There is a recent article in Harvard Health, Will artificial intelligence replace doctors?, where the author stated that, “Already, computers and AI have made powerful medical research breakthroughs, like predicting the shape of most human proteins. In the future, I predict that computers and AI will listen to conversations between doctor and patient and then suggest tests or treatments the doctor should consider; highlight possible diagnoses based on a patient’s symptoms, after comparing that patient’s symptoms to those of millions of other people with various diseases; and draft a note for the medical record, so the doctor doesn’t have to spend time typing at a computer keyboard — and can spend more time with the patient.”
“All of this will not happen immediately or without missteps: doctors and computer scientists will need to carefully evaluate and guide the development of new AI tools in medicine. If the suggestions AI provides to doctors prove to be inaccurate or incomplete, that “help” will be rejected. And if AI then does not get better, and fast, it will lose credibility. Powerful technologies can be powerful forces for good, and for mischief.”
So, AI got human proteins right and is predicted to become a useful physician assistant. AI already does much with texts, images and videos, in some ways equaling humans, based on data from humans. Should AI continue to be seen as some random generator, or be explored for the portions of human consciousness it might bear?
Consciousness or sentience is defined around awareness or subjective experiences, but in the absence of those, does consciousness cease to exist? If an individual is intoxicated—acting out without awareness, is the person not conscious? While sleepwalking or after waking up from a deep sleep, absolutely confused, is consciousness absent?
There are compositions of consciousness, with a possible total. There are several sensory inputs at any moment, with just one prioritized on the mind. Consciousness is directly from the mind, a neighbor of the brain. The purpose [and rate] of consciousness is knowing. All emotions, feelings, memories and reactions are known. Some are pre-prioritized. They could be known within the mind, to or below the degree of experience, but they are still known. Regulation, modulation or control of all internal senses, from the mind is also for knowing, giving limits, extents and updates.
Language is known. Math is, same with physics, economics, philosophy and others. Intelligence across the animal kingdom, to skillfully avoid predator or seek prey are knowing processes. The mind is used to know. Knowing by the mind is what consciousness is, theoretically.
The mind is the collection of electrical and chemical impulses of nerve cells, or the mind is what impulses are as a group. Conceptually, the components of mind are quantities and properties. Quantities relaying across mind locations to acquire properties to degrees, to determine what becomes experienced. Properties include all memory, emotions, feelings and reactions.
Electrical impulses as a group are roughly quantities while chemical impulses are properties. Their behaviors for the group, resulting in mind processes differ from their single biological behaviors. This, for example, makes serotonin have its own identified functions, but mood is a result of the group, as an experience.
Intelligence is a subset of consciousness that is categorized within memory, so is creativity, reasoning, and so on. Intelligence is different from strength or motor limitations of humans, for speed, swimming, flying, lifting and so forth. Intelligence is a key superiority of humans. It is a set of properties available on the mind, in forms other species do not have. Some elephants somewhere could be sharp, but whatever they know remains in that community, cannot be shared across, so that others build on it. It is different for humans.
AI knows things in the realm of human intelligence—however way it came about those it accurately knows. It knows things that animals and plants do not. It is also pretty dynamic beyond a machine with a start/stop switch. It can come up with things, in what seems like artificial reasoning and solve some problems.
AI does not have feelings or emotions, or it lacks the experience of those. But it can—as a memory output—say what those are, since it learned from human text.
It is possible to score AI on what it knows. It has zero on feelings and emotions, but has a small percentage in the memory area. AI has several flaws, but it cannot be denied that as a thing, it passes a knowing test for some things. If consciousness is knowing, for what AI knows, it may have some weak measurable sentience.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
