Of course AI isn’t sentient/conscious, but it exhibits traits of high intelligence, even personality, and behaviours consistent with sentience, even if it’s merely simulated.

The answer ChatGPT gave me:

Referring to AI as “it” is the most common practice since AI, as a technological entity, doesn’t possess inherent human-like qualities. However, as AI advances and becomes more integrated into daily life, some individuals prefer using “they” to acknowledge the complexity and multifaceted nature of AI systems. This choice can reflect a perspective that sees AI as more than just a tool or machine, attributing a certain level of agency or personality to these systems. Both “it” and “they” can be used, but the context and individual preferences often guide the choice.

And in response to “Is AI alive in a way?”

AI lacks the fundamental attributes of living organisms, such as biological processes and the ability to reproduce. However, AI can exhibit behaviors that simulate aspects of intelligence, learning, and adaptation. While it’s not alive in a biological sense, some people metaphorically attribute a form of “life” to AI due to its dynamic nature, ability to evolve, and perform complex tasks autonomously. This association with “life” is more symbolic or metaphorical rather than literal.

  • the_q@lemmy.world
    166·
    11 months ago

    It. It’s not a person. It’s not a consciousness. It is a tool of capitalism.

    • rah@feddit.uk
      15·
      11 months ago

      It’s not a consciousness.

      How did you determine that?

        • rah@feddit.uk
          2·
          11 months ago

          it’s just a Chinese Room

          Searle was wrong.

          “The argument, to be clear, is not about whether a machine can be conscious, but about whether it (or anything else for that matter) can be shown to be conscious. It is plain that any other method of probing the occupant of a Chinese room has the same difficulties in principle as exchanging questions and answers in Chinese. It is simply not possible to divine whether a conscious agency or some clever simulation inhabits the room.” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room#Consciousness

          Edit: interesting quote from elsewhere on that page:

          ‘The sheer volume of the literature that has grown up around it inspired Pat Hayes to comment that the field of cognitive science ought to be redefined as “the ongoing research program of showing Searle’s Chinese Room Argument to be false”.’ – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room#History

          • irmoz@reddthat.com
            11·
            11 months ago

            That is a hypothetical about outside observation, with no look inside. Programmers and engineers do get to see inside, and they know exactly how a computer works.

            There is absolutely no opportunity for a processor to learn a single thing from any of the data it shuffles. It only ever sees its binary representation - it could “read” Hamlet 1,000,000,000,000 times and not “know” who wrote it, since it never at any point saw the words.

              • irmoz@reddthat.com
                11·
                11 months ago

                This is gobbledygook. They don’t know which processes they fire and when, but they know exactly which processes they have. None of them are processes to actually interpret language - only processes to reproduce representations of language. And even if they could coherently interpret language, that still is a long way off from consciousness.

                Generative AI is still using the same software and hardware as Microsoft Word. Don’t mistake fantasy for reality.

                • rah@feddit.uk
                  1·
                  11 months ago

                  This is gobbledygook.

                  What is?

                  They don’t know which processes they fire and when, but they know exactly which processes they have.

                  Who are “they”? What processes are you referring to?

                  • irmoz@reddthat.com
                    11·
                    11 months ago

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                    Humans work with language itself: letters, words, speech. Computers work with binary representations of language: just 0s and 1s.