Experts Call on Artificial Intelligence Developers to Study Consciousness Because of the Rapidly Increasing Advancement of AI Systems
Syed Imran Haider 
Many tech companies have already made Artificial Intelligence technology an integral aspect of their upcoming and existing products. Recently, dozens of academics from around the world signed an open letter, calling on AI developers to study consciousness, given the increasing advancement of tech systems.
The letter says nobody in the science fiction world can deny the fact that artificial intelligence systems comprise human-level consciousness and feelings. Experts are on the same page for the AI being nearer the said level of sophistication. They believe the tech is progressing rapidly, which calls for a temporary pause on the developments.
Awareness
Artificial Intelligence is all about making computer systems able to perform jobs usually requiring human intelligence. It often includes chatbots, which can understand questions related to various topics and respond to them. Other AI-powered systems that can recognize objects in images are also part of Artificial Intelligence.
Nowadays, OpenAI is in the headlines for its success in artificial intelligence technology. It recently developed an AI-powered system – Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4 or GPT-4 that can obtain the professional qualification by attempting the bar exam. While it can still share misinformation and makes mistakes, it is just one aspect of artificial intelligence.
Many sectors, including finance, marketing, health, and research, deploy AI-powered products. Elon Musk, the technology billionaire, co-signed the recent letter agreeing that AI developers should consider pausing the tech developments until they design effective safety measures for further implementations.
Last week, Mrs. Tallulah Riley Elon took to Twitter to express her opinion regarding Artificial General Intelligence or AGI. This AI system can perform human-level intellectual jobs – required by Greta Thunberg, the environmental activist, to raise awareness and motivate public discussion.
The AMCS Open Letter
The open letter compiled by AMCS reveals that it did not have a set perspective on whether or not AI developers should pause the relevant developments in general. Its title also includes phrases highlighting the responsible developers of artificial intelligence agenda need to work on consciousness research.
While the AMCS memo highlighted the significance of having a greater technical understanding of consciousness, it could elaborate on how this understanding could be handy to AI and how people might live with it. The document also says the speedy AI development has exposed the urgent requirement to hasten research in the consciousness science field. Dr. Susan Schneider is among the experts who signed the open letter. She chaired academics from European, US, and UK universities and Nasa, the US space agency.
Emotions Expressed
In 2022, Google terminated a Google engineer after he claimed to say an artificial intelligence-powered system could express feelings. According to Blake Lemoine, Lamda – a large language model developed by Google was sentient. It is worth mentioning that Lamda is known for underpinning Bard, its ChatGPT rival.
On the other hand, Google still says Lamda did what the company has programmed to do – converse in a human-like style. According to Sundar Pichai, he could not fully comprehend how Brad performed or how the human mind works in this regard. Therefore, the experts from the AMCS demand Artificial Intelligence to study consciousness.
