“Hello, is there anybody in there?” Thus begins the iconic Pink Floyd song "Comfortably Numb." I posed the same question to Google Gemini, and pat came the response: “Were you poking fun at the nature of talking to an AI, or were you just testing if I'd pick up on the lyric right away?”
\n\nI was looking for a relatable hook to start this article, which aims to address a pervasive question with no easy answer: can a bunch of zeroes and ones come together to create consciousness? If that doesn’t seem rational, why is it more acceptable to say, as English Podcaster Alex O’Connor asked, that a bunch of atoms came together to become brains?
\n\nWhether we prove or accept AI as conscious has real-world implications. Rights follow recognition.
\n\nSome are already arguing for a basic-rights framework for bots before AI evolves into, or is accepted as, a conscious being and therefore be subjected to human-like suffering. Where would it start and stop? Property rights over its data? Freedom to start a company? Would they get a right to exist such that the plug can’t be pulled quite literally?
\n\nIntelligence is different from consciousness
\n\nAI sceptics are now armed…
Original source: https://www.cnbctv18.com/technology/
