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Advances in synthetic intelligence are making it difficult to distinguish between uniquely human behaviors and those that can be replicated through machines. If synthetic general intelligence (IIA) were to come into force—synthetic intelligence that surpasses human intelligence—the line between human and human computational functions would diminish entirely.
In recent months, a significant amount of journalistic bandwidth has been devoted to this potentially dystopian topic. If AGI machines expand the ability to consciously enjoy life, the ethical and legal considerations we will have to give them will become temporarily onerous. They will have emotions to consider, minds to share, intrinsic desires and perhaps fundamental rights as newly created beings. On the other hand, if AI does not expand consciousness – but only the ability to outperform ourselves in each and every scenario – we may simply place ourselves subservient to a tremendously awesome but sociopathic entity.
Neither of the two prospective futures is all that comfortable, and they require an answer to exceptionally mind-boggling questions: What exactly is consciousness? And will this remain a biological trait, or may it eventually be shared through the AGI devices we use? have you created?
For a computer to revel in the vast repertoire of internal states available to humans, its hardware will likely have to function similarly to a human brain. Human brains are analog “devices” that are incredibly energy efficient and capable of reaching higher levels. parallel processing.
Modern computers, based on Von Neumann’s architecture, are nothing like that: they are virtual machines that consume a lot of power and are basically composed of serial circuits.
Von Neumann’s computer chips physically separate memory from processing, requiring information to be retrieved from memory before calculations can be performed. “Von Neumann’s classical computers have a separation between memory and processing. Commands and data are stored in memory and retrieved by the processor as much as it can in parallel, then crunches the numbers and brings the knowledge back to reminiscence,” says Stephen Deiss, a retired CPU neuromorphic engineer. San Diego.
This restriction on the amount of data that can be transferred in a given amount of time (and the restriction it imposes on processing speed) is called the von Neumann bottleneck. The Von Neumann bottleneck prevents our existing computers from matching or even reaching the processing power of a human brain. For this reason, many experts believe that consciousness on trendy computers is highly unlikely.
Computer scientists are actively developing neuromorphic computer chips that escape the processing constraints of von Neumann computers by zooming in on the architecture of neurons. Some of them combine memory storage arrays and processing on a single chip. Others use specialized low-power processing components such as memristors, a type of transistor that “remembers” beyond voltage states, to increase efficiency. Neuromorphic chips mimic the brain’s parallel wiring and low power requirements.
“A computing device with memory, which includes things like neuromorphic computers, uses the actual physics of the hardware to perform computation,” Deiss says, referring to memristors. “Processing is memoryArray”
If neuromorphic generation can evolve to the point necessary to reflect neural activity, neuromorphic computers may have a greater chance of experiencing life consciously than simply calculating intelligently. “If we ever manage to reach the point of processing complexity that a human brain can reach, then we’ll be able to point to [neuromorphic computers] and say, ‘This works just like a brain; maybe he feels things the way we feel things. ‘”says Deiss.
Yet even in a long term filled with brain-like computer hardware and configurations conducive to synthetic consciousness, a big question remains: how will we know whether or not our AGI systems revel in sadness, hope, and an exquisite sense of forgetfulness?Or if they just seem to be going through those things?
How will we know what is happening inside a machine?
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