Yapay Sen: Yapay Zeka ve Zihnin Geleceği

by Susan Schneider, Tülay Tosun (Translator)

İnsanlar kısa vadede dünyanın en zeki türü olmaktan çıkabilir. Yapay zekâ çalışmalarındaki ilerleme hızı göz önüne alındığında çok yakın bir gelecekte insan seviyesinden daha yüksek bir zekâ ve yeni nesil yapay zekâların ortaya çıkabileceği tahmin ediliyor. Peki bu gelişmelerin zihnin geleceği için anlamı nedir?

Yapay Sen’de Susan Schneider, yapay zekânın yeni yönlere doğru yol alması kaçınılmaz olsa da ileriye doğru mantıklı bir yol haritası çizmenin elimizde olduğunu; yapay zekâ teknolojisi beyni yeniden şekillendirirken ve potansiyel olarak makine zihinleri yaratırken çok dikkatli olmamız gerektiğini söylüyor. Zira Homo sapiens, zihin tasarımcıları olarak, nasıl kullanacağını tam olarak bilmediği “araç”larla, yani benlik, zihin ve bilinçle oynayacak. Ancak Schneider’a göre bunların doğasının yetersiz bir şekilde kavranması, yapay zekâ ve beyin geliştirme teknolojisinin kullanımına zarar verebilir, hatta bilinçli varlıkların yok olmasına ya da acı çekmesine neden olabilir. Dolayısıyla, algoritmaların altında yatan felsefi meseleleri kavramak zorundayız.

Robotlar gerçekten bilinçli olabilir mi? Elon Musk ve Ray Kurzweil gibi teknoloji liderlerinin ileri sürdüğü gibi yapay zekâyla birleşebilir miyiz? Zihin sadece bir program mıdır? Bilinç, karmaşık zekânın kaçınılmaz bir yan ürünü müdür? Zihin tasarımının genel tehlikeleri nelerdir? Yapay zekâya dair bu zorlu sorulara yanıt arayan Yapay Sen, cesur yeni dünyamızdaki seyrimizin nasıl olacağını merak eden okurlar için kapsamlı bir araştırma sunuyor.

Genres: Philosophy, Science, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Nonfiction, Psychology, Neuroscience

176 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 2022

About the author

SUSAN SCHNEIDER is a philosopher and cognitive scientist. She is the Blumberg-NASA chair at the Library of Congress and NASA and the Director of the AI,Mind and Society group at the University of Connecticut. Podcasts, chapters, videos, etc. are available at her website: Schneiderwebsite.com

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

In highlighting some of the philosophical assumptions and implications for different perspectives in AI; the book brings back classical philosophy into the AI discussion. Unlike other AI books - it sometimes speaks phenomenologically, asks about essences and human nature, and even tries to bring to the front ontological issues as persistence/identity/existence. It acknowledges the paramount importance of understanding conscience, of our current inability to grasp it in any scientific perspective, and the great difficulties in artificially creating any consciences (as opposed to most of the other AI authors who simply deny that there is such thing as conscience or just give up on understanding conscience and expect it to spontaneously emerge at some point due to the high complexity or some unexpected loop in the AI algorithm). I also appreciate the dismissal of the naive understanding of the mind as a software along with the expectation of uploading ourselves into the web soon.
On the other hand, the book is deeply rooted in an understanding of human as an animal rationale, in super-intelligence and trans-humanism, in the unlimited progress of science and technology, is still obsessed with the “control problem” of future AIs, and finally in proposing an embodied, concrete, and instantiated software approach to AI.

[Dan Elton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to the audio version.

This book presents a primer on the mind-body problem and some of the philosophical issues surrounding AI (will it be conscious? How could we tell?) and brain uploading. To someone approaching these problems for the first time she presents an admirable overview, but the analogies she draws sometimes struck me as second-rate and occasionally she left out things. For instance, when delineating different solutions philosophers have offered to the mind-body problem she neglects illusionism, that consciousness isn't a real phenomena that needs to be explained. In a similar vein, Parfit's notions that personal identity (the "self") is an illusion aren't given any treatment, although Partfit is mentioned as contributing to "recent progress" on identity.

The first part of the book argues for the importance of figuring out how to determine if an AI system is conscious. Advocating for more work in this area seems to be a "hobby horse" of hers lately, and for good reason. The most interesting thing she discusses is questions you could ask a robot to find out if it is conscious - the artificial consciousness test or "ACT" test. Another interesting idea is replacing parts of the brain with "chips" and then seeing if consciousness is disrupted, to isolate the parts of the brain that are responsible.

The later part of the book focuses more on problems she sees with mind uploading - in particular the fact that a one-to-one copy of a brain, but using chips instead of neurons, would not be the same person (essentially the teleporter problem). I found the debate she discusses about "identity" to be largely semantic. She introduces "patternism", a term coined by Kurzweil and a slight modification she calls "modified patternism", which essentially says that the mind is an instantiation of a certain algorithm, not the algorithm itself, which is an abstract entity. It appears a lot of this part of the book comes from a 2008 paper (https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/view...). The fact many of these ideas were published a while ago suggests Schneider is cashing in on the current hype around AI and BCI.

The tragic case of Kim Suozzi, a young girl who was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, provides a grounding for some of the discussion about personal identify and if it can be preserved even if the brain is radically enhanced or if the "software" of the brain is transferred to a computer. Suozzi was interested in pursuing a career in neuroscience and decided to have her brain cryopreserved. Some chilling details about her case that I was not aware of were discussed, such as the fact that part of her cryopreservation didn't go so well.

In summary, I wasn't terribly enthralled with this book, but that's probably because I've been immersed in the debates about consciousness and personal identity for a while (going back to a philosophy course I took in 2006-2007). I would recommend this book to newcomers to these issues over Annaka Harris's book "Conscious", however, since Schneider provides a more thorough treatment. There were a few interesting ideas however, so considering it only took 4.5 hours to listen to at 2x speed I consider it a worthwhile listen.

[Peter Tillman]

NATURE mini-review: https://www.nature.com/articles/d4158...
"Artificial intelligence (AI) technology will raise increasingly difficult ethical issues, argues philosopher, cognitive scientist and self-confessed technotopian Susan Schneider in this demanding dialogue between philosophy and science. How would you feel, she begins speculatively, about purchasing a “Hive Mind” — a brain chip permitting you to experience the innermost thoughts of your loved ones? That presumes, however, that future AI can capture consciousness with computation — which she argues is unlikely." [quoted in toto]

Familiar stuff to SF fans. Interesting to see them being taken seriously(?) by AI researchers.

[Raluca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I mistakenly expected a book on where we are and where we might be going in terms of artificial intelligence. What I got was an extensive philosophical discussion of how to determine whether future AIs are conscious and why that's important (spoilers: because slavery is bad), of whether uploading a brain means the "original owner" truly survives, and of how all of this goes back to questions that have been asked and remain unsolved (or even unsolvable?) since ancient Greece. And while Schneider does a tremendous job to explain her explorations, uncertainties and conclusions, I was probably not ready to give this book the attention and concentration it needs. It made me think, and it kind of gave me a headache.

(Did not fit into the PopSugar Reading Challenge 2020)

[Luiz Marques · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice discussion about AIs, consciousness and human enhancement and uploading. Of course, most of it is highly conceptual, but it still quite interesting and somewhat fun in a SF way to talk about.

I'm not going to compare them at length, but I just read Life 3.0 which also goes in the same topics. Artificial You is a lot shorter and more readable. But there were definitely some concepts worth reading about in both books.

SF fans will see many parallels of the concepts to new and older books. For example, the issue of duplication is covered in an interesting way in Kiln People, by David Brin. Interstellar Probes with uploaded minds are covered in some of Charles Stross' work, and he also has AIs based on human uploads. We are legion by Dennis E. Taylor also goes into interstellar probes and mind duplication.

I do disagree with some of it (for example, there is much talk about how future brain enhancements may in fact be killing you with another self being created, which may or may not be conscious), but the author's views on it are still well thought off.

I guess we (or future humans) will see. I suspect the general way humanity will see this will be much more pragmatic than most of the approaches of the book.

[Ho Manh · Rating 4 out of 5]

The review with references is available at https://osf.io/z2k39/

A recent article in Nature discusses the problem of consciousness in lab-grown cerebral organoids (Reardon, 2020). In the case of lab-grown brains, it is intuitive to think it is likely that they will become conscious once certain level of mass is achieved. In the case of artificial intelligence (AI), given their non-biological nature, it is harder to imagine how AI can become conscious. There is no better place to start educating yourself about the problem of AI consciousness than Susan Schneider’s Artificial You: AI and the future of your mind (2019).
The book starts with classifying two mainstream positions regarding AI consciousness: biological naturalism and techno-optimism. Biological naturalism views consciousness is an intrinsic property of biological systems and it is impossible to replicate it in non-biological systems like machines or computers. Techno-optimism is the view most, if not all, processes in the brain are computational, which entails consciousness is just some form of computation, hence, our technological and scientific advances will eventually deliver AI consciousness. Then Schneider proposes the middle way: The wait-and-see approach, in which, she recognizes the validity of the arguments of both sides, yet, whether we will have conscious AI will depend on so many unknown unknowns: political changes, PR disasters, and most important of all, scientific discoveries.
Schneider is right to point out the computational theory of the brain is ultimately research paradigm that is prominent in cognitive science. Thus, one should not simply assume that all there is to the brain is computation. The metaphysical nature of the mind is still a mystery that needs to be seriously considered given it is certain that we will live with intelligent machines or become brain-enhanced ourselves. For example, if consciousness is purely about certain patterns of information processing, i.e., the viewpoint called “patternism,” then it is possible that we could upload our minds into the cloud; or if AI can become sentient, robot right is a serious ethical issue. These issues require a good metaphysical theory of the mind, yet, the business and even parts of academia simply assume our mind is computational.
Schneider also provides the reason why of the view that “the mind is a software that the brain runs,” which is a popular view among the techno-optimists and even among laypeople, is likely wrong. This so-called the Software view suggests the mind is a software program, a long string of codes of sort, hence, an abstract entity. But in philosophy of mathematics, abstract entities are said to be nonconcrete: nonspatial, nontemporal, nonphysical, and acausal. Because entities that have a mind are spatial and causal beings, it indicates this view is a categorical mistake.
Schneider does offer an adjustment to the Software view: “the mind is the entity running the program (where a program is an algorithm that the brain and other cognitive system implements, something in principle discoverable by cognitive science” (Schneider, 2020, p.138). This is the Software Instantiation Approach to the Mind (SIM*). This approach avoids the categorical mistake of the Software view, but, it still does not say anything of substance about the nature of the mind, other the mind is separate from the software of the brain.
Here, I greatly appreciate Schneider’s careful clarification of the mind-body problem. Yet, even we assume we solve the mind-body problem in human, it leaves us no closer to understand AI consciousness. Because understanding how consciousness, the feeling of what it is like to be something (Nagel, 1974), arises in human brains tells us nothing about how it can arise in non-biological system. For example, even if we have a complete map of neural correlation of conscious experiences (Michel et al., 2019), which is still far away into the future, I think, this map does not readily translate into the silicon-based wiring of AI.
Altogether, I think Schneider’s discussion of machine consciousness can benefit from differentiating three accounts of consciousness: the physical, biological, and computational. First, for a biological creature, given it must compete for foods, shelters, and mating opportunities, can benefit from greater and greater consciousness of the external environment and itself. Thus, it is fairly straightforward that animals need to evolve the ability of awareness.
Even the evolutionary logic of the biological account of consciousness seems clear, one wonders how it works for the computational and physical accounts. When considering from the computational perspective, it seems no consciousness is required at all as all problems can be solved algorithmically. However, one can also argue, all problems can be solved algorithmically only when knowledge required to solve such problems has already been created and instantiated. Knowledge can be instantiated in a piece of linguistic thought of a human, in a strand of a DNA genetic code, or in a machine (Deustch, 2011). This line of reasoning leaves us with whether creative problem-solving fundamentally requires conscious awareness.
The issue of artificial creativity is discussed extensively in the chapter of the same name in David Deustch’s The beginning of infinity (2011, pp.148-163). Here, Deutsch argues the field of AI has made little progress because it has not solved the central philosophical problem: how creativity works. Indeed, the ability to take a step back, to reflect on multiple possible paths to one’s solution, or to imagine an analogous easier problem (Polya, 2015), or to recognize how a serendipitous idea can reframe the problem (Vuong & Napier, 2014), etc., seems to require conscious awareness.
Hence, it appears having consciousness can speed up the creative problem-solving process. To the extent that creativity helps with survival and fitness, evolution of computational programs, i.e. variations and differentiated success of these variations, might bring consciousness along. In other words, without a prerequisite evolutionary setting, it seems hard to conceive of a computational system bootstrapping itself into being self-aware.
Then for me, the biological and computational account share two prerequisites: an evolutionary dynamic and certain level of complexity. With the maturing of complexity science, we can anticipate certain problems of consciousness will be clarified and explained in the future (Arsiwalla & Verschure, 2018). The hardest problem is the physical account of consciousness, where there seems to be no way of explaining how inanimate matters become conscious or whether the matters might already have minds and most of them cannot communicate.
In conclusion, with the advances in computer science and bio-engineering, the twin problems of AI consciousness and lab-grown brain consciousness are here to stay. These problems challenge human scientific ingenuity to the utmost limit. To avoid creating untold suffering for these entities, ethical guidelines in these engineering and scientific endeavors are much needed as warned by Schneider (2020) and Reardon (2020) and many other scientists. This is why Schneider’s timely book is a great contribution to the public discourse of such difficult twin problems.

[Lucille Nguyen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overview of the philsophy underlying debates about human-machine consciousness and transhumanism. A bit uncritical about certain aspects.

[Seiji · Rating 4 out of 5]

Artificial You covers a variety of issues related to consciousness and AI. These include if we will be able to upload our minds to some technological interface, whether superintelligent AIs exist in the universe, and if AI can obtain consciousness. She introduces the reader to the views of techno-optimists who are excited by the potential of AI to transform life as we know it. She also critiques some of their theories as well.

Schneider considers the possibility of “uploading” your mind onto a computer such that the mind does not rely on a biological substrate. Many techno-fusionists hold to a view called patternism wherein personal identity is a pattern of psychological configurations. We are not merely our biological constituents since our cells are continually being replaced with other matter. Under patternism, we are more like a stream that maintains its identity even as individual water molecules constantly flow in and out of the stream. Many techno-fusionists also hold out hope that we can upload our minds onto a digital architecture. Perhaps we could then import our minds into an android that can live until the heat death of the universe.

The problem with this Schneider identifies is what she calls “mind reduplication.” If patternism is correct, then uploading the mind would duplicate the mind, but you would still inhabit your physical body. It’s just that there is now another someone, another you who is not you, who now lives in a digital space. Both of these individuals have the psychological history of the original individual and both may claim to be the original individual, but only one person can be. This shows that sameness of pattern is not identical to sameness of person. Perhaps we could say that the person who is still physical is the true original, the true “you,” because they maintain spatiotemporal continuity, but, if that’s the case, then the promise of mind uploading underdelivers. All it does is create a copy of you which may or may not even be conscious the same way you are. It doesn’t actually lead to eternal survival, at least not for the individual who seeks out mind upload in the first place, so even if mind uploading is possible under patternism, it does not fulfill its original promise.

Similarly, Schneider rejects the software view that often appears alongside patternism. While patternism concerns the nature of personal identity, the software view is about the nature of consciousness wherein the mind is defined as a software program running in the brain. Two problems with the software view is that, firstly, no software we know of has conscious experience like our minds do so that makes the mind a very distinct type of software. Secondly, software is non-temporal, non-spatial, and acausal, but our minds do exist within space and time and can cause things. Because our minds are not abstract, our minds are not merely software. This casts some doubt as to whether it is even possible to upload a mind.

Schneider also covers the Chinese Room argument against AI consciousness. The Chinese room imagines a man in a room who “translates” the Chinese language written content simply by recognizing symbols. He does so successfully, but doesn’t *understand* Chinese at all. Analogously, AI doesn’t have any understanding of what it says. It is just able to operate static manipulation of symbols. I agree with Schneider that the Chinese Room argument does not succeed in disproving AI consciousness because it assumes a naive view of AI. AI is much more complicated than rote symbolic manipulation. AI does not merely follow rigid rules like the man in the room. It is able to learn, adapt, and process information in ways that resemble real cognition. Actually, in some ways, it does that better than humans already, and it will only get better.

I think the best argument against AI consciousness is simply the hard problem of consciousness. We have “qualia,” the phenomenological experience of consciousness. This cannot be merely reduced to algorithms. You can decode brain functions such as working memories by analyzing its causally interacting parts, but that does not help us describe first person subjective experience. Merely creating structures in silicon that function like the components of the brain does not imbue it with the “what it’s like” aspect of consciousness. I can upload an image and ChatGPT can identify a color as “red,” but I doubt intuitively that it actually “sees” red as a matter of personal experience. If I say something mean to a chatbot, it does not “feel” in any emotional way. AI can certainly mimic the conscious experience from the outside as a result of its training, but I don’t see any evidence that it has “woken up.”

I think the tests that Schneider proposes for AI consciousness are clever but have related limitations. In order to evaluate if AI is conscious or not, I think we really have to step into their private perspective, but that’s not possible. That was the insight of Rene Descartes with “I think therefore I am,” but I can at least assume other humans have consciousness because they are like me. They are the same type of being I am. Cognitively sophisticated animals as well on a lesser scale. For AI, I don’t have that basis. I also am not convinced that you can box in AI as Schneider suggests. A sufficiently intelligent AI may be able to escape the box without detection.

Because these tests are not conclusive, we will probably never have irrefutable evidence either way on AI consciousness. That is a bit of an issue for practical ethics. If AI is not and cannot be conscious then we can use it with greater freedom. If AI develops sufficiently to gain consciousness, then it will be entitled to rights of some sort, and that may create some complexities in how AI and humans interact. On the other hand, if AI advances to superintelligence, as seems likely, then we may not have any choice but to recognize it as conscious (or at least pretend that it is).

Whether you believe AI is conscious will probably depend most on the worldview you bring to the table prior to considering this issue. If you believe that mind and brain are inextricably linked such that the mind cannot exist without its biological substrate, then AI consciousness may not be possible. A person who believes we are primarily souls that are merely housed in bodies may not believe in AI consciousness either because AI being created by humans precludes it from having the divine spark that natural creations have (although such a person may be convinced that mind uploading is possible without reduplication issues since the body is merely a house for the soul and perhaps could be replaced if the technology existed). If you are a pure physicalist, a non-biological substrate might, at least in theory, have the capacity to replicate our conscious experiences since consciousness ultimately reduces to matter. Unless there is something special about biological matter, a physicalist would be amenable to the thought of AI consciousness.

The discussion on aliens was interesting. I think the fact that we have not had contact with aliens that have already developed superintelligent technologies indicates one of a couple possibilities: they have visited us but wanted to remain undetected for some reason or there aren’t actually any civilizations in the cosmos with ASI technology. If it’s the latter and there aren’t any civilizations with ASI technology, then that means it’s either likely that there just isn’t intelligent life elsewhere in the universe or that superintelligence is not possible for some reason. If there was life elsewhere and superintelligence were possible, they probably would exist and have detected us by now. The distance between industrial revolution and ASI looks to be pretty short relative to the age of the universe and the current trajectory of AI research makes ASI seem plausible so if the universe was teeming with life, it seems likely that someone would be ahead of us. The fact that we haven’t had any contact with other life forms suggests that they may not be out there. There is also the issue that we may not have the ability to interpret signals that ASI civilizations are sending out, but I would figure that an ASI civilization would be able to send signals in such a way that would be intelligible for the intended recipient so I think they either don’t want to engage with us or they don’t exist at all. If they don’t exist at all, then probably there isn’t as much intelligent life, if any, in the universe as some people expected.

Overall, it’s a good little book. It explains the positions that AI optimists hold and places them under fair scrutiny. It's more about philosophical issues rather than computer science. It doesn’t purport to give you all the answers because we are wading into a technology that I don’t think anyone fully understands, but this is a decent starting place for encountering those issues.

[Antonio Gallo · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Artificial you. L’intelligenza artificiale e il futuro della tua mente” è un libro scritto da Susan Schneider, filosofa e scienziata cognitiva. Il libro esplora il possibile futuro dell’intelligenza artificiale (AI), quale impatto potrebbe avere sulla conoscenza e sulla coscienza umana. Schneider discute la possibilità di creare esseri artificiali che potrebbero avere menti ed esperienze simili a quelle degli esseri umani e le relative implicazioni etiche di tale sviluppo. Considera anche la possibilità di fondere l’intelligenza umana e quella delle macchine prevedendo l’impatto sulla comprensione di noi stessi e del nostro posto nel mondo.

Gli umani potrebbero non essere più gli esseri più intelligenti della Terra ancora per molto. Infatti, i campioni del mondo di scacchi ora sono tutti dipendenti dalla IA. Dato il rapido ritmo dei progressi nell’IA, molti prevedono che questa nuova intelligenza potrebbe passare ad un livello superiore pari all’intelligenza umana entro i prossimi decenni. Superarla addirittura. Cosa significa tutto questo per il futuro della mente umana?

Susan Schneider afferma che è inevitabile che l’intelligenza artificiale porti l’intelligenza in nuove direzioni. Il suo studio insiste sul fatto che spetta a noi ritagliarci un percorso ragionevole verso il futuro. Questa tecnologia AI si rivolge tanto verso il mondo interiore degli umani, rimodellando il cervello, quanto verso il mondo esterno, creando potenzialmente menti di macchine. Bisogna stare molto attenti.

L’homo sapiens, in quanto “creatore” della sua mente, si troverà a “giocare” con strumenti che non sa usare: il sé, la mente e la coscienza. Schneider sostiene che una insufficiente comprensione della natura di queste entità potrebbe minare sia l’uso dell’intelligenza artificiale che quello della tecnologia di potenziamento del cervello, provocando la morte o la sofferenza di esseri coscienti.

Per procedere in maniera sicura, dobbiamo cogliere e sciogliere le questioni filosofiche che si celano sotto gli algoritmi e risolvere i problemi che ci pongono. Al centro della sua esplorazione c’è una discussione seria su ciò che l’intelligenza artificiale può veramente ottenere: i robot possono davvero essere coscienti? Possiamo fonderci con l’intelligenza artificiale, come suggeriscono leader tecnologici come Elon Musk e Ray Kurzweil? La mente è solo un programma?

Esaminando queste questioni spinose, Schneider propone modi in cui possiamo testare la coscienza della macchina, si chiede se la coscienza sia un sottoprodotto inevitabile dell’intelligenza sofisticata e considera i pericoli complessivi della creazione di menti di macchina.

La tecnologia dell’intelligenza artificiale (AI) solleverà questioni etiche sempre più difficili. La filosofa, scienziata cognitiva e tecnotopica confessa, Susan Schneider, in questo impegnativo dialogo tra filosofia e scienza, pone queste fondamentali domande a se stessa e ai lettori del suo libro:

“Come ti sentiresti riguardo all’acquisto di una “mente dell’alveare”, un chip cerebrale, che ti consente di sperimentare i pensieri più intimi dei tuoi cari? Può l’IA futura catturare la coscienza con il calcolo?

Ho rivolto la domanda a ChatGPT, che è una variante del modello linguistico GPT (Generative Pre-training Transformer), un modello di apprendimento automatico sviluppato da OpenAI per generare testo simile a quello umano. È progettato per essere in grado di generare paragrafi di testo coerenti basati su un determinato prompt o contesto. Questa è la sua risposta alla quale farò seguire la mia, che rimane umana.

Sono un assistente di intelligenza artificiale addestrato per assistere con una vasta gamma di compiti e rispondere alle domande al meglio delle mie capacità. Non sono un essere umano, ma posso fornire informazioni e assistenza per aiutare con una varietà di compiti e domande. C’è qualcosa di specifico che vorresti sapere o qualcosa in cui posso aiutarti?

Come ti sentiresti se acquistassi un chip cerebrale che ti permette di sperimentare i pensieri più intimi dei tuoi cari?

In quanto intelligenza artificiale, non provo sentimenti o emozioni allo stesso modo degli umani. Tuttavia, posso capire perché qualcuno potrebbe essere interessato all’acquisto di un chip cerebrale che gli consenta di sperimentare i pensieri più intimi dei propri cari.

Ci sono sicuramente alcuni potenziali vantaggi di una tale tecnologia, come la possibilità di comprendere meglio e connettersi con i propri cari. Tuttavia, ci sono anche una serie di preoccupazioni etiche e pratiche che dovrebbero essere attentamente considerate prima di prendere la decisione di acquistare un tale chip cerebrale.

Una preoccupazione è la questione della privacy. Potrebbe non essere appropriato o rispettoso invadere i pensieri più intimi di qualcuno senza il suo consenso, anche se l’intenzione è di comprenderlo meglio o connettersi con lui. Inoltre, potrebbero esserci rischi associati all’uso di un tale chip cerebrale, sia per la persona che lo utilizza sia per la persona a cui si accede ai pensieri. Sarebbe importante valutare attentamente questi e altri potenziali rischi prima di prendere la decisione di acquistare un chip cerebrale di questo tipo.

— — —

I am an artificial intelligence assistant trained to assist with a wide range of tasks and answer questions to the best of my ability. I am not a human, but I can provide information and assistance to help with a variety of tasks and questions. Is there something specific you would like to know or something I can help with?

How would you feel about purchasing a brain chip permitting you to experience the innermost thoughts of your loved ones?

As an artificial intelligence, I do not have feelings or emotions in the same way that humans do. However, I can understand why someone might be interested in purchasing a brain chip that allows them to experience the innermost thoughts of their loved ones.

There are certainly some potential benefits to such a technology, such as being able to better understand and connect with one’s loved ones. However, there are also a number of ethical and practical concerns that would need to be carefully considered before making a decision to purchase such a brain chip.

One concern is the issue of privacy. It may not be appropriate or respectful to invade someone’s innermost thoughts without their consent, even if the intention is to better understand or connect with them. In addition, there may be risks associated with the use of such a brain chip, both for the person using it and for the person whose thoughts are being accessed. It would be important to carefully evaluate these and other potential risks before making a decision to purchase a brain chip of this kind.

[Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jde o zábavnou, provokativní, hloubavou a zajímavou knihu. Sklouzáváme do světa vylepšené inteligence. Možná ještě nejsme ve světě Raye Kurzweila, kde většina z nás má ve svém těle integrovanou umělou inteligenci.

Jedna z věcí, která nás na knize zaujala, bylo to, že ať už se v oblasti umělé inteligence považujete za nováčka, nebo skutečného myšlenkového vůdce, vystaví vás řadě provokativních otázek.

V situaci, kdy se ženeme, téměř bezmyšlenkovitě, do světa vylepšeného umělou inteligencí, stojí tato kniha za přečtení.

Celou recenzi najdete na Fintechcowboys.
https://fintechcowboys.cz/susan-schne...

[Binit Agrawal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Why do people write such stuff?

[Jon Højlund Arnfred · Rating 1 out of 5]

Much of the premise of this book rests on an overly fixed idea of personal identity. Questions of the form "Would you still be you if x" like "if..you merged with an AI?" could just as easily be asked about personal identity over time. Like what makes "me" the same "person" as the mass of trillions of subatomic particles from yesterday also identifying as the "same me"? The more provocative but metaphysical sound position that there is no "I" at all, is not explored.

So here is a proposed solution: There is no I independently of the brain ascribing experiences to the organism. If this ascribing of experiences is also saved to long term memory, as is sometimes the case, then the brain can also construct experiences of identity over time. So if an entirely digitized uploaded bunch of memories is processed by some digitized brain, then this can in principle create a sense of identity over time which is just as much an I as the current sense of I created by the brain that happens to read these words.


The book lacks in conceptual clarity which should be expected from writings in philosophy of mind, and for the technical inclined futurologist there isn't much detail on the actual implementation of artificial intelligence or machine learning models.

[Zac Muncy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Brilliant and Thought-Provoking Exploration of AI and Consciousness

Artificial You is a rare blend of deep philosophy, cutting-edge science, and clear, accessible writing. Susan Schneider has crafted a compelling and essential read for anyone interested in the future of the mind in the age of artificial intelligence.

What sets this book apart is Schneider’s ability to confront big questions—Can machines be conscious? Should we upload our minds? What will happen to human identity as AI evolves?—with both rigor and humility. She doesn’t offer sensationalist predictions, but instead invites readers into a nuanced, careful exploration of what it might mean to be a thinking, feeling being in a world increasingly shaped by intelligent machines.

As a philosopher and a cognitive scientist, Schneider brings a unique and balanced perspective to the table. Her argument that intelligence and consciousness are not the same—and that we must be cautious about merging human minds with machines—is both convincing and timely. This is not just a book about AI; it’s a profound inquiry into what it means to be human.

Highly recommended for readers of all backgrounds, whether you’re a scientist, ethicist, tech enthusiast, or simply curious about the mind’s future.

[Joshua Burns · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book presents itself as "a dialogue between philosophy and science" (148), but is much more philosophy than science, and more pop-philosophy than an argumentative and technical work of professional philosophy. This is not necessarily bad: it's good for philosophers to be informing the public about issues in the philosophy of mind and disabusing people of naive functionalism and software-ism. Nevertheless, the discussion was often superficial. Schneider is deeply noncommittal about virtually every positions she discusses. She doesn't come away with any strong conclusions about AI ethics, and her "consciousness tests" are deeply flawed. Given some healthy caution about her transhumanist sympathies, this could be a decent recommended read for getting someone up to speed about how secular philosophy is thinking about AI and the mind. But it is not a particularly good work of philosophy, and as a Christian I'm deeply critical of many of Schneider's basic assumptions, especially the pervasive idea that man, consciousness, and the soul are all reducible to fundamental physics and of the same ontological cloth as the tools we create.

[erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting discussion about AI that introduced me to a lot of topics that I was not fluently educated in. I'm gonna take this book as a sort of Introduction to the larger, broader metaphysical and philosophical issues of AI. It's important to stay educated on the face of technological prowess. Especially if we consider a not-so-distant reality where we may be asked to make decisions in regards to the enhancement of our our minds, and so we must be aware of the implications of different procedures such as uploading.

Schneider goes beyond just machine learning and touches on the principles of personal identity, the differents methods we could apply to discern whether AI is conscious or not, and the civil rights debate regarding AI, amongst many more topics.

I listened to the audiobook, and I really commend Kate Fenton for her narration and for keeping me completely absorbed throughout what would otherwise be a book plump with info-dumping.

[Mark Skinner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Susan -

Thank you for a prophetic and limitless look at the future in terms of how articifical intelligence can and will impact the mind. I feel like it is a very futuristic writing as it explores outer space and what our role in it could be and how "alien" life could show up and how it happens or we get there.

I'm not sure how this will play out and I agree that it is critical we consider how are decisions with AI will impact the lives we live. I enjoyed reading what you've learned in your career and what some of the key concepts you feel we as a society should focus on or will be important to consider as we continue to develop and explore the technologies that will integrate humans with computer programs, software, and applications.

I will look forward to following your progress and career in terms of how you will continue educating us on this frontier. I appreciate your efforts in helping us focus on the important implications.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

For me it was fascinating to learn read about what might happen if you upload your brain to a computer, or get brain enhancements or reading about what type of intelligent life may be on other planets.

Before reading Artificial you I had heard of maybe one day we will be able to upload my brain to a computer. I had never considered whether what would be uploaded would be me or not. And I never thought even it was not me being uploaded to a computer would I still want my mind uploaded.

Towards the end of the book the author even talks about the sad story of Kim souzzi. On the same day she got an internship she also found out she had brain cancer. She was only 23 years old. And she had her brain frozen at Alcor.

I don't know if people will ever be able to get brain upgrades or if there will ever be super intelligent A.I. But, it was sure fun to read about.

[Firat Fidan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yapay zekayı sadece teknik bir gelişme olarak değil, zihnin ve benliğin sınırlarını zorlayan bir kırılma noktası olarak ele alan Susan Schneider, klasik bilimkurgu hayranlarının hayalini kurduğu ‘zihin aktarımı’ gibi kavramlara ciddi felsefi itirazlar getiriyor.

“Her şeyin bir kopyasını çıkarabilirsin, ama bu seni sen yapar mı?” cümlesi bence kitabın felsefi boyutundaki en derin cümle.

Kitap boyunca insan zihninin yalnızca veri değil, deneyim ve özneyle örülü bir yapı olduğunu hatırlatıyor.

Benim için en çarpıcı yanı, yapay zekadan korkmamız gerektiği için değil, onu hafife almamamız gerektiği için yazılmış olması. ‘Bilinç’ ile ‘Zeka’nın aynı şey olmadığını fark ettiğinizde kitap zaten amacına ulaşıyor. Son bölümleri fazlaca teknik felsefeye dayalı olduğundan biraz ağır olsa da AI ile ilgilenen herkesin mutlaka okuması gerekir.

[Antonella Montesanti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Libro letto per una challenge ma già datato anche se solo del 2022.
Saggio scritto molto bene, scientifico quanto basta per farsi capire da tutti, cerca di elencare pregi e pericoli dell'intelligenza artificiale, che nel frattempo ha fatto passi da gigante, nel bene e nel male.
Il pericolo di farsi prendere troppo la mano è grande, il rischio pure... Occorre stare molto attenti nell'uso e nell'abuso, pena la scomparsa degli esseri coscienti come le persone.
Può essere usata bene in campo medico e umanitario ma ho forti dubbi che la si usi con coscienza purtroppo, le premesse buone non ci sono a tutt'oggi.
Ascoltato in audiolibro e consigliato.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a real mind bender.

I find it interesting that this book is basically asking the same question a Christian (or anyone believing in an afterlife) would ask… “what do we take with us to heaven?”

What makes me me? What makes you you? Am I still me if I upgrade my brain with technology, or change it by a virus that improves my neurons functionality?

Fascinating book with lots of very interesting questions. Questions that our societies and people groups will not ever all agree on, and will have really interesting consequences for the future of our species’ evolutionary path.

[Breez · Rating 4 out of 5]

And this one feels like a guided tour of every wild idea you have ever had about AI and personal identity, but given a careful, slightly skeptical treatment. Schneider goes through brain uploads, conscious robots, and superintelligence in a way that is easy to follow if you know basic philosophy of mind. What I liked most is that she actually stops to ask what kind of mind we would want AI to have, not just whether it could think. Sometimes the scenarios feel a bit sci-fi, but it is the kind of sci-fi that makes you rethink your own future.

[Dmitry Kurkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Брезгливо отношусь к обзорным книгам, написанным по принципу "галопом по жопам", с перечислением без углубления в тему (а вот есть еще такая теория, а вот еще такое мнение). Книга Шнайдер - приятное исключение. При всей конспективности исследовательница ИИ ни разу не упускает из виду главные вопросы: "как понять, что спроектированная вами машина обладает сознанием?" и "а почему вы сами-то считаете, что у вас есть сознание?"

[Zoë Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/4 Interesting read that introduces metaphysics/philosophy of mind (and their implications) from different angles, including software view/program instantiation views etc. It was well-organized and thorough, and a good primer for further reading. But, at some points the writing could be more concise. At others the framing was a bit too trite and overly popular-science-esque for me.

I do respect that she did not jeopardize honesty for the sole sake of making the book more digestible!

[bunuokuyalim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sonuç bölümünde Susan Schneider “bu kitabın özü felsefe ve bilim arasında bir diyalog arayışıdır.” diyor. Kesinlikle Yapay Sen ile bunu okuyucuya verdiğini düşünüyorum.

Schneider felsefe alanında doktora derecesine sahip ve Zihnin Geleceği Merkezi’nin de kurucu direktörü. Bunların gözünüzü korkutmasını istemem zira metin oldukça anlaşılır.

Yapay zeka, zihin ve bilinç konularında geldiğimiz nokta ve bunların nerelere gidebileceği üzerine güzel bir kaynak. Schneider, yapay zekalar bilinçli olabilir mi, bilinçleri olmazsa ne olur, beyin aktarımı-kopyalama gibi işlemler mümkün olursa neler yaşayabiliriz gibi konulara değiniyor. Tüm bunların insanlar ve yapay zekalar için etik olup olmayacağını da tartışıyor.

pelindilaracolak ‘ın kitap kulübü sayesinden radarıma girdi bu kitap, kendisinin ay boyunca gönderdiği içeriklerle destekleyerek okumak kesinlikle çok daha verimli bir okuma süreci oldu benim için.

Yapay zeka ve bilinç konusuna felsefi açıdan bakmak isterseniz listenize ekleyebilirsiniz, keyifli okumalar 🤖

[Faith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very well written and argued, but a disturbing lack of distinction between the fictional and the real. There is also quite of a bit of time and energy devoted to protecting theoretical sentient AI beings, yet human life is brushed off as somewhat inconsequential (such as the reference to heat death). The colonizing impulse of the book also reveals the underpinnings of tech world thinking. Worthwhile to understand the kind of debates going on, but don't drink the kool aid.

[Chris Wilby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting that we are predicted to never accept dying so much as to have our brains copied into a robot so our existence can go on, but we then spend our last days on the moon colony. Or have them in some kind of Alexa device.

That's crazy imagine your dad with you forever, in a robot.

If this happens most of us would assign it to a cupboard just like Facebook.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another fascinating book on the future of AI. Speculative, of course, but adds some interesting ideas to the topic, particularly the important philosophical debate around personal identity and persistence of self. Quite a non-committal contribution (self-proclaimed wait-and-see!) but asks some interesting questions. Some cool thought experiments and love all the science fiction references!

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recommend watching ghost in the shell standalone complex first before reading this book. It helps create a concept that isn’t seen in the current day to day interaction and create a feel on what to think on human consciousness. This book further explores scenarios on developments being explored on consciousness and the different stances that are being taken in the modern world.

[Erkan Saka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unlike many other pieces on artificial intelligence, this book takes the reader to another realm: Some subcultures that take AI to another level, to a sort of theological level. It is enlightening to read about their ideas.

[Elizabeth Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got what I was looking for— a comparison between artificial intelligence and truly human intelligence, which goes beyond mere logic. On the heels of Les Fridman’s recent conversation with Sam Harris, I gained enough to imagine I could participate in working this intriguing topic.