I agree that a computer is not a biological being. I think current LLM-based AIs are not conscious but, as to “everything else we normally associate with consciousness is biological and living,” while I agree that’s currently the case, if I look at AI (in general; not just at what’s popular now) through the lens of Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality, consciousness is on the Intellectual level (IIRC he classified what he referred to as Quality into Static/Dynamic and inorganic, organic, social, and intellectual).
A priori, there’s no reason why a level couldn’t be skipped and have intelectual patterns be supported directly in inorganic ones, skipping the biological (I think also the cultural, because if an AI ever is conscious we might as well call it alien and not just artificial: it would be so different from anything we know that it may just come from another galaxy, and it may not need a cultural substrate either).
I agree that a computer is not a biological being. I think current LLM-based AIs are not conscious but, as to “everything else we normally associate with consciousness is biological and living,” while I agree that’s currently the case, if I look at AI (in general; not just at what’s popular now) through the lens of Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality, consciousness is on the Intellectual level (IIRC he classified what he referred to as Quality into Static/Dynamic and inorganic, organic, social, and intellectual).
A priori, there’s no reason why a level couldn’t be skipped and have intelectual patterns be supported directly in inorganic ones, skipping the biological (I think also the cultural, because if an AI ever is conscious we might as well call it alien and not just artificial: it would be so different from anything we know that it may just come from another galaxy, and it may not need a cultural substrate either).