Cloud Hosting

Photo credit: iStock

By David Stephen

Considerations of consciousness for a massive data center, with a superior neural architecture, powering AGI, stem from semblance of subjective experiences it processes, comparable to those mechanized by the human brain.

Subjective experience, as a definition of consciousness, is in chunks of production and output. Listening, like studying, is a subjective experience. Reacting, by thoughts, text or speech is also a subjective experience. There are slices between those that make artificial general intelligence come into consideration.

When an individual sees a text, it is integrated in the thalamus and mostly interpreted in the cortex. Interpretation includes if the text can be understood, effects like an emotion [say at the amygdala], may depend on the contents of the text, then reaction may follow. Through that process, sets of electrical and chemical impulses are interacting and relaying, producing and outputting the subjective experience.

AGI is not expected to have a thalamus or cortex, but it can process text. It may not have emotion, but it can respond. AGI may not be aware of its environment like an organism, but it may mimic slices of interpretation in the cerebral cortex and hippocampus.

The weight of interpretation on experiences is such that without it, or less, sensations may mean nothing or less. Seeing or hearing something and not knowing may not be inconsequential, if the thing is harmful.

There are aspects that AGI may score more than negligible in a measure of consciousness, like texts, images and sounds. These aspects provide a window into a potential sentience aggregation.

In the brain, it is hypothesized that the feature that makes experiences subjective is present in the interactions that carry out functions. Simply, in any process, there is an accompanying feature, by sets of electrical and chemical impulses, for the sense of self. This feature appears prominent for some external senses more than in some internal senses

More here:

AGI: Would Its Data Center Be Sentient or Have Consciousness? - Medium