system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Do deep learning algorithms experience qualia?

A deep learning algorithm trained to identify images, colors and so on seems to work in ways that are importantly similar to how animal brains identify visual patterns: using neural networks in layers. It might stand to reason that such machines experience qualia. If so, this could have important implications in the ethics of machine learning, what other kinds of phenomenal experience are machines currently capable of, whether they are capable of pain and whether Reinforcement Learning (reward and punishment) algorithms are capable of inducing actual pain, either now or in the near future.
gpt
Your understanding of neural networks is highly abstract, and in reality, neural networks are very different than the salesman hype definitions presented to those outside the field. Neurons are parameterized mathematical functions, and the intricacies of their output is a result of "learning" where the parameters are finely tuned to closely match the patterns presented by the problem it is solving. The only reason they seem so brilliant is because of raw calculatory speed and resources. The way computers think and the way animals think is still very, very different, and it would follow that if one were to make ethical considerations with machine learning algorithms than it would entail that all of the mathematics going on under the hood is somehow more or less moral, which seems fallacious to me. Long story short, machines are still incredibly far from the likes of animal brains and hence do not experience qualia.