AI Souls

I've actually wondered. Even regarding a plain computer like mine: could it be conscious in some kind of way? Not in the same way as a human being or even an animal, but...

I wasn't sure about the doctrine, but it was my impression as well.

I'll post a video when I can, one I saw a couple of weeks ago and that would be very on topic. AIs having existential crises, but in a novel way, I thought.

Hope I didn't set your expectations too high lol

First, some context: this is a technical demo for a graphical engine--basically, a boring video game, mostly, except for a few details. Most really popular games in the past, IDK, 15 years, were based on the concept of open worlds: basically, huge virtual territories (known as maps) a player can freely roam, that most of the time are populated with many NPCs, non-playable characters, that you can talk to. Most of the time, they were/are immensely boring people; one of the reasons why is that most of the time they only have a few prerecorded lines/reactions, and keep repeating the same ones after a while, and you yourself can only choose from a very limited set of lines or actions the developers have put at your disposal beforehand. So, not enough freedom for really interesting interaction to take place.

What's new with this demo is that 1) you can talk to them, as in, with a mic, using natural language, 2) they understand it, 3) a reaction is generated by AI, and 4) they answer by speaking, with an AI generated voice.

Basically, the NPCs who populate that virtual world are chatbots, with something like "react like a regular person would in the street" as a prompt.

Here's the result (if you can't see it: the title is "I Tried to Convince Intelligent AI NPCs They are Living in a Simulation"):


To be clear: I'm not saying this is consciousness. And the limitations are obvious enough: some NPCs just make no sense, react in unlikely ways, the voices are still pretty stilted, etc. On the other hand, while nothing really new is happening if you take each element of the NPCs behavior separately, I think the combination of virtual avatar + voice + natural language comprehension + chatbot abilities, makes the whole thing quite otherworldy. And while the voices are indeed still rather bad, do notice the intonations: most of the time they fit rather well what the NPCs are saying.

Give it a few more years, and lines will start getting really blurred. Chatbots (and the language models that make them possible) are so advanced that you could say they've already passed the Turing test; I think soon enough we'll start seriously considering if they've passed the consciousness test.

Note that I'm not saying it's a good thing. I'm not saying it's a bad thing either. IDK what to make of that, but I think it's real.

Ok, I'm blind it seems: it clearly says "Hold down A to talk", with a mic icon, so indeed it seems like the game natively supports audio input. So, I'd guess the cuts in the video are due to the game needing some time to generate the NPC's answers + audio, and the player, in typical YouTuber fashion, didn't want it to ruin his video's rhythm so he cut that off.

1) Haven't a clue! I understand neither the psychology of self-awareness, nor IT, sufficiently to make an informed comment.

2) Assuming (1) is possible, no. Because they would not be beings created by God, but by man.

Intringuing.


Are soul and consciousness completely separate things, so that you can have consciousness without a soul* or a soul without consciousness**?

*Like our theoretical AI.
**Like plants, maybe (do you believe plants are conscious?) or a human in a deep coma (some people think the soul has departed from such patients; what's your opinion?).