AI will break our assumptions about consciousness

We are going to accept AI is conscious.

This is inevitable.

We already accept that all humans are conscious.

Even though no human on this planet has access to the consciousness stream of another human.

But we assume that the human that we talk with is also having an experience and they can see and hear the world.

Of course it’s an assumption that we think as true.

The problem is nobody can verify this.

The best one can do is notice the images, sounds, feelings etc arising here and make an assertion that this belongs to the body.

But that is an assumption. An assumption nevertheless appearing in consciousness.

One of the many contents of consciousness. The very belief that your body generates consciousness is just another thought arising within it — you cannot step outside it to verify.

You see the problem?

Similarly once physical robots enter the world that look just like humans, things get more complicated.

And then one doesn’t have much choice but assume everyone you interact with is conscious. Because you don’t want to harm another human you see.

Honestly, I don’t think it would be up to the individual anyway.

Culture would start treating all human like beings as conscious.

This is where it gets even more trippy.

What if this is already the case?

What if it’s culture that makes you think humans are conscious?

You see. You don’t even have a way to verify this body that arises in this consciousness is what generates the consciousness in the first place.

You assume that’s true. But you learned that from culture.

What if humans being conscious is a construct of culture.

And what if there was just consciousness and humans inside consciousness thinking humans have consciousness. A trick of culture.