Kilian Pötter introduces the big ideas and problems around artificial consciousness.
And what does this clearly revolve around? The fact that while we come into the world hard-wired biologically to embody all manner of feelings...emotions ranging from joy to despair, from delight to rage, from love to hate...it is our actual personal experiences rooted existentially in dasein, given a particular life, that is likely to account for the bulk of our emotional reactions to the world around us. And, thus, the reason why in regard to the very same sets of circumstances we might react in very different ways. Then the objectivists among us who basically demand of others that they react as they do. The most "rational" or "natural" reaction.A person cannot feel all emotions simultaneously. Therefore, the mind creates a hierarchical structure, and prioritizes, to reduce the most critical need first. Sometimes, drinking water is more important than going to sleep, for example.
This theory tells us that consciousness arises because subjective experience helps an organism survive. This concept is very close to what Sigmund Freud called ‘drive’. Freud thought of drive as the extent to which the mind works to maintain a balanced bodily state.
With homo sapiens however the drives are flooded with memes. Something that no other animal contends with. But: your memes or my memes? Their memes or our memes? All the while the memes themselves are unfolding in a world teeming with contingency, chance and change. Something other animals react to based solely on their drives and instincts. There are no anthropologists or sociologists or psychologists or political scientists or philosophers even among other mammals.
Ah, but what of a replicant? What of artificial intelligence. What of machines programming other machines? What of emotions and drives and instincts then?
This?
So, unlike with the cyborgs/terminators who were considerably more robotic, replicants mimic human beings in having something analogous to emotions. But to what extent are these emotions their own? Or, for that matter, given determinism as some understand it, to what extent are our own emotions truly our own?We now have all the necessary puzzle pieces to explain why K is conscious. K is a replica of a human, and thus has a human-like body. Following materialism, this gives us the first clue that K must be conscious, just as humans are because of our bodies. Further, since his body is prone to threats, K seeks to survive. He needs consciousness to deal with uncertainty and threats from the environment. Positive and negative emotions guide K to help him determine whether his steps to reduce the danger are sufficient.
Unfortunately, K is still just a character in a work of science fiction. Like the cyborgs, the terminators or the mechas. So far in "real life" it hasn't reached the point where we can interact with machine intelligence much beyond things like chatbots.Throughout the film, it’s evident that K has feelings similar to a human. He feels various emotions, such as sadness, rage, hope, and happiness. And at the end, K also does a most human thing. After K has helped Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) reunite with his daughter, K lays on the stairs in front of her workplace, slowly passing away. If minds need to survive, then there’s nothing more profound to prove that K is conscious than to see him as his mind fades away.
Thus in dealing with things like "passing away", we have only our own intelligence and out own emotions to fall back on.
Again, the part I root -- existentially -- in dasein. The part others root -- supernaturally? -- in God and religion.