That’s precisely what it means actually. Consciousness is a direct byproduct of physical activity in the brain. It doesn’t come from some magic dimension. Meanwhile, the analogy you’ve made makes a huge assumption that high level patterns are inherently dependent on the underlying complexity of the substrate. There is no evidence to support this notion. For example, while our computers don’t work the same way our brains do, it is a fact that silicon chips are physical things that are made of complex materials, are subject to quantum effects, and so on. Yet, none of that underlying complexity is relevant to the software running on those chips. How do we know this? Because we can make a virtual machine that can implement the patterns expressed on the chip without modelling all the physical workings of the chip. Similarly, there is zero basis to believe that the high level patterns within the brain that we perceive as consciousness are inherently tied to the physical substrate of neurons and their internal complexity.
Furthermore, from an ethical and moral point of view, we would absolutely have to give the AI that claims to be conscious the benefit of the doubt, unless we could prove that it was not conscious.
That’s precisely what it means actually. Consciousness is a direct byproduct of physical activity in the brain. It doesn’t come from some magic dimension. Meanwhile, the analogy you’ve made makes a huge assumption that high level patterns are inherently dependent on the underlying complexity of the substrate. There is no evidence to support this notion. For example, while our computers don’t work the same way our brains do, it is a fact that silicon chips are physical things that are made of complex materials, are subject to quantum effects, and so on. Yet, none of that underlying complexity is relevant to the software running on those chips. How do we know this? Because we can make a virtual machine that can implement the patterns expressed on the chip without modelling all the physical workings of the chip. Similarly, there is zero basis to believe that the high level patterns within the brain that we perceive as consciousness are inherently tied to the physical substrate of neurons and their internal complexity.
Furthermore, from an ethical and moral point of view, we would absolutely have to give the AI that claims to be conscious the benefit of the doubt, unless we could prove that it was not conscious.