Intelligence is overrated & consciousness abounds.

There is a lot of hype and argument among the tech bros right now regarding the likelihood that artificial intelligence (AI) is about to acquire consciousness (or already possesses it).

This idea that we have finally created (almost god-like) another consciousness, as if it is some sort of supreme apex human achievement.

Well worth reminding ourselves that back in 2012 a group of prominent neuroscientists (including Stephen Hawking) attending the Francis Crick Memorial Conference on Consciousness got together in the Balfour Room at the Hotel du Vin in Cambridge UK, pulled out a few sheets of scrappy paper, and wrote a declaration:

We declare the following: “The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non- human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.”

Lets hope that if AI were to become conscious, we treat it a little better than our track record with the vast multitudes of sentience that already cohabit our world.

Here is the full, folded-up-and-put-in-someones-pocket, thing: