ChatGPTo3 take:

 

Behavioral alignment without a story about value-laden reflexivity risks brittle simulacra that look aligned until edge cases expose the hollowness. Treating metaphysics as mere rhetoric underestimates how deeply humans anchor meaning, purpose, and responsibility in those domains.

 

A better research agenda pairs functional tests with structured reflection on value, narrative, and lived experience—fields where the humanities remain indispensable.

 

Most research labs, including DeepMind, treat consciousness as a functional property that can be decomposed and tested. That stance deliberately brackets questions about ultimate reality, purpose, or spirit because those questions resist empirical metrics. The up-shot is a rhetoric that can sound dismissive (“let’s not get confused by metaphysics”) even when the mystery is simply parked, not solved.

 

No single framework has clinched “life, the universe, and everything.” Yet mapping where each leaves an explanatory hole is progress: it marks the live edges where fresh insight—scientific or metaphysical—can still emerge.

 

In this episode, Hannah is once again joined by Murray Shanahan, Professor of Cognitive Robotics at Imperial College London and Principal Scientist at Google DeepMind, for a philosophical deep dive on AI. They explore everything from consciousness and metacognition in animals, to symbolic AI and neural networks. Murray also shares insights into his involvement with the film ‘Ex Machina’ and discusses the idea  …

Below is a copy and paste of a discussion Admin had with ChatGPTo3 about the ideas in the above YouTube interview. Provided here for those who want to dive deeper into some of the weeds re human consciousness and “machine” consciousness.

This actually is more than an intellectual entertainment, as it gets to issues we want answers for in the realm of can AI provide a teacher student relationship on par with a human teacher student relationship?

IF so, what would that look like. Since “defining” consciousness is so challenging, it would seem that a lot of idea work will be needed to attempt to get worthy answers to that question.

This touches on ideas such as “what we mean when we say “Spiritual” and “Spirituality” vs “Material Reality”…such as are often used by thinkers in the ineffable realms (see Kris’s post on Mary Baker Eddy’s ideas and other recent posts here at PSA.