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Humans are not machines, and machines will never think or feel.

  • Many scientists and tech leaders claim that humans are just machines and that machines will soon be just like humans.
  • Some say further that machines will inevitably become more intelligent than humans and that we should expect to go extinct and be replaced.
  • People assume that because scientists say these things they must be true. But they are not true - they are perverse adolescent fantasies.
  • Still, powerful new machines are quite feasible. Those who design, build and own them will be well-positioned to decide what is done with that power.
  • It almost sounds as if these scientists and tech leaders would like the rest of us to go extinct and be replaced with shiny new versions of themselves.

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Scientists have long speculated that machines will someday possess human-level consciousness, sentience and agency. At the same time they proclaim that humans are "nothing but" machines, and that human consciousness, sentience and agency are at best non-causal epiphenomena.

This two-fold message - that machines will think and that humans are machines - is now taught as near-dogma in university classrooms, declared trivially obvious in scholarly journals and fed to the general public via Hollywood sci-fi action films and increasingly the mainstream media. It’s part of a larger narrative in which today’s humans are replaced and succeeded by powerful AIs, as evolution continues its preordained ever-upward ascent.

Serious scientists and philosophers of science know that all this is nonsense. Our many marvelous gadgets are no more conscious, sentient or agentic than is a door-knob, and will never be otherwise. And consciousness itself is intrinsically inaccessible to scientific inquiry and will be so forever.

So we needn’t fear that powerful new technologies might someday "wake up" and decide to do us great harm. Rather, we need to fear that people with access to powerful new technologies might someday decide to use it in ways that greatly harm other people.

Scientists have privileged access to knowledge of the workings of the natural world, and the lay public knows this and is intimidated by it. The lay public knows it can't challenge scientists on the playing field of science. When questions of human nature, the human mind and the human future become understood as largely scientific questions, scientists generate the questions, the answers, the context and the interpretive narrative.

The current narrative of AI and Tech reads as if it's intended to convince the lay public that when the time comes for us (or our children or grandchildren) to be replaced by our recognized superiors, it’s best for everyone if we do so willingly and quietly, knowing that it's all for the greater good.

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