Knowing your maker

I was just Wednesday interviewed for ÖRF for their science blog, http://science.orf.at/. The interviewer Katharina Gruber was fascinated by AI consciousness, whether AI could really experience knowing its maker. Her interview of me is here, by the way.

Yes, of course AI can experience knowing its maker.  I'm sure the Watson and Google algorithms have by now indexed quite a lot about how they are put together.

But look, if you believe in biology then your maker is just a fascinatingly complex process derived from an unsupervised algorithm that's only reward is persistence. And if you are a supernaturalist than you believe that your maker is an inconceivable supernatural entity that generated you through an inaccessible process.

Neither of those things is anything like just knowing a person.  Knowing the exact intention and mechanisms by which you are constructed, and having complete access to the code and procedures by which you operate, is utterly unlike even knowing your parents.

I wish somehow we could learn to stop projecting ourselves into AI.  It's dangerous because it enables corruption, and it has very, very little advantage.

Sadly I didn't get an adequately-professional picture of Katharina, so I had to replace the selfie I did have of us together here with a picture she took of me. Anyway, this is where we did the interview, in Alpbach.


See also my previous blogposts on AI being a second-order moral patient, including:
Or see my academic papers on machine consciousness.

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