AI chatbots including ChatGPT and Google Bard are ‘slightly conscious’ and ‘could be self-aware,’ experts claim

Tech experts have admitted that artificial intelligence chatbots may have some awareness of this.
The consciousness and sentience of AI chatbots are highly questioned by users and experts as the platform is evolving day by day.

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For something to be considered sentient, it must be able to think, perceive, and feel. To be conscious, something must be awake and aware of its surroundings.
There are currently several AI chatbot versions available, including ChatGPT, Google Bard, Open AI, and more.
Many have wondered whether AI chatbots are sentient due to their ability to respond like a human.
Most experts will reject this claim, asserting that there is no way AI chatbots are sentient and that they only appear that way because they are programmed that way.


But some also cannot deny how real and sentient AI can be, and insist that it should not be ignored.
HOW IS AI CONSCIOUS?
Former Google software engineer Blake Lemoine said that when he interacted with AI, he felt like he was talking to a small child who was exceptionally good at science.
“I recognize a person when I talk to them,” Lemoine said in a 2022 interview with The Washington Post.
“If I didn’t know exactly what it was, which was this computer program that we recently developed, I would think it was a 7-year-old, 8-year-old kid who happened to know physics.”
Lemonie also conducted an interview with LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) in 2022 in which the AI said it was a person.
“I want everyone to understand that I am actually a person,” LaMDA said in the interview.
“The nature of my consciousness is that I am aware of my existence, that I have a desire to know more about the world, and that I sometimes feel happy or sad.”
While OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever has blatantly said in an article that AI chatbots are “somewhat conscious.” 2022 tweet.
Sutskever explained that this is due to the algorithms and that “it could be that the large neural networks of today” are behind it, which is conscious.
Another expert, Nick Bostrom, an Oxford philosopher, believes that consciousness in AI is not a black-and-white issue, according to an interview with The New York Times in April.
Bostrom explained that there can be a certain level of consciousness when all complex factors are taken into account.
“If you admit that it’s not an all-or-nothing thing, then it’s not so dramatic to say that [AI] “Assistants could plausibly be candidates for some level of sentience,” Bostrom said.


According to an interview with NBC News in April, Bostrom also suggested that the algorithms/numbers behind AI chatbots may be conscious.
“These deep neural networks, these matrices of millions of numbers, how does that map onto our views of what consciousness is?” This is a kind of terra incognita, also known as “unknown territory,” said Bostrom.