A Parrot Walks into a Bar

I recently asked Chat GPT to provide a joke that begins with “A parrot walks into a bar…”. The joke wasn’t funny.

Today, humor from Artificial Intelligence is parroted— sifting through previously published jokes, selecting the best example, and delivering it. Will AI ever develop good humor on its own?

To do so, AI must acquire consciousness to fully understand life’s experiences and make choices. Will AI ever develop consciousness?

Consider that science can explain how the brain affects our mental and physical functions, for example the act of reading or using our muscles. But science cannot explain how our cranium’s three pounds of grey matter produces consciousness. Science has theories about this “matter” but no widely accepted proof.

If science could explain how consciousness occurs, could science produce it artificially? And if so, would mankind be able to control it? Or would AI have a free will that could defy its human creator?

Note that mankind has used freewill to defy his creator from the beginning (Genesis 3). Adam and Eve violated God’s command, not because they wanted a forbidden apple, but because they aspired to be like God. With a human-created conscious, would not AI mimic us and exhibit defiant aspirations? Aspirations to exceed us?

Were I the creator of AI, I would limit it to being a useful parrot with no free will, even a parrot that tells bad jokes. Otherwise, the joke might be on us and much less humorous.