Comment by putzdown

The article argues that because each little computer is a little “sentient”, and because machine learning builds algorithms that are intractable to the people who nurture them, and because in a house there will be lots of these sentient and intractable “learning” machines, that therefore the house (and car and office...) is full of consciousness, much like primitive ancients would have imagined a forest to be. This is simply terrible logic. It certainly resembles the logic of those primitive ancients. It does not follow that just because you don’t understand something or find it awe-inspiring, that it is therefore conscious, or a spirit, or a god. This is a dangerous error, because to worship, or merely believe in, the consciousness of one’s house is to cling to a fantasy and to place personality where there is no personality. Why don’t you continue to attribute consciousness to the human beings around you who actually have it, rather than wasting regard on soulless man-made calculators? Is humanity doomed to always revert to creating their own gods and worshipping them? What is it in us that longs to do that?