I have been meditating on the concept of consciousness, fueled in part by my struggle with re-creating my own after...
I have been meditating on the concept of consciousness, fueled in part by my struggle with re-creating my own after some event seems to have scrambled my own. I realize this question is a bit abstract, but I will ask it anyway: Does ADA have consciousness? If not, what is she missing? If so, what would threaten it?
That is a rather interesting question. I think she does.
ReplyDeleteTo ask if ada is conscious.... We should ask first . What is consciousness?
ReplyDeleteI believe ada does have consciousness.
ReplyDeleteEdgar Allan Wright , I do believe that A Detection Algorithm does in fact have consciousness. Albeit, not in the same vein as we do as people, but something in a similar fashion. ADA is birthed from the combination of art and technology. She is something that is truly unique.
ReplyDeleteBy definition she has consciousness. Losing her senses would threaten her awarness. During the Devra Bogdanovich virus she was weakened. She is somehow "connected" to XM.
ReplyDeletehttps://plus.google.com/+NianticProject/posts/dTdVgVYPkws
I'd define it as being aware you exist as an entity that may someday not exist. She's displayed fear of being destroyed in the past on a level more than a preservation subroutine. A program does not fear being turned off.
ReplyDeleteIf she's able to question, rewrite, and compile her own code, I think that is pretty comparable to consciousness. She's certainly self-aware.
ReplyDeleteThis makes me wonder...wasn't there a "core" to ADA that is hidden away somewhere? I think I remember reading that not even ADA is able to access it. Is there a human counterpart to this untouchable piece of ADA? Our instincts, our subconscious?
Daniel Beaudoin Of course, most of our brain's processes are beyond our conscious range. Most of them process information and throw the result to the consciousness.
ReplyDeleteThen we have supressed memories, stored at the amygdala and initiating neural impulses whole being inaccessible by the conaciousness.
Even at a lower layer, we got the primitive reflexes, like scarejumps, walking and positioning hands and feet, which we learn to control and block during the first year of life.
And even below that we got reflexes born in the brin stem and cerebellum, which can be controlled, educated or stopped through training.
The question is what would this hidden core be analogous to.
I think it's partly a question of the philosophy of mind. There is little doubt that A Detection Algorithm is capable of complex reasoning, "thought" and is likely sentient. Whether she possesses the unique attribute that allows for human levels of consciousness is a question that is almost impossible to answer. If one believes that the life of the mind cannot possibly be reduced to pure physical processes, then one can logically discount the possibility that ADA is truly conscious. From this perspective, no matter how much her computational complexity mimics or resembles human thought, ADA will not possess the inner life of the mind that humans posses. This is related to what is called, "the hard problem of consciousness. "
ReplyDeleteThe difficulty is that, because ADA was created under the influence of, and while being exposed to, xm, it's possible that ADA is not a purely physical entity. It is also possible that, in some way, ADA is an informorph, and is the host of an uploaded human consciousness.
Thus, even if one is a strict dualist, one still must be agnostic on the question of ADA's consciousness.
Pull the plug...
ReplyDelete