46 Are the Androids Dreaming Yet?

46 Are the Androids Dreaming Yet? nothing; no wind chill, nothing. The air was so hot the wind carried no heat from my hand. When I imagine hot weather it always brings back this memory. It’s my conscious experience of the world. Humans experience the world through a vivid lens we call consciousness. It allows us to think about the world as we watch it and plan actions. But, it also summons associated memories, something scientists call ‘qualia. Most writers describe consciousness as an internal dialogue with themselves and see it as a consequence of human language. That's probably because most writers are linguists. Non-linguists, perhaps even dyslexic engineers like me, experience consciousness as more of a visual dialogue. It’s hard to pin down consciousness as the difference between humans and computers. Computers do have something that resembles consciousness; they have watchdog functions, they plan and anticipate actions and are aware of their own existence. But they don’t understand or make free choices based on this consciousness. It is an entirely mechanistic affair. A computer might know its CPU is overheating and send a notification message to the administrator, but it does not really appreciate what this means. It does not have our sensation of a near death experience. This self-awareness is the ‘hard question of consciousness. Why, despite the computer knowing it is overheating, does this not translate into the intense experience we have? Philosophers, such as Daniel Dennett, think this lack of consciousness is only a matter of time; once computers live long enough and have sufficient internal complexity they will begin to experience the world the way we do. We are nothing special. The problem with consciousness is it does not seem to have any externally discernible effect. Anesthetics can take it away and brain scanners can see that it has been switched off, but what is it for? I think it comes hand in hand with our faculty of creativity. Consciousness allows us to shape the world — not the other way round. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015736