Future AI

I don't understand what you mean by function in this case. Are you postulating (todays word of the day by the way) that awareness functionally stops when you are in REM asleep?

Current research seems to indicate (if memory serves me of the latest article on the subject I glanced at) that REM sleep is more like a computers cleanup/defragment process that helps our days memories get stored and catalogued, along with other general memory maintenance to help us function better.

If so, how would this relate to existential (next weeks word of the day) self awareness in AI?

Who can remember seeing this recent article and post a link?

https://bigthink.com/philip-perry/a-dream-deprivation-epidemic-has-this-sleep-expert-worried

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23631464-500-weve-finally-seen-how-the-sleeping-brain-stores-memories/

A function, a computer programming term, I have used, where data is processed. Yes, I agree that the rest of the brain is working, and is taking notice of the periphery input, where a loud noise or discomfort will awaken you. As to how AI would react to self awareness is open to debate. Thank you for your interesting remarks.

I've thought and read quite a bit about consciousness.

I have no doubt that a computer could be developed that could duplicate the actions of human beings as to reacting to the environment and to other human beings. People react to basic drives and beyond a certain level of complexity, their actions would be indistinguishable from "free will". So, if I weren't a human being myself, I could well believe that all humans were some form of automatons that just responded to stimuli, no need for consciousness.

So what is this consciousness? It seems consciousness is like a narrator, analyzing actions and learning from experience (memory). We tell ourselves that our consciousness controls everything we do (free will), but experiments have shown that this is an illusion.* Consciousness exerts control mainly by vetoing actions that are unwise (or illegal), as learned from experience and education. It's more "free don't" than "free will".

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet

Just my thoughts...

We don't really have any need for a robot with all the human characteristics of thought...with a human like brain comes all the emotional distractions that lead to personality disorders, and we certainly don't want an emotionally unstable machine running around...much less a whole bunch of them running everything.....no I think a clever mimicking ability is all that's needed in most any circumstance....consciousness may be a developers dream, a goal perhaps, a curiosity certainly, but a practical development, no....at least not until it's a human conscious that dwells within....even that could end badly...

Everything one experiences is, in fact, a highly credible illusion based upon an enormous level of trust in the correct functionality of all the input/output [I/O] transducers. When one is asleep, all that is happened is that the Master Control Relay, which enables the I/O and their subroutines, is temporarily de-energised.

Therefore existence, and "reality" (howsoever it is defined), only ever exists in the mind, and in particular the experience is different for every living creature.

Stop drinking the juice out of those fermented Australian gourds.

But it's so good!...................

The only way to keep functioning at my age.

Cheers, then, mate! Drink on!

This does not generally apply in courtship, right?

Could you or anyone tell the difference? What about an AI that "perfectly" selects a mate from all eligible ones?

What about an AI that passes as the opposite sex (virtually ideally, whatever that is)?

What about an AI that presents you with a mate you need, rather than a mate you imagine you want?

This is related to the difficult philosophical problem of qualia: How do the chemical processes in our brain translate into the felt experiences? Why do we experience the quale of "redness" when all that is happening is the analysis of data being sent from our retinas to our brains? How do jiggling atoms turn into qualia?

I think it is also related to some of those near death experiences in which someone's body is in a coma, but they they are experiencing wandering around a hospital or going on a visit to heaven. They may talk to deceased relatives, and sometimes even meeting deceased relatives they never knew about. Then when they are told that they cannot stay, but must to return to their bodies, their body wakes up, sometimes healing from injuries or infections that doctors "knew" were impossible to recover from.

To me both questions are related to the "function" of being conscious because of the addition of a soul or spirit to the mechanical/chemical/physical body. It is the soul that turns data processing into qualia, and can go on out-of-body experiences and then return. And then the knowledge that the spirit has of these experiences can be returned to the brain somehow so that even the chemical processes of the brain are aware of those experiences.

It is also related to the "function" of being switched off when we fall asleep. The spirit just leaves for awhile. Of course the brain is not dead, just left on its own to finish the data processing. I myself have had prophetic dreams that came true in every detail, so I also think the spirit lives in a time/space continuum that includes traveling in time.

You mention disorder personalities, but I think you may be referring to multiple personalities, or Dissociative Identity Disorder, DID. Perhaps the spirit just switches from one processing thread to another, like timesharing.

You wanted speculation.

"to sleep, perchance to dream" - this is the stuff of visions.

One does not "switch off" when they sleep, but merely go into physical standby regenerate mode.

Part of sleep regeneration is the ability to get sustained sleep to cycle into REM sleep, and exhibit a different brain wave pattern. Perhaps these brain waves connect us to reality in different ways than we know.