Auto-poetic agents
According to Vervaeke, humans have a few traits that AI can’t have. We’re auto-poetic, meaning, moment by moment, our thoughts and environment shapes us. He calls his “perspectival knowing.” Based on what we evaluate from our perspective, it then reframes our perception, and what we find relevant. It’s a two-way process, where we are shaping and being-shaped by our niche. We can program meaning, and we have the wisdom to know what’s worth coding. Our selective attention and caring is what provides structure and makes us human.
While AI can have propositional knowledge, Vervaeke says it can’t have participatory or episodic knowledge. He says AI can’t have consciousness or agency, that they are not seeking the information they need to maintain their existence, but he’s conflating chatbots with all of AI. You can program agents to have participatory and episodic memory, and agents without wisdom would create a hellscape.