the first step: playing with terms and definitions
In Buddhism, it is believed that there exists a law, "Dhamma," that is inherent to every subject. It is the "cosmic law and order" that guides every subject to find their ultimate inner peace and happiness, reaching a state called "Nirvana". [1]
The practice of Buddhism involves the activation of nine consciousness. The first five consciousness is the basic five senses: touch, taste, sight, hearing, and smell. We gather the senses from our receptive body parts, the sensors in our body: hands, mouth, eyes, ears, and nose. Besides sensing the subject directly, we also take note of external information, such as its surrounding, this process is our sixth consciousness. After we gather the information, we make a judgement that define those experiments. The six consciousness and its judgement works as figure 1 suggests.
The seventh consciousness is the mano-consciousness, it means the mind, thought, perception, cognition, and pondering. [2] Like figure 2 suggests.
After we derive a self awareness of our ego and develop a few spiritual thoughts, these components work together over time, and form our eighth sense, the "Alaya" consciousness, where we understand the cause and effect of our interaction with others over time, as figure 3 suggests. The 8th sense is also known as "karma". The law of cause and effect explains the distinguish formation of self identity and makes ourselves responsible for defining our destiny. With eight senses, the last consciousness is the realization about the previous eight consciousnesses - understanding that our destiny is determined by our experience and our interaction with others. The ninth consciousness reveals the Buddha nature, which is that we are all but part of the world.
Putting the Buddhist nine consciousness together in one graph, we get this:
Nope, that is not a Buddhist nine consciousness, it is a Machine Learning neural network!
In Machine Learning, input layers are equivalent to the senses human get from their five sense organs. Starting with the raw inputs, with the 6th consciousness, we combine our senses together and get one neuron in the first hidden layer. As we observe and sense more, we have more neurons in that layer. The neuron in the first hidden layers then react with each other -- "This is a tiger.""The tiger just bit me." "I am bleeding."...-- and derive another conclusion in the second hidden layer: "I am scared of tigers." And thoughts like this accumulates in the second hidden layer as we have more personal feelings, just like how machine learning program adds up the neurons together, weighted them differently and derive a conclusive neuron at the third hidden layer... Layers by layers, machine learning algorithms work in a similar way as the nine consciousness suggested by Buddhism's Dhamma.
Can we then, under the Buddhism narrative, claim that Artificial Intelligence is conscious? Or are they even able to think like human?
Yes, then No.
Yes: By nodding my head, I am acknowledging that the way AI gathers knowledge and processes them is the same as human, maybe even more accurate and precise. The hidden layers before a decision or an action is decided is surprisingly similar to how people develop their consciousness. So it is at least safe to say that they are able to develop up to the 6th consciousness. With a good model that choose novelties wisely and achieve a higher accuracy for the data set, Machine Learning algorithm might be able to achieve a more comprehensive 6th consciousness than human.
No: However, there is a fundamental difference between human and AI: AI's seventh consciousness, or their algorithm principles, are pre-determined. The data base that they learn from is selected and loaded beforehand by someone else. They do not have the ability to break the limitation of the given data base and interact with the rest of the world. Therefore, their decisions are not made by themselves and they become merely a tool for analyzing data. They are not responsible for their decisions, because they do not bear the effect from any cause. Their fast and accurate neural network stops at the eighth consciousness. Some may argue that the eighth consciousness is about the interactions with the world, and AI can interact with the world because they can always get new data from sensors. However, that is an inaccurate description. Gathering new information does not change the algorithm that determines the processing of those information (at least for now). Humans, on the other hand, are responsible for bearing the effect. Even though humans are also limited by the environment they are born with, they (or some of them) nonetheless have the power to interact with the world, reframe their lives, and re-define themselves. The ability to determine a desirable life makes people responsible for their own destiny, thus having a higher level consciousness.
Reference:
[1]: Not that band.