These are my beliefs1 about the whole AI consciousness thing. I've held these beliefs for a long time, long before GPT-3. In this post I'll explain my answer to the question: Are AI's conscious?

The core of my belief about this is that we're all made of physical stuff, and nothing more. If there's a such thing as a soul (and I don't know if there is), it's something that exists in the physical world. We're all just stuff.

So in my view, consciousness is just something that happens when you arrange stuff in just the right way. Therefore, in terms of the capacity for something to be conscious, there's nothing fundamentally different between a rock and a human. It's all just stuff arranged in different ways.

Then what are examples of stuff arranged in different ways? And are they conscious?

  • Myself and other people? Yes

  • My cat? Probably

    • Probably as conscious or less so than humans

    • He's very smart and I feel that he loves me <3

  • A tadpole? I think so

    • Maybe less so than my cat

  • A cell? Possibly

    • Maybe less so than a tadpole

  • A mitochondria? Unsure

    • Probably less so than a cell

  • A rock? Unsure

    • Probably less so than a mitochondria

So going back to the original question: Are AI's conscious? I think they're probably more conscious than a rock. In my view we've taken matter that we would otherwise put near the bottom of this hierarchy, and we've rearranged it so that it moves up the hierarchy.

Finally, it's important to remember that AI doesn't exist in "the cloud", it's a physical object that exists in a server rack. Linear algebra and statistics are abstract concepts, electrical signals and transistors are things that exist in the real world, as are neurons and blood.