Is AI Conscious?

 I don't think so; I admit I don't know the extent of what AI can do. But Tyler Cowen (an economist at George Mason U) writes that we are not as conscious as we would like to think. In this sense consciousness might be identified with awareness of all our brain is doing (which we do not have) and intentionality:

Sometimes I like to say that “I am only conscious at the margin.” Tongue in cheek, I will suggest that I am only conscious enough to avoid the self-contradiction of asserting that I am not conscious at all. I feel I am honest enough to just not be very impressed by my own flow of conscious awareness or its ability to perform complex calculations. Still, I recognize that it is all I have got, so I need to treasure it, however paltry it may be.

So if a) people are barely conscious, and b) we tend to radically overestimate intent and sentience in external circumstances, why should we think the AIs are sentient or conscious? Why should we trust the intuitions we have about possible AI sentience? We are talking about an area in which human intuitions operate at a low level of reliability.

Science-fiction writer Ted Chiang was correct to refer to belief in AI sentience as absurd and damning. The pope, too, is on our side. Philosopher Colin McGinn put forward the proposition—not yet refuted, I might add—that human brains simply are not smart enough or advanced enough to understand what consciousness really is.

I do not think belief in AI sentience is a form of mental illness any more than belief in a thunder god would count as the same. Yet both can be understood as a small marginal step in that direction, a step fulfilled by schizophrenic individuals who vastly overestimate the extent of conspiracy and intent virtually everywhere.