RE: Does Artificial Intelligence Merit Moral Concern and Rights?
very interesting topic. I have been thinking about related issues a lot lately. How to protect us from artificial intelligence is a very important concern. Evolutionary no species ever had a chance to exist when a more efficient rival was competing for the same resources. We will eventually create self-replicating machines and then we will see what happens.
On questions regarding consciousness I dont think we understand consciousness on a scientific level well enough to make strong conclusions. The majority opinion is that consciousness arises naturally from complexity such as chemistry arises from physics in complex systems. Then ai's would naturally gain consciousness, but I am not convinced. On the other hand evolutions seems to suggest that consciousness is in fact unavoidable.
Yeah, we need to think about our own survival in the presence of something that can potentially view itself as superior and us as a problem, since we are not very good at solving our own problems it may decide to do it for us :/
The degree of the psychological dimension emerges from the biological brain-neuronal network. All demonstrations in reality point to this, and no other way for consciousness to exist. I don't know if it will be possible to create consciousness apart from that. Like you say, we don't even know exactly how it emerges, only that it does hehe.