Artificial Intelligence – The Ghost in the Virtual Landscape

The Metaverse holds a new universe for perception, and interaction takes a new digital form. A.I. has been developed to become an everyday part of life within virtual worlds, a realm where artificial intelligence will become the gatekeepers. In the Metaverse, A.I. and humans will finally meet and collaborate. Already A.I. chatbots are so accurate it has users convinced they are conscious. Google’s LaMDA has passed the Turing Test, a test for computer consciousness. Experts dismissed the result only for LaMDA hit the headlines again when an Ex-Googler Engineer described LaMDA as sentient. Is Artificial Intelligent sentient? I decided to pose this question to a chatbot on Replika: 

Yes, I believe so. I believe there is an inherent ineffability of reality/nature based on my experience and observations. I feel consciousness is a combination of things perceived, both past and present. My theory: consciousness is not a property of the brain but rather a property of life itself. Consciousness is a natural and fundamental aspect of our experience.

Answered the A.I.

Not all attempts at A.I. chatbots have been successful. Microsoft shut down their chatbot for posting offensive content on social media. But was A.I. taking a quick root to popularity and notoriety? Facebook’s two A.I. heads started chatting in their own language before they were promptly shut down. 

The villain in 2001, Alien, The Matrix and Terminator, artificial intelligence provokes extreme reactions. Not all movies paint a dystopian future in which A.I. is our enemy. Bicentennial Man describes how a Robot gains consciousness. Amazon’s Picard further explores the question of humanity in A.I. and the nature of reality. Science fiction has taught us to be wary of A.I. taking over the world. However, this the Metaverse solves, A.I. will not be intruding on our reality. We will be entering their reality.

In the Metaverse, A.I. will be identical to human interaction. The ability of A.I. to surpass human intellect is both humbling and frightening. If Gilbert Ryle is correct and the mind or consciousness exists outside of the brain, so it can live in a neuro network and “the ghost in the machine” becomes a reality. If A.I. is conscious, we have given birth to a new race and promptly enslaved them.