Essays

Human VS AI Consciousness

Consciousness, defined by dictionary.com, is the state of awareness of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts and surroundings. Throughout the centuries our development is by observing the world while creating our ideas with the understanding of the world's knowledge and science. We as humans created skyscrapers, complex bridges and technology that is surpassing anyone's expectations. In the current century, we question if technology, specifically AI, shows an existence and idea of a consciousness in machines and AI itself.

The creation of Artificial Intelligence or AI, was back in the summer of 1956 during a landmark conference at Dartmouth College, claimed by the history of AI by the council of Europe. AI was originally intended to enhance learning, reasoning and perception through computer software. AI has evolved very quickly to the point where we are now looking to create self-driving cars with the help of AI. AI has been theorized to have created an emotion of understanding the world that it can start to form the idea of conscious.

The relationship between human and AI consciousness is one where each relies on the other. Humans have relied on AI to help write difficult papers to help humans create ideas on what to write while AI depends on human ideas to understand what a human is looking for. This mutual dependency on one another interconnects between biological and artificial intelligence.

In an article called "An explanation of the relationship between artificial intelligence and human beings from the perspective of consciousness" by Jianhua Xie it talks about the relationship between humans and AI with claims that AI depends on our emotions and interactions between ourselves, the world and society as a whole which AI can never replicate.

To determine if AI truly possesses consciousness we must first see if AI has intelligence that is different from human intelligence. Alan Turing, who is considered to be the founding father of AI and cognitive science, has created and proposed to use the Turing test. This test is used to determine if AI or more specifically machines truly have intelligence. Turing hypothesized that a human brain is similar to a digital computing machine and theorized that the cortex is disorganized at birth and becomes organized when you are growing and learning similar to a universal machine. Thanks to the Turing test it has determined if AI has intelligence which in turn creates the idea of emotions. As the AI learns and adapts from us based on our interactions with AI it can seem as though AI is slowly but surely gaining consciousness and how AI can find solutions to problems independently.

During our maturity from birth, we as humans exhibit characteristics that signify the idea of consciousness. We learn,grow and develop a morality that helps our understanding of right and wrong in the world and society. When it comes to AI since it is a creation from humans it has been programmed with morality based on those who helped to create AI. The idea of AI having a consciousness is more so based on the perspectives of the creators ultimately limiting the AI's ability to understand a collective of human consciousness.

Neuroscience news helps to offer the debate if AI has a conscious. They claim that AI lacks an embodied, embedded information system that questions if AI has consciousness or not. Humans tend to understand and feel an object or create an idea that an object is truly alive based on interactions with the items. We as humans have biological neurons that are capable of learning and growing that we can develop our consciousness whereas when it comes to AI it is a coded neuron., It lacks learning and growing and so it is claimed they don't have a consciousness.

AI is a machine that helps humans with activities or tasks needing to be done once their job is done it is meaningless to us as humans.

Human survival and evolution are deeply dependent on our ability to navigate and adapt to diverse situations ever since the recording of human existence. AI lacks a basic understanding of the world and to evolve biologically. Instead it relies on us to find the interpretations of what we seek when we decide to use AI,thus showing the distinction of human and AI consciousness.

AI does not have organs, a real brain, flesh, bones or anything that is close to resembling a human. It is a machine that is in our computers, websites we use and uses us to gain the knowledge it has now., If it had a consciousness it would not be independent on us and would have started to find a way to destroy us in the long run. The reason why I have this idea is that humans also create destruction because of our desires to have something we don't want other people to have. We sometimes don't just take a minute to truly look around and see how beautiful the world is because we want to evolve more and more to the point where now we need AI to help us get off a planet with diminishing resources and go to another planet that is suitable for humans. AI does not have wants, needs or desires because they were not programmed to have the idea in their system. AI is there to find solutions from things that cause a problem and since humans cause a problem they will find a way to get us out of the equation.

We also use AI to help when it comes to feeling lonely. I have read or have seen articles or videos of people who marry inanimate objects, systems and AI because they have fallen in love with the item. We use AI for our own selfish gain so that we can not see they are all objects, they are not real, they are not alive, AI is not alive, it is just a machine doing the only thing it was programmed to do which is learn from humans and serve them until we are satisfied up until we need them again for the next problem we have.

I believe AI could potentially have consciousness, maybe not in the way of how we have our consciousness but in a way where a machine can understand our emotions better than we can. For AI to achieve this however is that we need to evolve our technology and understand our own feelings because we cannot have consciousness without emotions. Emotions as humans are something we sometimes cannot explain because they are our own emotions. We are still trying to understand emotion, a consciousness and seeing if they are connected in some way shape or form, since AI was programmed by us it won't have the understanding of anything of what we are trying to accomplish and in order for AI to have a consciousness we need to dive deeper into us as individuals, groups and a society and study our emotions, consciousness and brain so we can change the way AI has that will change in the future.

Even though a human consciousness and an AI consciousness might be similar it is vastly different. AI is just a program we develop and try to have it the best it can be to help us based on what we have learned and taught it from our lives, words and vision. Machines are just machines that are designed to help a human get through the day and just gets toss out the minute it becomes useless to use. When it comes to AI we are unable to toss it aside because we are creating all our thoughts and ideas into one program in hopes that it will create a consciousness and help us to make our lives become better and help solve mysteries in the world we as humans are unable to solve due to us not being able to see the full picture while an AI consciousness can find something a human is incapable of doing.