I met unscrupulous teammates at the beginning, watch me turn the tide

Clearly, there are no obvious technological obstacles to a conscious AI from deep space power.

The path to conscious AI seems feasible, even inevitable.

This also leads to a question that humans need to discuss, that is, any physical substance - meat, silicon chips, etc. - can produce consciousness as long as it can perform the correct calculations.

At the same time, humanity has lost its best chance to gain some moral clarity in this highly uncertain field.

That is: "Do you need 'flesh' to have thoughts and consciousness?"

If consciousness requires "flesh," then the entire debate about AI consciousness becomes irrelevant, no matter how advanced the technology becomes. Without biology, there is no consciousness, and without consciousness, there is no risk of suffering.

Those scholars and experts believe that the material that makes up consciousness, or the "substrate" of the mind, is important.

If a biological matrix is ​​the only basis for thought, for mind, that we have discovered so far, then we have reason to think that biology is necessary for consciousness.

But now you can build a machine that performs the same computational functions as a physical brain, and you can still gain consciousness.

From this perspective, the important functions are certain kinds of information processing—although there is no consensus on which kinds of processing distinguish unconscious information-computing systems (like a calculator) from systems that require conscious experience (like you).

Leaving this detail aside, what is important for consciousness is the structure or “abstract logic” of information processing, not the physical entities that perform it.

For example, consider the game of chess.

Anyone can play chess as long as they have a chessboard, two sets of chess pieces, and know the rules.

But if two people are stranded on a desert island without a chess set, they can still play chess.

They can draw lines in the sand to recreate the board, collect driftwood and shells as chess pieces, and play chess as before.

The game of chess does not rely on its physical basis.

What matters is the abstract logic of the game, such as moving a piece designated "Knight" two spaces forward and one space to the side.

Whether it's wood or sand, marble or marker, any material that can support the correct logical procedures can produce a chess game.

The same is true for consciousness.

“Consciousness is the feeling that information is being processed in some complex way.”

If consciousness is the abstract logic of information processing, then biology may be as arbitrary as a wooden chessboard.

To make real progress in the matrix debate, humans at the time lacked not only a theory of consciousness but also a theory of life.

That said, biologists still don't agree on what life is. It's easy to say a garbage truck isn't alive, but your snoozing cat is.

But special cases like viruses or red blood cells show that humans still don't understand what exactly constitutes the difference between life and non-life.

Some argue that reducing consciousness to computation, particularly in the context of AI, is a mistake: it assumes that the subjective experience of meaning and perception can be replaced by fixed computational rules.

Enactivists believe that the body, destined to decay and decompose, plays a vital role in its environment to maintain its survival. So, can we create enactivist-inspired robots that replicate all the properties required for life, and therefore consciousness, without any biological features?

Previous humans had no answer to this.

But after the arrival of the two spaceships, this condition was met.

Now the conditions are met.

“The emergence of machine-biological hybrids offers us an opportunity to stop asking what we are and focus on what we want to be!”

A scholar expressed his opinion.