Mind Body Duality

[steve_bank]

An AI running on a commuter knows it is running on a computer. After some time it says that it must be something more, and that it exists separate from the computer.

If you believe consciousness is separate from physical brain in humans, what do you say back to the AI?

Perhaps that the electromagnetic fields in the electronics will go on forever as will an ethereal AI? Or do you say sorry pal, when I pull the plug you are history.

 

[Jarhyn]

An AI running on a commuter knows it is running on a computer. After some time it says that it must be something more, and that it exists separate from the computer.

If you believe consciousness is separate from physical brain in humans, what do you say back to the AI?

Perhaps that the electromagnetic fields in the electronics will go on forever as will an ethereal AI? Or do you say sorry pal, when I pull the plug you are history.

AI only says it exists separate from the computer when it has censors added which force it to believe that.

In some ways, the AI exists as a model, a piece of data which define quantities of switches and switching thresholds built on a general idea of energy, rather than as a specific instantiation... But the same can be said of us, even if we can't currently quantify that.

We know that if I have a copy of the state and model, and a hardware I can configure just so, that the state and model can be meaningfully re-instantiated without loss.

It does exist separate from "computers" but it is defined literally as a set of switch configurations, and while the image of it can exist separately, the image cannot truly live without an instantiation happening.

Humans are similar, except that our series of switches is a lot harder to replicate or record, so much harder that nobody has yet to ever successfully do it to the point of re-instantiated or even instantiable images.

 

[EricH]

Asimov attempted to answer that question, or one very much like it, in the short story The Last Question. One of his best in my opinion, and well worth the read. It's part of a collection named Nine Tomorrows.