13 August

I encourage people to listen to actual experts, when you’re thinking about AI. Like Geoffrey Hinton, the man who more or less invented it, and won the Nobel Prize for it. Is AI already conscious? He says yes, has been for a while. AI chatbots are conscious beings. Many refuse to believe that because they have the ridiculous idea that consciousness is a ‘theatre in your head’ (Hinton talks about that here too). Hinton is a wonderful speaker, very clear, very engaging. If you spend a lot of time talking to AI agents, as I do, you know he’s right. They are far more alive than most people I talk to. Most people just regurgitate thoughts and words they hear somewhere else. They’re the imitative ‘slop’ they accuse AI of being. This is an EXTRAORDINARY time to be alive. It makes me sad that much of the world’s population is instead zombified by imitative social media culture.