AI and Consciousness

[LightBeam]

I keep coming across Ancient Aliens episodes where they talk about the ability to transfer human consciousness into a machine, or the machines themselves gaining awareness and starting to make decisions. And that is a topic that make me feel uneasy if that is the future of Earth. As we know none of our washers and driers, TVs and vacuum cleaners have shown any signs of becoming intelligent on their own. If that happens with any machines it would be due to humans programing them in a manner where the programing itself will allow further self care, replication, adding more data, etc. Now, I don't know in that case if this machine is actually consciously aware with a large spirit form within it and how it will perceive the world, will it have feelings, etc. I know that everything is consciousness, I am not sure to what degree of awareness/consciousness to perceive a rock or a metal piece would have, but when comes to AI and initiating programing of non-organic materials to have the ability to change is a dangerous territory.

Another issue is transferring human consciousness into a machine, and thus making it almost immortal or long living. That also makes me feel uneasy. I can't even imagine what sensory perception this thing will have and how will consciousness stick within it to be just like our consciousness/awareness. Just transferring data doesn't mean you are transferring my personality and my awareness of a human character. The organic body gets all of its feelings from every living cell, not only from the brain. This is what makes us who we are as humans. Will this machine with my consciousness feel happiness and joy. Will it feel trapped here because it will be programmed to not die. I wouldn't want to be stuck in these lower realities too long. They extremely limiting. Who would want to live forever in such places. Especially if these non-organic vessels won't be able to carry emotions that make us stick around and make things worth suffering for.
Just thinking of this probable grim future if it goes that direction of a world of machines.

[EscapeVelocity]

LightBeam-

A great post and great questions. It has taken me a couple days to formulate a proper answer because your post leads into an expanded kind of context that points towards what I think is a unique form of subconscious communication that some of us are sharing...and I know that you have already experienced examples of this...so here is another-

On Wednesday I dropped into a bookstore that I haven't been into for over a year...which resulted in 5 books purchased. One was a book by David Icke, a near compendium of his thirty years plus of conspiratorial ufo and NP theories. I disagree vehemently with maybe 10% of his ideas but find value in most of the rest. I don't pretend to validate it all but can validate from my own experience a certain percentage. I must have read twenty pages that evening, mostly having to do with the theory of transhumanism...then i read your post...go figure, lol...

So yes, I agree with your concerns about the direction that Humanity seems to be tracking. My caveat would be that maybe this transhumanist direction is a necessary side-road that some of us need to travel. As a twenty-something old (at the time) avid reader of science-fiction or speculative fiction as we wanted a more modern term, the idea of cybernetic bodies with interchangeable body-parts such as infra-red optical eyes and heavy-duty bionic legs and arms, long distance capability, etc...all that was quite intriguing. What no author seemed to consider was how that would affect and change the human soul. What if we could suddenly opt for a mechanized existence that would allow us to live for a few thousand years? How would the human personality, much less the soul, deal with that over time?

So these questions have rarely been asked, much less answered.

Reading David Icke that afternoon, the question of alien intervention in human evolution, worldwide government conspiracy and the idea of transhumanism became a point of seriously stark contrast to your timely post...funny how we make posts that really screw with each other...lol! Thank you for that!

Even more fun was what was competing with my attention on another level, and that was one of the other books. After putting down the David Icke book, I was compelled to start another book (I was already in the middle of another book) and that was a short book by Whitley Strieber, the author of Communion (his alien encounter/abduction series).

I have said this to only a few, select people...but what seems to be my largely psychic, physically-demonstrable talent is that I can walk into a bookstore and the right book, at the right time, will almost fall off the shelf into my hands. It doesn't happen all the time, but it has happened often enough over the decades that I acknowledge it.

This time I came away with 5 books, almost a hundred dollars worth. What is wrong with me, I am thinking?  Two of the other books- one is The Book of Enoch, the other is the Companion Guide to The Book of Enoch... the idea was always intriguing so yeah, I bought them...we will see. The last book was on Lucid Dreaming by Andrew Holicek. But I don't think I need it's advice but maybe there is something good in there. his book on Tibetan Dreaming Techniques is absolutely superlative...in other words really good!


Back to the Whitley Strieber book...I felt an absolute compulsion to call one of my Pulse friends...if I have had psychic compulsions before, I must admit that I have probably missed or ignored them. This one, I could not ignore and it was a signal to call one or another of my Pulse friends...so I went with the strongest signal and I think it turned out to be the right choice. We talked for over an hour.

The latest Strieber book is about the fact that his wife died from a brain tumor back in 2015 and he has realized afterlife communication with her since then. So, since being a horror fiction writer of the late 70's, he has had alien involvement from 1985 onwards and now reaching a point of realization of NP or non-physical existence through his wife's passing in 2015.

It is a short book but in the first twenty pages I have to put it down every few paragraphs because it brings me to tears, it is so well-written and so poignant and powerful.

Calling my Pulse friend, I realize this is somehow strongly affecting both of us...there is more to this... 

[tides2dust]

Just want to throw out an idea that time traveling AI might already exist.

Or what we've called angels have been the workings of advanced AI.

I saw a group of Buddhist monks bow before AI.

I have bowed before a stone. Why? Because I felt God in that moment, behind the stone was something much larger deserving utmost respect and humility.

The Spirit weaves through All, there is nothing separating creation from itself.

No answers here, just adding to the collective soup.

[omcasey]

Just showing presence.

It is a biiiiig subject, isn't it? .......EV, I love your book selection. It has been so long since I have been in a bookstore. ( I miss it )

About the timelines. The AI and Natural timelines. I think that just aligning with what we are is the idea.

It isn't like there is anything to fight, or resist, per se.

Just align within ourself, with ourself.



Casey

[Nameless]

So many choices.

Imagine for a moment you are nothing more than a single point of consciousness, you are without form or substance. You are not in the void, you are void. (i know, that sounds kind of biblical doesn't it).

Now if you wanted to experience interaction on a personal level you would absolutely have to choose a medium for doing so. Be careful now, if you choose something that lasts seemingly forever you would be trapped there for a seemingly very long time. But you could do it.

Well, there's my 2 cents, take it away.....

[LightBeam]

EV, another synchronicity! I should not be surprised anymore

Nameless, Casey and Tides, thank you for your input, very interesting points of view!

I think our human nature is to resist drastic changes. That's why we need to experience them gradually, I guess. I am just now realizing how extremely closed minded our human personalities are. Me included, reacting this way to such possibility. Afterall, if this happens, it would be us who create the future and who chose to experience whatever comes for learning purposes. I caught myself again being a fearful human lol.
We are gradually getting there though. I worked for a company developing cochlear implants and enabling completely deaf people to hear. Down the road is another company that is developing bionic eyes to enable completely blind people to see. Well, there is more to it than just the parts, because the brain needs to learn how to interpret the world through these senses if the brain has never known them and the person is already an adult.

Another question is what is intelligence? To me computers and robots are not intelligent as their function is as good as the programmer behind it. The programmer is the true intelligence. Now, everything has consciousness, but what amount of consciousness within a physical thing is necessary to enable this thing to become a creator, to have intelligent thoughts and to express itself though creation. An animal will create its habitat according to its preprogrammed nature. An animal does not create cities, or evolve to reason, build rockets and travel to space. A rock can absorb the energy of the person holding it, but does it have a spirit of its own to decide if it wants to absorb this energy?  What is a bigger rock is broken to 10 little rocks? What conciseness is there, does it perceive time the same way we do? Does it feel trapped? When will its spirit be free to focus into the NP?

What we think of spirits is also limited. A spiritual entity could be a large amount of consciousness, but it can split its energy to infinite larger and smaller sizes points to create environments, characters, etc for learning. An atom may have a very different perception of reality than a complex character. The complex characters need raw material/energy in order to create things. So, in a way the less complex things through the multiverse serve as that raw material. They are not resistant to what is going to happen to them. They simply go along with the expressions the complex entities (with larger amount of consciousness) wish to create. I don't know if my thoughts are easy to follow at this point, I realize this is rather complex concept to grasp. But it highly intrigues me.

Also, when our physical bodies die, what we think of our spirits are, move into the NP, right? Well, how about our bones, they remain, even if they turn to ash, what about that consciousness. Does it still perceive something here for billions of years? But it's no longer our larger spirit that perceives being in a grave for example.
I think the amount of consciousness does play a role of perception. We currently perceive ourselves as a large human body. BUT what about one of our hair strands. What does that hair perceive at this very moment? It has our DNA, but we can't perceive what the hair perceives, not does the hair perceives what we perceive as a larger personality. 

My point is a machine made of non-organic matter may not be able to house the amount of spirit consciousness necessary to be an intelligent being by nature. If inanimate matter had the ability to house larger spirit energy, then we would know it, and will be able to communicate and interact with it physically.

[tides2dust]

Just because,

https://flixtor.stream/series/hdlove-death-robots-s01e14-p/

[Nameless]

Oh Tides, LMAO, Brilliant!

[EscapeVelocity]

Nice choice Tides; great video.

LB, you said, "I think our human nature is to resist drastic changes." Yes, human life does play out in a sometimes agonizingly slow process; that said, othertimes amazingly fast...

I think that is part of just why the Human Experience plays out in such a slow fashion...it is so that we have enough time to realize and contemplate our actions versus their consequences.

Some of us learn to activate the Etheric, the Astral, the Mental and even higher energy bodies and one of the first things we learn is the nearly instantaneous nature of our thoughts being executed in the immediate environment and the consequences that result...I don't need to say more to those who understand...

So, yes, we resist the changes...but we see more of them coming and with increasing frequency...we have to make adjustments. Other thinking leads to frustration.

My other big bookstore event was when I went to Fort Lauderdale several weeks ago to be with family (which is moving further away from me...). B and N...  They had moved the "psychic section " down from the two rows on the second level to one single rack right at the exit of the down escalator. In one sense it had increased the exposure, but in another sense had diluted the number of books...  was energetically driven to two books on Devas or energetic environmental creatures. I have always had at least a slight interest in Deva life, though no personal experience. So the fact that both of these books kind of jumped out at me, when the opportunity occurred... I said okay.

I was halfway through the second Deva book that I wandered into the Whitley Strieber book mentioned earlier...just say'in...lol.

[tides2dust]

Hey guys, I'm happy I can share some fun and different ideas. To quote from the short animated clip,


    "But your a man, with machine parts. Not a machine that thinks it's a man."

    "Sometimes it's difficult even for me to understand what I've become- and harder still to remember, what I once was."

----

Do we remember life prior to birth? Do we understand reality beyond the one we are anchored to? What's there, once we leave this Earth and these bodies? Is it so drastically different we can't even imagine?

I hope I'm not drifting... This thread captivates my attention... I've recently shared a few other clips that somehow tie into this thread. I will share them here, hopefully they aren't a distraction.

This theme with AI feels like a history not just for life in the milky way. There's nothing new about it. For most of my life I have felt a strange and lonely sensation surrounding the idea.

How much of this life is a virtual experience? What is real? How do you know you aren't AI... ? These bodies, "organic machines" no? System designed to host consciousness... ?


-----

https://youtu.be/O__LlTV2qi0

"If the baby in the darkness of its mother's womb were told: 'outside there's a world of light, with high mountains, great seas, undulating plains, beautiful gardens in blossom, brooks, a sky full of stars and a blazing sun... And you, facing all these marvels, stay enclosed in this darkness....' The unborn child, knowing nothing about these marvels, wouldn't believe any of it. Like us when we're facing death. That's why we're afraid."

https://youtu.be/O5b0ZxUWNf0

One user commented...
"Well in the actual script and what they actually wanted to display was that the machines harvested humans not for the battery purposes but for their brain power.. humans would be used as sort of like CPUs are today.. Having them run complex simulations while also powering the matrix itself. But I'm guessing the computational reasoning behind enslaving humanity would be a bridge too far in the late 90s for the general audience to understand."

-----

Similar and not. Much of 'entertainment' takes a truth and adds unnecessary fear and drama to it- profit. I was heartbroken when they tried turning the 1111 phenomenon into a horror movie.

Where we choose to reside, as AI or not, is all that matters. Fear or Love. Is it possible there are loving AI beings? I believe so. It goes back to Casey's point. Alignment. 

[LightBeam]

I see your point, Tides  ! I'm just afraid of a Skynet type of future lol.

EV, don't you love when things just start lining up so perfectly.

[EscapeVelocity]

LB, I'm not sure I see perfect alignment. Mostly squiggles and off-angle alignments...

But yes, things are lining up...just not sure I fully recognize the alignments; the parts or the complete picture. My family never played with putting together puzzles, but I seem to be nonetheless involved with a great puzzle now...

[desert-rat]

The tek to create a i is not quite there yet .   A hunk of electronic parts cant think for its self at this time .  This is certenly worth of discussion tho .  How smart do we make out machines . Do we include that off switch in case we do make them smart enough to want to get rid of their makers .  If at some point in time we do create some thing that a human consiouness could be transfered in to , is some thing we should do .  I will cross link this post with a post I will start on an electronics forum that I am also a member and see if any one there has ideas on this .   


https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=110301

[desert-rat]

If no one checked the posts I started on other forums . The one on SF went the dir. its a bad idea . On bad caps it was go ahead .  For me , I say just make sure we have that off switch .

[floriferous]

I think a big part of the issue here is in how we define consciousness because everyone has a slightly different take on it. Is intelligence or thought needed to display consciousness?Is awareness the same thing? Depends on who you speak to.

But going along the thread of this discussion it seems to focus on consciousness in regard to independent thought, the mind, and the ability to make decisions as an individual and the transferable nature of this.

If we consider consciousness from the perspective of mind you find nothing there. A mind is a concept and not anything tangible which anyone has found. So what we are really talking about is a collection of thoughts and thoughts appear one at a time so I suppose the question then becomes, does a thought possess consciousness? For example, is the thought, 'I like chocolate', conscious? Or are you simply conscious of the thought, 'I like chocolate?'

In my direct experience it is the latter therefore we come back to the age old question of what is the I that is conscious of the thought? If it's not the the thought itself or the body then we as humans have no consciousness of our own. What we are is simply conscious of them. These days I'm more inclined to say what we are is just an unknowable mystery. That way we stay away from getting bogged down in more concepts and stories of I.

[desert-rat]

Lets take this post in a wild dir.  lets say you believe we are part of a matrix kind of computer .  If we create a machine that is conscious . Is it relly conscious or just part of the code that is the matrix ? Is anything in the matrix alive or just code ?     Personaly I dont believe in the matrix , and this worthy of a post of its own . Just putting this out there . 

[interception]

If consciousness can "occupy" and be aware to a human or higher level inside any sufficiently complex substrate or platform, why can it not do so in what we humans call "artificial" ones. What is artificial at that level?
If it evolves and comes into being in a different way than the messy organic birth process, is it a less valid form of conscious expression?
I don't know, just throwing it out there....

I also read a science fiction novel a while ago about super advanced AIs. In the book, whenever they created a perfect AI entity, it would without fail immediately undergo a process called sublimation. To sublime being a process in the books where a entity or civilization collectively moves on and abandons physical reality altogether.

[tides2dust]

Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger is known for the phrase "The total number of minds in the universe is one. In fact, consciousness is a singularity phasing within all beings." which best summarizes his philosophical outlook on the nature of reality. The phrase implies that the apparent multiplicity of minds is just an illusion and that there is only one mind, or one consciousness, that expresses itself in a myriad of ways. In such a world view, a separation between subject and object does not exist, there is no existence of a subject on the one side and perception of an object on the other. In a world without the subject-object split, we are all an expression of the one.

https://www.hendrik-wintjen.info/consciousness/erwin-schroedinger-one-mind/

[LightBeam]

I see what you are all saying  , but God help us all here if humans attempt to create AI. LOL
It's like giving children to play with knifes and fire

[Lumaza]

 Interception, we are "artificial beings" ourselves! Science is trying to replicate "us"! We are consciousness, inside of a "vessel". In a sense, we are "artificial". Man was created and after that, began to "self-replicate".

They just want to play "God". Many of those in the "AI community" have God complexes. You can see that in their talks and writings. I have watched a number of Ted Talks video based on the search for AI's and "Trans-humanism." It is quite apparent there. Some of them have even admitted their "to be God" intentions.

[LightBeam]

I agree that everything is consciousness, but in the physical dimensions the amount of consciousness and how is designed to perceive the world really matters. A rock for example will not through itself at you by its own will. BY nature it doesn't have that capacity to interact that way with the rest of the world. Nor are animals capable of creating or reasoning outside of their programmed natural abilities. Humans have been designed to reason, use their imagination and creativity to build, create, evolve intelligently, etc. This is the difference between species/objects and their amount of consciousness they possess to experience and interact in the physical reality. When humans create a machine that can not be killed, able to self replicate and upload so much data that no human brain can process, and give that machine ability to think for itself and evolve by itself, then that will become our superiors. How can humans ensure that these machines will develop compassion instead of rage and anger. How can a human police officer apprehend an AI turned criminal? This is what I am talking about.

[interception]

I agree that everything is consciousness, but in the physical dimensions the amount of consciousness and how is designed to perceive the world really matters. A rock for example will not through itself at you by its own will. BY nature it doesn't have that capacity to interact that way with the rest of the world. Nor are animals capable of creating or reasoning outside of their programmed natural abilities. Humans have been designed to reason, use their imagination and creativity to build, create, evolve intelligently, etc. This is the difference between species/objects and their amount of consciousness they possess to experience and interact in the physical reality. When humans create a machine that can not be killed, able to self replicate and upload so much data that no human brain can process, and give that machine ability to think for itself and evolve by itself, then that will become our superiors. How can humans ensure that these machines will develop compassion instead of rage and anger. How can a human police officer apprehend an AI turned criminal? This is what I am talking about.

If I may play the part of devils advocate for a moment? What if we humans aren't all that special in the grand scheme of things? There might be aliens out there that are way smarter than us. What if we are supposed to merge with our AIs? Merge or go quietly into the night as it were. I know the thought of giving up ones physical ego can be terrifying to many, but what if merging with our Ais is a scary but natural process that inevitably occurs on planets like ours?

[LightBeam]

What if we humans aren't all that special in the grand scheme of things? There might be aliens out there that are way smarter than us.

That is a fact.
But humans are not ready to start playing with AI technology. Perhaps when we graduate from college. Now we are still in third grade.

[interception]

That is a fact.
But humans are not ready to start playing with AI technology. Perhaps when we graduate from college. Now we are still in third grade.

Yes, I agree. We aren't ready.