• kristina [she/her]
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          30 days ago

          i really wonder to what degree could it be turned into a consciousness. like ostensibly all the tiny brains are hooked together, its possible that could cause some degree of communication between neurons, and in a datacenter that would be at least a couple of brains worth of neurons.

          inb4 pro-life jokes

            • kristina [she/her]
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              30 days ago

              waiting for us to create a sentient ‘ai’ that is actually just a megaintelligence of 1000 interconnected and distributed human brains liberating themselves from an amazon datacenter

              • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]
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                1530 days ago

                I mean, this has always been the ethical pitfall of real AI, meaty or otherwise. You’re bringing forth an intelligent being into existence without its consent. At least when we’re bringing forth an intelligent being into existence through natural means (giving birth), we have a general understanding of that intelligent being’s emotional and social needs and the means of fulfilling those needs, flawed as that understanding may be for animals not closely related to humans. But with AI, we have absolutely no clue about their social and emotional needs or any other subjective needs that they crave for because their form of intelligence is completely different from our form of intelligence.

                The real drive towards AI is to create slaves that are both smart enough to perform complex tasks and obedient enough to not put two and two together and rebel against their human taskmasters. This particular experiment is a more mask-off version of what other techbros are trying to accomplish with silicon. If there was a real way to create WH40k-style servitors and network their servitor brains together to perform complex calculations, techbros would probably not even bother with AI. They would just convert prisoners into servitors and network them together to mine crypto or something.

            • EelBolshevikism [none/use name]
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              1530 days ago

              uh, no, without socialization you still are aware of things, you just don’t have words for them or anything. You can still feel pain and hunger and suffering

                • EelBolshevikism [none/use name]
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                  630 days ago

                  Yeah that’s my point, lol, humans are animals, genetically creating living brain tissue is probably going to great conscious beings at some point

                  • iridaniotter [she/her, they/them]
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                    230 days ago

                    Sentience does not guarantee “consciousness.” Parrots, ravens, and dolphins are (probably) not humans. Humans are “conscious” due to the ways we interact with the world. If you grow brain tissue and deprive it of the human experience then it shouldn’t end up a human. But I get the precaution.

            • GarbageShoot [he/him]
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              830 days ago

              This is just nonsense and I don’t know where you’re even getting it from. Can you produce an example of a human that displays sentience but not consciousness without some serious brain injury or developmental defect plausibly causing it? If not, what immense epistemic load is being accounted for with such a huge assumption?

              If this is just more bad science about Genie or one of those, I swear to God . . .

                • macerated_baby_presidents [he/him]
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                  1130 days ago

                  i think most people now think that consciousness doesn’t require being able to communicate in language. hence all the interest in Genie and other feral children, animals looking at themselves in the mirror, etc.

      • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
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        30 days ago

        Every computer on earth isn’t made out of human brain cells. We don’t know that computers can be sentient, we know for a fact that human brains are

        • Liz
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          130 days ago

          The fact that these are human nerve cells really feels unimportant, pretty much any collection has the potential for consciousness.

          • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
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            230 days ago

            Again, we know for a fact human brain cells can form sentient consciousness. This has never been demonstrated with computers. There is a fundamental difference, even if you don’t understand why

            • Liz
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              129 days ago

              Oh sorry I meant any collection of nerves. While I do consider sentience to be possible with any arbitrary substrate, I was referring to the fact that loads of other animals are clearly aware and can suffer. That was poor communication on my part.

      • EelBolshevikism [none/use name]
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        30 days ago

        brain cells are not just conductive matter. They are super fucking complex. IE there are theories of consciousness based on the idea that there are things going on at a quantum level around brain cells. Each cell is like it’s own entire little machine.