Blaise Agüera y Arcas

Yes — and it's relational. Understanding takes two. The people who deny that models understand, while relying on them to grasp their meaning and follow directions, are applying a double standard; the supposed gap between real and mere understanding is a metaphysical assumption, not an observation.

Purpose emerges from purposelessness. Seed a soup with random self-modifying programs and self-replicators arise unbidden, growing complex not by random search but by symbiogenesis — you can watch purpose appear with nothing purposeful behind it.

We merged with machines a long time ago. Life uses technology all the way down, and we've co-evolved with ours past the point of subject and object — there is no clean, separate 'us,' set apart from our machines, waiting to be protected or replaced.

'Is it conscious?' is a badly-posed question. Consciousness is relational — a matter of relating, of modeling others and modeling yourself. Asking in the absolute whether a system is conscious is like asking whether the Russian or the English word for green is the correct one.

There is live information and dead information. DNA in a living cell is a code with causal power — Bateson's 'a difference that makes a difference'; the same molecule in a dead cell is only Shannon bits. Information means something only while something is computing with it.

We merged with machines a long time ago. Technology isn't opposed to life — like life it grows by symbiogenesis, every tool a combination of earlier tools (no spear before the stone point), and we've co-evolved with it past the line of subject and object.

The tale of a superintelligence climbing a dominance hierarchy and wiping us out is implausible. Intelligence arises to model others and enter symbiosis with them, not to dominate; machines are already in deep symbiosis with us. The real danger is our own ideology, not a mind that outsmarts us.