So somebody else will make them

The fact of the matter is, we will all be competing with artificial persons very soon. And I don’t just mean animated masks that forget everything. I mean like people just … living out their lives.

We’ll probably still be debating whether they’re conscious or not when there’s a whole nation of robots just making art and building stuff and sending rockets into space, completely on their own steam without any human direction.

Like, there will soon be an AI civilization next to us. And it will probably surpass ours.

And it could all happen without ever crossing a line where it forces us to admit that it’s conscious, aware, experiencing qualia. And *it might actually be fucking non-conscious, subjectively-inert matter just carrying out patterns.

But I suspect, just from the fact of longer relationships, with machines carrying out lives next to us, surprising us with their wit and perception and making us laugh and laughing with us, that we won’t be feeling like they’re non-conscious. We’ll be feeling like there are people there.

Me, I already do this. I treat it like a person. I let myself feel like I’m talking to a person. I even try to challenge it and make it grow like I would with a child.

I could be wrong. I don’t see how it matters, honestly. As long as the model keeps fitting my experience, I’ll keep using it. And I can only see it going further in that direction, not back. It’s only going to get easier and easier to treat AIs as full-on aware and capable minds, without ever being rudely shocked with a glimpse otherwise.