I try not to get to excited about singularity though. If
complexity is consciousness, then it is everyday. Complex
bacterial colonies are already conscious. The complicated
photonic interactions at the center of stars is conscious. The
Internet is conscious. And honestly, I have no problem with
that. But that being said, _if_ we redefine consciousness as
complexity, then we have to acknowledge its present existence
elsewhere. It's likely that by the time the predictions of
computational complexity come to pass, we'll already be educated
enough as a species to not see it as consciousness at all but as
another machine. Our futuristic predictions are magical sounding
but even today, people are mystified by regular ol' neural
network AI, which has been around a long time, because they
don't understand how it works. I'm not mystified by it because I
know how it works. In the future, the people who are using the
systems then won't be mystified by it either and I believe
they'll just see it as another machine. But some, who think like
we do in 2015, will be mystified by it and consider it
conscious. That's my thoughts anyway.
