I am so used to ideologically extreme and transgressive articles published in science and other professional journals, that when one publishes commonsense commentary, I think it should be applauded.

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As most readers know, there is a great advocacy push underway to have AI declared to be — or soon to be — conscious and hence, entitled to “rights” as “persons.” (I have responded to this advocacy on several occasions.) Now, an article in Nature — written by three academics — strongly rebuts that blatant anthropomorphism.  From “Three Reasons Why AI Is Not Conscious and Perhaps Never Will Be:

Between us, we’ve spent decades studying consciousness from diverse scientific perspectives: experimental neuroscience, theoretical neurobiology and philosophy of mind. On the basis of this work, we feel that consciousness in AI is extraordinarily unlikely, at least in the digital, silicon-based systems that underpin today’s technologies.

Between us, we’ve spent decades studying consciousness from diverse scientific perspectives: experimental neuroscience, theoretical neurobiology and philosophy of mind. On the basis of this work, we feel that consciousness in AI is extraordinarily unlikely, at least in the digital, silicon-based systems that underpin today’s technologies.

Pet peeve: They really mean they “think” that AI consciousness is unlikely, not that they “feel” it. Those concepts are not the same and that matters. I think — ha — that we should stop conflating the two.

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