Needless to say, the number of articles in all branches of print that relate to AI is mind-boggling.  Recent coverage in the NYTimes and New Yorker has been fascinating; I recommend you do a search if you have missed it. I also have posted several time recently concerning AI from a lawyering / business standpoint.

However, I must particularly recommend the August 22-28 issue of The Economist, which asks whether Large Language Models (LLMs) are or can become “conscious.”  This question of course feeds into the fundamental worst case scenario: AI becomes self-aware and makes slaves of all inferior humans.  Skynet foresaw this horror 42 years ago (if you can believe that time line–seems like yesterday).  If it were not for Arnold, would we all be dead now?  [Ultimate confession: I looked up the release date of the first Terminator movie on Chat GPT.  My bad.  Between that act and AI scanning this post, I am perhaps now a marked man.]

We have all read about the large number of humans who are buddies with AI sites, which I gather show empathy and understanding.  Some humans in effect are “dating” an AI bot (though I gather bots never pick up the tab for beers).  The fact that this has become commonplace is itself frightening even if AI never becomes self-aware; humans may simply deteriorate when faced with AI in its emerging form even if AI consciousness never occurs.

Not to spoil the experience of reading the two Economist articles, which I found fascinating, but the topics are these: first, what is the definition of consciousness for humans and other animals, and how can we determine if AI layers have consciousness now or later; second, how dangerous is it that scientists are placing human neurons on silicon and putting that “thing” into a computer?  Seems that  that computer has been taught to play Pong and Doom (also a computer game).  Frankly, I hope to hell that the Australian company that reported this result was lying….

I admit that if one reads The Economist regularly then one needs therapy just in order to stay sane; deep analysis of risk, from war to disease to politics to trade policy to pollution to climate change to financial ruin to AI destroying jobs or humanity–these are the stock and trade of this magazine.  But the magazine cover warns us thusly about AI consciousness; it is “[t]he mind-bending question humanity must face.”