable goals are what keep us learning, and along the way we discover other useful stuff.

[Angrboda]

Given the general assumptions of the OP, I'd have to say no, your computer is not conscious.

The main difficulty lies not in determining whether the computer is conscious or not. The difficulty is in assigning meaning to the phrase, "conscious like me." What does it mean to be conscious like a human? To someone like Chad, it means to be linked up to a very special and unique ontological existent, a spirit, that doesn't exist solely in the brain. To me, consciousness is nothing more than a specific type of process occurring in a biological machine, no different in basic operation than a thermostat, albeit possessed of immense complexity. What's important to me is not the level of complexity, as there are equally as complex entities that likely don't possess consciousness (perhaps an ant hill, or our entire ecosphere). A minimum of complexity is required because, in my view, consciousness is a specific type of process, a very specifically structured mechanism. Just making something complex and filled with information won't get you to consciousness unless it is operating on that information in a specific, structured way. However, anything else besides a biological brain which possesses that type of process, will, to my view be conscious. Most people lie somewhere between these two polar opposites, believing the brain causes consciousness, but also not altogether certain that there isn't something unique and incapable of being duplicated outside a living brain going on.

To my view, once we understand what's actually going on in the brain, duplicating it outside the brain will be considerably easier (though not easy). However, a modern computer doesn't in any way resemble the way the brain gives rise to consciousness, imo, aside from that they are both machines performing well ordered and structured processes to manipulate information, using basic, naturalistic, cause and effect mechanisms. There the similarity ends.

(And in a nutshell, yes, I believe I understand what makes the process of consciousness what it is, but that's another story.)

[Minimalist]

They must. Mine fucks with my head every chance it gets.


They are like women in that regard.

[The Reality Salesman01]

Thanks for dropping in Apo!

Good post.

[Ryantology]

As a whole, I think that the level of complexity and self-referentiality that exists in the human mind is too deep and complicated to be accurately replicated in our artificial intelligence designs.

Do you say that as the current state of affairs, or do you think that brains are so complicated that we'll never figure out how to duplicate their capabilities?

[The Reality Salesman01]

If you have an iPhone, ask Siri what July 27th 2014 is....her response is very strange.

"Opening Gates of Hades" wtf?

Weird huh?!!