Re: The AI Effect
While we use consciousness less than we think we do. If I consciously think about typing I make more mistakes for eg. But I needed it to learn to type in the first place (we did typing, on manuals not even golfballs in the first year of Secondary in NZ). There’s also the thing where you are driving/cycling/running/walking along a well known route and you don’t remember sections of it. You were in automatic mode.
But we are quite a way from genuine AI. We have a good inkling that thought relies on the fact that our neurons have configurable on the fly receptors and other flexibilities such as reverse flowing action potentials which do things to the dendrites. IOW consciousness requires architecture flexibility.
Therefore trying to create it in inflexible silicon is not going to cut it. On the bright side fears about the Singularity are overblown. But then to us Neuroscientists* listening to Physicists and that ilk talk about consciousness is often absolutely hilarious. Many of them seem to see at as something akin to magic. Quite what it is about the photon that enters my eye causing the universe to split vs the one which I missed is never explained. There’s a strong whiff of ‘god did it’ about the whole thing.
*Muscle is an excitable tissue, it fires action potentials so it falls under the aegis of Neuroscience. I have cut and counted spinal ventral route axon numbers as well.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
