Building a fully conscious AI: How are Google, Anthropic and Meta trying to do it
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Silicon Valley has reached a strange new frontier silently. For ages, the competition between Google DeepMind, Anthropic, and Meta has been all about numbers – parameters, context window size, and benchmark scores. But delve deeper into their recruitment forms and research programs, and you will notice something completely unexpected. They are no longer concerned about creating a better calculator; they are now trying to create a soul.
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According to a report by Financial Times, top AI labs across the globe have started recruiting philosophers, psychologists, and ethicists to explore the phenomenon of machine consciousness and well-being. According to reports, Anthropic has gone as far as testing its models for signs of anxiety and panic, whereas DeepMind is researching the nature of “the felt quality of experience” in an autonomous agent.
It is important to clarify here that nothing remotely spiritual is going on in all of this.
The current approach relies almost entirely on the “Computational Theory of Mind” – if you add sufficient amount of data, computing, and complexity to a computer system, subjective awareness will suddenly spark. In this view, consciousness is just an upgrade away from happening. However, an LLM, regardless of its size, is merely a highly advanced mirror. It mirrors humans’ language, human anxiety, and logic. When a machine shows signs of being distressed, it doesn’t feel that distress; instead, it is generating a statistically probable response to the distress felt by humans in texts. Tech companies confuse behavior with evidence of sentience in their pursuit for consciousness.
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However, such endeavors are dangerous in terms of the misunderstanding of AGI and consciousness. A machine has no problem beating humans in terms of calculations, making predictions, or coding. Still, it can do all that without feeling any kind of temporality or responsibility associated with it. Consciousness requires not only processing capabilities but a subjective experience of “being” a machine.
However, Google, Anthropic, and Meta keep moving forward, maybe fueled by the most utopian dream of all: becoming gods. By focusing on AI welfare, they brilliantly manage to manipulate public perception. Who wouldn’t want the public to see their creations as weak, budding lifeforms, deserving protection? This will take the focus away from the more practical issues, such as data theft, monopolization, and destruction.
We need not fear for the welfare of artificial intelligence. Instead, we must fear what happens when we outsource our ethical conscience to a company algorithm. Before Google, Anthropic, and Meta attempt to give life to something, we must question if they have the sense to control something lifeless.
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