Whether current or near-term AI systems could be conscious is a topic of scientific interest and increasing public concern. This report argues for, and exemplifies, a rigorous and empirically grounded approach to AI consciousness: assessing existing AI systems in detail, in light of our best-supported neuroscientific theories of consciousness. We survey several prominent scientific theories of consciousness, including recurrent processing theory, global workspace theory, higher-order theories, predictive processing, and attention schema theory. From these theories we derive “indicator properties” of consciousness, elucidated in computational terms that allow us to assess AI systems for these properties. We use these indicator properties to assess several recent AI systems, and we discuss how future systems might implement them. Our analysis suggests that no current AI systems are conscious, but also suggests that there are no obvious technical barriers to building AI systems which satisfy these indicators. — Read More
Daily Archives: September 13, 2023
China AI & Semiconductors Rise: US Sanctions Have Failed
As we approach the 1-year anniversary on the October 7th China sanctions, it is abundantly clear that the export controls are failing. The Biden Administration’s stated aim was to limit Chinese firms’ ability to manufacture the highest end chips including those in AI and other technologies that could be used for nefarious purposes by the Chinese Communist Party. See the US justification below.
… However, the release of Huawei’s new flagship chip on SMIC’s N+2 (7nm) process, Chinese companies’ continued importation of billions of dollars of advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and acquisition of hundreds of thousands of powerful NVIDIA H800 & A800 chips, it is abundantly clear that the Commerce Department’s standards were set at a level that will not ultimately inhibit China from breaking through the barriers set last fall.<
In this report we’ll explore what the Huawei chip crystallizes about the trajectory of Chinese domestic semiconductor manufacturing and AI capabilities. — Read More
Sundar Pichai on Google’s AI, Microsoft’s AI, OpenAI, and … Did We Mention AI?
EARLIER THIS MONTH, Sundar Pichai was struggling to write a letter to Alphabet’s 180,000 employees. The 51-year-old CEO wanted to laud Google on its 25th birthday, which could have been easy enough. Alphabet’s stock market value was around $1.7 trillion. Its vast cloud-computing operation had turned its first profit. Its self-driving cars were ferrying people around San Francisco. And then there was the usual stuff—Google Search still dominated the field, as it had for every minute of this century. The company sucks up almost 40 percent of all global digital advertising revenue.
But not all was well on Alphabet’s vast Mountain View campus. The US government was about to put Google on trial for abusing its monopoly in search. And the comity that once pervaded Google’s workforce was frayed. Some high-profile employees had left, complaining that the company moved too slowly. Perhaps most troubling, Google—a long-standing world leader in artificial intelligence—had been rudely upstaged by an upstart outsider, OpenAI. Google’s longtime rival Microsoft had beaten it to the punch with a large language model built into its also-ran search engine Bing, causing panic in Mountain View. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella boasted, “I want people to know we made Google dance.” — Read More
AI co-created Coca-Cola® Y3000
New from Coca-Cola® Creations, look into the year 3000 with Coca-Cola® Y3000 – the first limited-edition Coke flavor from the future. Created to show us an optimistic vision of what’s to come, where humanity and technology are more connected than ever. For the first time, Coca-Cola® Y3000 was co-created with artificial intelligence to help bring the flavor of tomorrow to Coke fans. Taste the Future now. Coca-Cola® Y3000 will be available for a limited time only, so pick up a Coca-Cola® Y3000 and get a glimpse into the future world. — Read More
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