Gigaom AI Minute – May 7

Transcript

We recently surveyed Gigaom's audience about their views on artificial intelligence. Our audience is primarily made up of business people that have an interest in technology and I would like to use the next several AI minutes to explore the answers.

The seventh question that we asked may seem a little out of place. We ask, "Is consciousness a uniquely human phenomenon?" Consciousness is your experience of the world. It's your feeling of warmth, or the taste of an apple or something like that. And the question is, is it uniquely human? Not is it uniquely biological, but are humans the only conscious creatures?

The number of people who said "yes," was 50%. The number of people who said "no," was 25%. And the number of people who said, "I don't know," was also 25%. So, of the people who professed to have an opinion, 2-to-1 believe only humans are conscious. It's interesting that fully a quarter of people said they don't know, and in a sense, you kind of have to almost go with that answer, because consciousness is a subjective experience of something. We trust that people self-report it, that they are conscious, but obviously animals can't self-report. Although the consensus of thinkers in the consciousness space, would say that certain animals are almost certainly conscious.