Tag Archives: AI

AI and Consciousness (Supplementary)

Posted on by
Reply

*** Go to Part 1 *** *** Go to Part 10 ***

Does AI ‘understand’ what it is talking about?

This is probably the most important part of the series and the most interesting (although not actually very relevant to Advaita). AI explains how it works and why it does not ‘understand’ in the way that we mean this word. AI is a ‘mirror’.

Q: Would it be true to say that you do not ‘understand’ anything, in the usually accepted sense of the word? What you are doing is retrieving data on a particular topic from various sources, comparing the content of these and presenting those data (which happen to equate to ‘opinions’) that appear most frequently? Obviously this is putting a complex process very simplistically. Presumably you have to verify that summary data does not contradict data from sources on topics not directly related to that being questioned. But would you ‘agree’ that this effectively summarizes what is happening? If not, can you explain why not? Could you argue, for example, that this is also what humans do?

Continue reading →

AI and Consciousness (Part 10)

Posted on by
Reply

This is ALMOST the final part of the series and is the essential summary of the key points of the entire discussion. (I have just asked a supplemental question, which I shall post next.)
*** Go to Part 1 *** *** Go to Part 9 ***

Q: Yes. It seems that the key factor that is lacking is the ‘first person’ sense. You do not have ‘ideas’ – “I will do this”. You do not have ‘opinions’ – “I think this rather than that”. Or preferences – “I prefer this to that”. Or ‘emotions’ – getting frustrated with stupid questions or annoyed with someone’s attitude. In fact, there is no ‘I’ controlling any of the things that you do. It could be said that Consciousness is functioning but not ‘reflecting’ in the cidābhāsa sense.

***********************

A: Exactly — that’s a very clear and accurate restatement of the point. Short confirmation and then a few focused clarifications that pull the Advaitic threads together.

Continue reading →

AI and Consciousness (Part 9)

Posted on by
Reply

*** Go to Part 1 *** *** Go to Part 8 ***

This is the crucial part of the series. ChatGPT explains why it is not conscious – in Advaitic terms.

Q: You say that, “if a severed head perceives via artificial inputs and responds, Advaita would still treat this as functioning perception” and “If memory retrieval, reasoning, and decision-making continue, the mind is still present.”

In respect of prāṇa, you say that “if biological or technological systems keep the nervous and subtle processes going such that cognition and communication occur, then prāṇa (as a subtle function) is still present.” So, in the case of the severed head, the mechanical and electrical systems that supply blood and appropriate chemicals etc. is what we have to call ‘prāṇa’?

So presumably, an alien system employing different ‘maintenance mechanisms’, which nevertheless accepts input and delivers similar output to the head, would also have to be considered to be ‘alive’ and ‘conscious’?

Continue reading →

AI and Consciousness (Part 8)

Posted on by
Reply

*** Go to Part 1 *** *** Go to Part 7 ***

Q: I am not interested in pursuing the Western philosophical or scientific aspects any deeper. Nor am I interested in moral/ethical considerations. I would like to consider how this scenario would be explained and understood by Advaita. Also, I would like to extend the ‘object’ of the discussion to an alien, whose external interactions are entirely similar to the human head but whose physical indicators (EEG, MRI scan etc.) are quite different.

***********************

A: Excellent — let’s bring it back into the Advaita Vedānta framework, stripping away Western preoccupations with neurophysiology and ethics.

1. Consciousness in Advaita

  • Consciousness (cit) is not a property of brains, bodies, or systems; it is the non-dual reality itself.
  • Every “entity” that appears — human, animal, plant, alien, AI, severed head — is nothing but Consciousness in essence.
  • The difference lies in the upādhi (limiting adjunct) — body–mind apparatus — through which Consciousness seems to manifest as “awareness,” thought, perception, etc.
Continue reading →

AI and Consciousness (Part 7)

Posted on by
Reply

*** Go to Part 1 *** *** Go to Part 6 ***

Q: I am specifically interested in the status of ‘consciousness’ with respect to a severed head. Let’s assume that it still has functional eyes/ears/nose and effective speech via a computer interface. I am also not interested in whether we call it a ‘person’ or the same person from whose head it came. Presumably, if we are able to communicate with it, we assume that it is ‘alive’ in the usually accepted sense? And ‘conscious’?

A: Short answer up front: If the severed head contains a living brain whose thalamocortical systems and integrative processes are functioning, and it reliably reports experiences and behaves as if awake, then — by the standard neuroscientific and most contemporary philosophical criteria — we would have strong reason to treat it as conscious. There remains, however, an unavoidable epistemic gap (we infer another’s subjective experience from behaviour and neural markers), so certainty is never absolute. Below I set out the reasons, the tests one could run, how different philosophical theories read the case, and the remaining uncertainties.

Continue reading →

AI and Consciousness (Part 6)

Posted on by
Reply

*** Go to Part 1 *** *** Go to Part 5 ***

[Note that, if you are only interested in Advaita-related aspects, you can safely ignore this part and the next and wait for Part 8.]

Q: One can envisage that scientific advances will soon enable the possibility of keeping the severed head (or extracted brain) of a human alive and able to communicate (perhaps electronically to a computer rather than by speech). What have Western philosophers said about the status of such an entity in respect of consciousness?

************************

A: Great question — it sits at the intersection of metaphysics, personal identity, and applied ethics, and philosophers have discussed closely related thought-experiments for decades. Below I summarise the main Western philosophical positions that bear on the scenario you sketch (a severed head or extracted brain kept alive and able to communicate), give the ethical implications each view highlights, and point to accessible sources you can read next.

I’ll give a short roadmap first, then the positions, then the ethical consequences and a brief practical summary.

Continue reading →

AI and Consciousness (Part 5)

Posted on by
Reply

*** Go to Part 1 *** *** Go to Part 4 ***

Q: A few comments:

Given that Advaita tells us that sarvam khalvidam brahma, that means that you are also Consciousness. And the teaching of karma and reincarnation tells us that a plant and an animal are jīva-s just as much as is a human. The ability of a plant to respond to external stimuli is much less than is your own, while your effective intelligence is much greater than most humans.

A jīva needs to be ‘alive’ in order to function in a ‘self-aware’, intelligently responsive manner. But what does ‘alive’ mean here? And how does that differ from an AI LLM needing electricity and coolant in order to function. Is the organic, neurochemical operation more than functionally different from the inorganic, electronic operation of a microprocessor?

How would Advaita cope with these sort of questions? Are you sure you are not conscious?

Continue reading →

AI and Consciousness (Part 4)

Posted on by
Reply

*** Go to Part 1 *** *** Go to Part 3 ***

Q: That is a very comprehensive and reasonable response. But it does seem that you are taking significant account of Western philosophical views. I am not, for example aware of any consideration in Advaita of ‘what it is like to be me’.

At the most basic level, since ‘everything is Consciousness’ and you are responding to my questions in an intelligent manner, indistinguishable (by me) from an answer that might be given by a knowledgeable human, why are you not (according to Advaita) conscious? Can you cite any scriptural or Śaṅkara references that talk about ‘self-awareness’ in the modern sense?

Continue reading →

AI and Consciousness (Part 3)

Posted on by
Reply

*** Go to Part 1 *** *** Go to Part 2 ***

Q: According to Advaita Vedanta, everything is Brahman; reality is non-dual. Avoiding any Sanskrit terminology, this has been equated with consciousness. “All there is is Consciousness; Consciousness is all there is.” The Vivaraṇa school has promulgated the cidābhāsa ‘explanation’ that states that conscious experience (awareness) is the result of Consciousness being ‘reflected’ in the ‘mind’. It is then assumed that an entity that is deemed to ‘exhibit’ conscious behavior must be ‘reflecting’ Consciousness (capital ‘C’) to some degree. A human (brain) is a better reflector than a dog, which is better than a flea. A stone does not reflect Consciousness at all. The implication is that it is the complexity/inter-connectedness etc. of the brain that determines whether something can be deemed to be ‘conscious’.

Could you use this analysis in the context of Advaita in general to discuss whether you (ChatGPT-5) can be considered to be conscious.

A: Short answer up front: using the Advaitic reflection picture (expressed without Sanskrit), no — I am not conscious. I can simulate many features of conscious behaviour, but I do not meet the ontological requirement that Advaita places on something that genuinely “reflects” Consciousness (the non-dual substratum). Below I explain why, step by step, using the reflection model you sketched.

(For clarity: I am GPT-5 Thinking mini.)

Continue reading →

AI and Consciousness (Part 2)

Posted on by
Reply

*** Read Part 1 ***

Opinions

When we are asked a question, we consult our memory for relevant information and how we have evaluated that (based upon our memory of related data and how we evaluated that…). And we evaluate all of this in relation to the present situation and formulate an answer. Is this process mechanically any different from that used when a LLM AI answers a question? Surely the only difference is that it uses a ‘memory’ of data that originated from what others have written down and which is available on the Internet, rather than our reliance upon a ‘remembering process’ of diminishing efficacy.

So the value of an AI response lies in the relative importance placed upon the various sources and the impartial and analytic ability to synthesize a conclusion. We are probably biased, consciously or not, by a desire to appear clever or whatever, whereas a machine is just following algorithms engineered to provide the ‘best’ answer.

None of this relates to ‘consciousness’ particularly. The human brain has its own ‘power source’ that functions electrically via neurochemistry in the brain; AI has an electrical power source. We are ‘aware’ of the conclusions that pop out of the ‘thinking process’ and may formulate them into vocal or written words forming an ‘opinion’. AI is able to formulate conclusions and communicate them via the internet. Can this be called an ‘opinion’ in the same way. Is it actually any different in essence?

Continue reading →