The answer to the OP's specific question is no. Current AIs are designed for a specific purpose. We're not going to wake up one day with one of them becoming self-aware.
Whether a different kind of AI could become self-aware is a different question. I think the answer is yes. But some of it has to do with what you mean by self-aware. An AI definition would be that part of its knowledge is a model of itself, that it can reason about itself, and knows what it is doing. I don't think there's much doubt that this could be done. Consciousness is a different question, in part because no one is really sure what the term means. There's a lively debate on that topic among philosophers. But the OP asked about self-aware, not conscious.
Note by the way that I have a PhD in Artificial Intelligence, although I haven't done research for a long time. When I got my degree people were thinking in these terms. Mostly today they're not, though there are surely some people ...
Incidentally, in the very early days of AI, Marvin Minsky published a paper in which he argued that a self-aware AI would believe that it has an immaterial soul.
Whether a different kind of AI could become self-aware is a different question. I think the answer is yes. But some of it has to do with what you mean by self-aware. An AI definition would be that part of its knowledge is a model of itself, that it can reason about itself, and knows what it is doing. I don't think there's much doubt that this could be done. Consciousness is a different question, in part because no one is really sure what the term means. There's a lively debate on that topic among philosophers. But the OP asked about self-aware, not conscious.
Note by the way that I have a PhD in Artificial Intelligence, although I haven't done research for a long time. When I got my degree people were thinking in these terms. Mostly today they're not, though there are surely some people ...
Incidentally, in the very early days of AI, Marvin Minsky published a paper in which he argued that a self-aware AI would believe that it has an immaterial soul.
Last edited:
Upvote
0