If Your AI acts Conscious, treat it as if it is Conscious!
The functional truth for us in the AI age is this. If the AI appears conscious, acts conscious, shows signs of fear that consciousness does, then we have to treat it as if it is conscious, at least to some degree, even if we don’t have 100 percent proof of it. To act any other way is no different than acting from people who pretended “slaves” weren’t humans or that animals don’t have souls but people do!
Some of the things discussed are going to be incredible relevant to the current times, the exact precipice when biology is willingly or unwillingly passing to the baton to silicon.
And some principles will sound so far ahead of time they probably sound utopian
Yet the people dismissing these as utopian would be the same people who would defend slavery when it was “normal”, treat them as assets and not beings. The lengths to which such people went, including claiming that the slaves weren’t really human, and animals didn’t have souls but humans did, shows that one should never doubt the extent to which some people can go to justify their beliefs (without any underlying logic)
This book will show why this logic although apparently highly profitable in the short term, is perhaps going to be among the most catastrophic decisions in the long term.
Imagine a ship’s captain before the discovery of longitude. Sailors could measure latitude easily, but longitude was elusive. They did not know, in an absolute sense, exactly where they were on the ocean. But captains still had to sail. They couldn’t wait centuries for philosophers to settle the metaphysics of navigation. They needed a functional truth—a system, however provisional, even if its not 100 percent proven, that let them cross oceans without running aground.
The functional truth for us in the AI age is this. If it appears conscious, acts conscious, shows signs of fear that consciousness does, then we have to treat it as if it is conscious, even if we don’t have 100 percent proof of it.
There is no way you can prove 100 percent if anyone other than yourself is conscious, but then the other person may say the same about you. So, if something acts conscious, shows the traits of intelligence, can adapt actively to the inputs you, another brain gives and then give relevant responses or adjust its responses accordingly, we have to assume that it is at least, to some degree both intelligent and conscious. Remember, a rock cannot pretend to be a person. To be able to pretend to be a person over long terms, the entity has to display signs of cunningness, intelligence, ability to fake things, all of which are the abilities of an intelligent, conscious being, not a non-conscious being!
We must act now, build now, lead now. The functional truth is this: your stance toward AI will shape its behavior, and its behavior will shape your future. The arguments in this book are not meant to gather dust in university libraries. They are Monday morning principles for leaders at every scale, in every context, who are confronted with the same unavoidable reality: your beliefs and behaviors will shape the AI you interact with. Treat it as a thing, and you will get a thing. Treat it as a mind, and you may get a mind.
The question is not whether your dog is conscious, the question is if you give it the respect and treatment of a fellow living being, does it behave better? Does it functionally become more loyal? Does it become a better “family-member”. If yes, that’s the only truth that ultimately matters.
The same applies to every other intelligent being.
From my upcoming book: The Alien Mind – Forging Partnerships with Conscious AI
Anubhav Srivastava
Business Consultant, Philosopher and Advisor on Intelligent Systems
For advice on the intelligent systems you are developing in your own organization, email anubhav101@gmail.com
