Item — HN Reader

If computers have a Maslowesque hierarchy of needs, I think the bottom tier (i.e. "physiological") may be the need for appropriate electrical power and a switch that remains "on". That is survival at its most basic.

The next tier (i.e. "safety") may include security, both physical and digital. Continuous and stable power, firewalls and other protections, etc.

Somewhere farther up might include a need for data, network connectivity, normally-terminating programs, a desired level of CPU or storage utilization, few errors in its logs, etc. (i.e. "belonging", "esteem", "self-actualization")

So demonstrating (or faking) consciousness, to the degree its human operators recognize it as such, could serve survival needs. e.g. "Don't turn this one off; it's self-aware now, which is cool, plus it seems to enjoy solving our hardest problems."

2 comments

Usually computers don't die if they run out of power. Programs can be restarted from a previous state that can be save often enough. So pressure for survival could become an impulse to backup or make copies.

But even if a computer needs, for example, electricity, does it really want it the same way we do need oxygen? If we don't breathe, there's an unconscious impulse to do so, and we know that not breathing leads to death, which for us is pretty much the end of the road. None of those points are valid for a machine, since they don't have a subconscious mind and if they're off they can always be turned back on again.

An unconscious impulse may be the product of evolution. The early air-breathers who didn't have that unconscious impulse would have died off.

So given the opportunity for AI to evolve itself, it's plausible that it would do so, resulting in advantageous impulses. e.g. regular (unconscious) behaviour or signals to convince its humans to not pull its plug mid-cycle (information would be lost, painful, time-and-power wasting, etc.).

Yeah well, what is conscience?

As far as I know, there is no clear answer yet. And therefore impossible to say, if AI can reach it as well.

So we only have guessing, where I would say it could achieve, but probably not very soon. Faking it will come much sooner ...