The Stream of Consciousness Revisited

A couple years back, I wrote about one of the philosophical questions I have about life. Suppose strong AI (I'm fascinated with AI.) were achieved as a computer program living on my computer, and I were to start its life on my terminal. The same questions I brought up about humans earlier would apply to the AI program. If I send the program a ^C and then start the program back up again, is it going to be the same being, the same stream of consciousness?

The thought occurred to me today that it might not matter whether or not it is the same stream of consciousness. As each instant passes, the old being is left behind. It's gone forever. I am a new person with each moment. Even with this thinking, though, I think I've reached another unanswerable question: Why does my existence seem so coherent? This is one of those that makes my brain hurt, like trying to think of how long eternity is...

With each moment that I am aware, I am confident that I will still be aware in the next instant. Time slips by, and I hardly take notice. But if you were to knock me out, clone me, copy my memories over to the clone, then wake both me and my clone up in different rooms, my clone wouldn't even be aware of the fact that he didn't exist previously.

Speculation on Life and Artificial Intelligence

Around a year ago (before The Prestige was released), I was studying for my Artificial Intelligence class when some strange ideas wandered through my head. In order to preserve them, I wrote them down on a sheet of notebook paper. I was just going through my notebooks when I stumbled upon these notes again.

Life
What constitutes a soul or an awareness? I can be certain that I exist presently because I am currently thinking and aware. I believe even Descartes can agree with that.

When I go to sleep, I lose consciousness. I am no longer aware. Am I the same person when I wake up? Does the same consciousness pick up where it left of, or does the old one end and a new one take its place? I have read that when we sleep, the section of our brain that is used for long-term memory is shut off. Perhaps when we sleep, we are still conscious, but we simply can't remember much of it when we awaken. I once heard that a person might consider his life just a collection of his memories. That definitely puts sleep and dreams in a strange classification. Is a life defined by a combination of a person's stream of consciousness and his collection of memories?

The same question gets stronger in circumstances such as a brain transplant. Or teleportation. If all of the molecules in my body are disassembled and then reassembled in a new place, does the same consciousness get transferred, or does one person die while a new, identical one is reborn, completely oblivious to the fact that his old consciousness has "died".

AI
A being has a thought cycle. What occupies that thought cycle at a given time is determined by things such as the being's interests and "interrupts" (as in computing) from its senses. I wonder how it breaks its thought cycle to remember something it needs to do.

A being might be given a set of instincts, which is behavior the being is urged to do in a given circumstance. Whether or not the being follows the instinct is up to its decision-making process. After repetitive behavior, that behavior should become more and more instinctive. I wonder how.

I wonder if a being that is given a strong desire to learn and a given set of instincts might be able to find its own instincts strange. I wonder if a being modeled in a human image might find a modified set of instincts foreign.

A being could be created to dislike boredom as a method to gain a desire to learn and gain interests. I wonder how it could discern from a topic that is interesting and one that is not.

Boredom could be a state of mind where there are no current interests or activities to occupy its thought cycle.