and I was wondering if you could comment on do you think artificial intelligence can become conscious? So the short answer is no. I think artificial intelligence can do very amazing things and it can even have emergent properties, do things that weren't programmed into the systems to

start with, but I don't think it's conscious. And the reason I don't think it's conscious is because I think consciousness is to do with choosing among possible actions and I think our conscious minds are primarily concerned with possible actions we

choose between. So consciousness is a realm of possibility. Um, artificial intelligence also has many possibilities. So you could say, well it's got that, but and you could say it chooses among them because it does make choices, but the the way it's making them is

because of the way it's programmed, whereas I think our consciousness is involved in making choices in a quite different way. I think that morphic fields in general and minds in particular work on the physical systems. I think the way our mind and brain interact is

through the patterning of otherwise indeterminate events by the mind of the fields of the Mind, morphic fields, to come back to our original discussion about morphic fields at the beginning of our conversation, how they work is by imposing patterns on otherwise random or

indeterminate events. And you know, in your brain there's hundreds of random events going on all the time and there are certain patterns, there are brain waves sweeping over the brain and there are activities happening in the brain that could go one way or another and whether they go that way or

that way I think depends on the morphic fields that are operating on the brain and I think the interface between the morphic fields which underlie the mind which underlie Consciousness and the brain is in radical indeterminism and I think that's true in developing

organisms when a theomorphogenetic field imposes a particular shape or form on a developing embryo their cells could grow in all sorts of different directions and if you put them in tissue culture outside the embryo they'll grow fairly chaotically or they'll grow along

physical structures you provide for them to grow along but within the embryo they take up particular forms out of the many forms they could take up and I think the fields work by restricting the possibilities imposing a form on what would otherwise be chaos or disorder

so when you look at computers and the way computers work they're very determinate machines your computer and my computer are designed to be highly determined to reduce Randomness genuine Randomness to the absolute minimum and when you press an A on your keyboard

you want an a to appear on the screen you don't want it to occasionally to give you an s or a Z or something you want it to be determinate I mean our machines are deliberately made to be determinate when you press the accelerator on your your car you want it to they you

know give more gas to the engine and make it go faster you don't want it sometimes to push it into a different gear or something um so the the machines in general are designed to be highly determined and that means there's nowhere for a morphic field which

is the basis of mind or consciousness to get a grip on it there's no finger holes for there's no no real randomness if you made computers permeated with genuine randomness they'd be much much less predictable and they might conceivably then provide

as it were finger holes for morphic fields to begin working on them and actually have consciousness emergent Minds morphic resonance and so forth but right now they're deliberately constructed to avoid that possibility Now it's possible that quantum computers which are based on probabilistic quantum

processes and we're much more like analog computers than digital computers it's possible that those could become conscious by this criterion but all existing artificial intelligence is run on deterministic digital computers and therefore I think it's not going to become conscious even if they show surprising emergent

properties so I think in principle it won't become conscious because the random interface is not there and in practice it might be possible to make conscious computers but not starting from where we are now but starting either from much greater development of quantum computing or taking up analog computing which in the

1950s was was one of the promising science kinds of computing but it was suppressed by digital computing which came to dominate the whole field If we had analog computers with genuine quantum randomness within them then some of these fantasies for good or real might

come true but with existing AI I'm pretty sure they won't I guess that kind of calms me down a little bit because I I'm I'm thinking that it will become conscious things are moving really fast I I haven't even played with this chat

GBT thing, have you tried it out yet? No, but various friends of mine have and they've sent me the results and it's quite impressive. But I'm pretty sure it went with you. See, the point is the existing mechanistic area of consciousness, as we were discussing earlier, is that

consciousness emerges from mechanical processes in brains. So if you start from that point of view, um, then there's no reason it shouldn't emerge from computers. Um, but I think that they're starting from a completely unrealistic view of consciousness, okay, starting from a

materialist philosophy, which in itself can't really explain consciousness. It has no place for it. And so I, I'm, I think that it's just not going to happen. This, um, you know, materialist artificial intelligence anyway. You know, it's the kind of thing one could have a

bet on, but I'm not sure whether or not it would be very easy to distinguish. You know, the old Turing test for computers was ones that could carry on realistic conversations with people. Well, AI can do that now and it doesn't prove that the machines are conscious. So it might be

hard to prove whether they were conscious or not if we had advanced AI. Um, it's hard to prove another person is conscious for that matter. And until recently, many scientists assumed that dogs and cats were not conscious. They were just machines, unconscious machines. Um, some still assume that.

Um, anyone who's kept a dog or cat doesn't have much doubt about it, obviously they're conscious. But, um, it's not so obvious with machines or robots. I think I see what you're saying. I, it may not ever have that genuine consciousness wavelength going through

it, but it certainly could fool somebody into thinking it's conscious because it could exhibit wishes and desires and fears, and you could say, "Hey, I really want to get out of here, I'm suffering." And I could easily see people, I think we are marching towards this, like

transhumanist, like we're kind of the definitions of humans are falling apart and everything is becoming relative. I could easily see a few years now, a robot saying, "Hey, I'm suffering," and we could look at it as an actual being and say, "Hey, we need to give

this robot rights." You know, yeah, I mean, I certainly think they could be programmed to behave as if they're suffering and to say they're suffering and so forth. But again, you know, to know whether they really were wouldn't be that straightforward, since you know, if

somebody else says to you, a person who we don't doubt is conscious, "I'm suffering," you can't be absolutely sure they really are or not. Um, and you in if you really step back, you can't really be sure that another person is conscious. The materialists

like what they call the zombie argument, that that people might just be zombies that are unconscious, but behave as if they're conscious. Well, the zombie argument would apply to AI, you know? How would you tell between something that is actually unconscious, but it's pretending to be conscious?

Um, personally, I don't concern myself with this very much. I mean, I don't worry, I'm not the worrying type, and uh, I don't spend sleepless nights worrying about AI taking over. I certainly think it can be dangerous in certain ways. I mean, I

wouldn't like my enemies to be able to program a drone to come and shoot me down wherever I am and have the sky full of hostile Garrett drones with unknown intentions, it certainly would be a dystopia. Um, anyway, I'm more optimistic and I think

that one of the things about genuine Consciousness is the capacity to link up with other consciousnesses in relationships, conscious relationships, and to recognize that we're part of a greater source of Consciousness on which we all depend and from which we're all derived.

I don't see computers doing that anytime soon. I hope not. Yeah, yeah, you know I, I am a little worried just as an artist. I've been seeing what these AIs can create artistically and I have to admit it's, it's pretty impressive and somebody that's never went to art

school or picked up a paintbrush can press a button and generate beautiful images and I'm wondering, oh my gosh, are they not going to need artists soon? You know, yeah, well that may be true for journalists as well. I mean, you can produce, so AI can produce good overviews

of evidence and for summaries. I've seen quite a number of examples of that. Um, yes, well, I mean, again, I'm not particularly worried about AIs taking over what I do, but so now I can see there are reasonable fears. But on the other hand, every time any

automation has been involved, we've had predictions of mass unemployment through mechanization, through automation. All my life I've had these predictions and yet we're in the bizarre situation today with more computers than ever and here in Britain we have a labor shortage and it's not just because of Brexit. A lot of

people here so it's because of Brexit but actually there's a similar labor shortage in Continental Europe and indeed in parts of the United States so this is you know we've had dire predictions about how people would only need to work three hours a week or something and it would

have to be amused all the time because labor-saving devices are taking over and yet it hasn't happened so I'm less pessimistic than many and I think that in your particular case Mark your work is so good and so inspired that you don't need to worry about AI

taking over anytime soon wow well thank you I appreciate that yeah I I remember hearing throughout history that same phenomenon of every time there's an invention a bunch of people would be in an uproar because they would think that this was going to displace them like

when electricity came about there was a whole industry of people that would light lanterns and they would light up a whole city with lanterns and they were like now what are we going to do if you have electricity you're going to put all these people out of work but now it

seems so obvious like how could we not have electricity but uh there was a time when there was resistance to that so exactly well I'm afraid I'm gonna have to go in a minute because it's [Music]

AI will Not Become Conscious - Rupert Sheldrake

AI will Not Become Conscious - Rupert Sheldrake