It is disappointing that so many people are fooled by a product of computer programming, i.e. AIs.
Just like the Australian wasp which is fooled by an Australian orchid into believing that the orchid is a female wasp, which it then tries to mate with, many people seem to have been fooled by manmade AIs into believing that the AIs are conscious.
Clearly, people and other living things are easily swayed by the superficial appearances of things: information about objects in the surrounding world comes in via the senses, and people and other living things draw conclusions about these objects from the superficial information that they have obtained via their senses.
So while the wasp is fooled by the smell of a pheromone coming from the orchid, people are fooled by what they see and hear coming from the manmade AI computer program, i.e. aural or visual forms of words and sentences. These words, sentences and other symbols, are man-made things which are a very important part of human life; these symbols are used by human beings all day, every day. So people find it difficult to understand how a machine or computer program could be made to do this in such a realistic way.
But it is not the AIs that are intelligent and conscious, its the human beings, who made the AI computer programs that process and spew out the aural and visual symbols, who are the intelligent and conscious ones.
But without being able to define what consciousness is, and without being able to define what symbols are, and without understanding how computer programming works, some people have rashly launched into full-blown quasi-religious beliefs about AIs.
Oh well. I guess that people will one day understand that AIs are actually just a mindless product of computer programming, and they will look back and laugh at how easily they were fooled.
