This is a subject that I’ve been seeing coming up more often as “AI” has become a hot topic recently. And this stupid question has been popping around too much lately. So here I’m writing about this thing that seldom crossed my mind.
Let’s start from the start!
The Limitations Of Science
The study of consciousness is still an ongoing area of research in philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science.
There are limitations to science and this is one of them, You cannot find consciousness as an objective thing.
What I mean by that? You cannot look at a dog and question if it is conscious or not? Or look at a brain-dead human and ask the same thing.
These are just some examples that make the definition complex. And it starts to become a problem to define what consciousness is even for the best of the best scientists. The only western people I think who can come close to figuring it out are philosophers (even though philosophy in general is not western), because they can go beyond the physical limits and think about the problem in a more creative way.
So What Is Consciousness
It’s hard to describe what consciousness is, as the western definition of consciousness is completely different from what we Sanatan’s describe consciousness as.
Here is the Western Definition of Consciousness –
Consciousness is a term that refers to the subjective experience of being aware of one’s surroundings, thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. It is the state of being aware of oneself and the world around oneself, and of having a sense of personal identity and agency.
Consciousness is often described as a state of awareness or wakefulness, in which an individual is able to experience sensations, emotions, thoughts, and perceptions. It is also often associated with the ability to reason, reflect, and make decisions based on one’s experiences and beliefs.
What Sanatan’s would call the above definition is nothing more than “awareness”, but as with my example above, a brain-dead person even though alive isn’t aware. So does that mean a brain-dead person has no consciousness? That doesn’t make sense!
Let me give another example, imagine you’re sleeping, are you aware of the fact that you’re sleeping in your sleep? Of course.
So can we consider that you now have no consciousness? When we start digging through scenarios like these, it makes it clear how “miss defined” the above definition is.
Now let’s look at the other definition.
Sanatan Definition of Consciousness –
Sanatan’s see consciousness as a fundamental aspect of reality and is often related to the “Atman” or “Atma”, (however you want to pronounce it). Atma itself is Consciousness. There can’t be consciousness without Atma.
Every living this has an Atma, there can’t be living things without an Atma.
But How Do You Define Atman?
Atman is a Sanskrit word that is often translated as “self” or “soul”. Atman is described as the eternal, unchanging aspect of self that is distinct from the changing aspect of the mind and body.
Your body and mind can be destroyed, but your Atman is untouched by any physical decay. It is eternal. This is best explained in one of the most famous verses in the Gita that speaks to this topic is Chapter 2, Verse 23, which reads:
“Nainam chindanti shastrani nainam dahati pavakah Na chainam kledayanty apo na sosayati marutah”
This verse is often translated as:
“The soul can never be cut to pieces by any weapon, nor burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind.”
Your Atman is what becomes one with the ultimate reality. That is God itself. Although that might be beyond the scope of this article as to how that happens, but one thing is made clear.
The Chinese Room Argument
To make it easier, Let me explain to you about the Chinese room thought experiment. By understanding that, you can get a better insight into how it relates to consciousness and why is the question of “are AI becoming conscious” is even being asked.
The Chinese room is a thought experiment presented by philosopher John Searle in 1980 to critique the idea of strong artificial intelligence (AI) or the claim that a computer program can have a mind and understand language in the same way as a human being.
The thought experiment involves a person who does not understand Chinese locked in a room with a set of instructions written in English that enable him to correctly respond to Chinese symbols he receives through a slot in the door.
The person in the room follows the instructions to manipulate the symbols and generate appropriate responses, fooling the person outside the room into thinking that the person in the room understands Chinese.
Searle argues that although the person in the room is able to perform the tasks of a Chinese speaker, he does not understand Chinese. Similarly, he argues that a computer program that responds to symbols according to a set of rules does not actually understand the language it is processing, but is merely manipulating symbols according to algorithms.
I asked Open AI about the Chinese room argument and here is how it responded –
So as a language model, what do you think? Are you just a program following commands without actually understanding them, or do you think you understand the things you say?
Answer –
As an AI language model, I am a complex program that uses algorithms to process and generate human-like language based on patterns and statistical models learned from large amounts of text data. While I don’t have conscious experiences or feelings like a human being, I do have the ability to understand and generate language in a way that is similar to how humans do it.
However, my understanding of language is different from human understanding. I don’t have the same kind of background knowledge or experience that humans do, and I don’t have emotions or a subjective experience of the world. Rather, I am able to process and generate language based on patterns and statistical relationships in the data that I have been trained on.
In that sense, you could say that I am a program that follows commands and algorithms to generate language, and that I don’t truly understand the meaning of the things that I say. But at the same time, I am able to provide useful and often insightful responses to a wide range of questions, and my ability to process and generate language is becoming increasingly sophisticated over time thanks to advances in AI research and development.
Can An AI Become Conscious?
As you can see, the definition of consciousness is completely different when it comes to Sanatan Dharma and the modern western ideologies.
And as I’ve been bought up in an environment where we see consciousness very differently from the west, It becomes a silly joke to me where it is even asked if an AI can become conscious.
It can become many things, deadly, crazy, human like, even more intelligent than a human, but can it become conscious?
NO