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Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

#91

Post by joubert »

matthew-wegner wrote: post #14

I look at consciousness fairly oddly: I believe consciousness is an emergent property of a complex system; it is simply the nature of the universe that complex systems exhibit consciousness. I'm defining "complex system" as any system whose outputs/results affect the inputs/possible states. If I think something, the possibility space for my next thought is dependent upon my previous thought, and so on. I think artifi…

Aren't you also (perhaps only almost) defining complex systems as those that have consciousness? I.e. your argument for the one is dependent on the other and vice versa?

Re: Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

#92

Post by ewjordan »

fburnaby wrote: post #86
drcode wrote: post #7

I am dead certain that it would NOT be possible to achieve consciousness in a computer program. On the other hand, I know if I ever had to debate this question with Daniel Dennett or Eliezer Yudkowsky or any other capable person who believes there's nothing special about "consciousness" I would lose the debate. Attributing a special meaning to consciousness, on the surface, is just as illogical as believing in religi…

Searle is an atheistic (I think - at least he's nonreligious) philosopher who agrees with you. He argued against "functionalism" - which is pretty much the stance that most here are taking - that consciousness is a complex adaptive process, nothing "magical". However, he's just playing with your intuition, the same way you are, and his logic (though not his certainty, either, from the bit I've read) is flawed. You sh…

Searle is an atheistic (I think - at least he's nonreligious) philosopher who agrees with you. He argued against "functionalism" - which is pretty much the stance that most here are taking - that consciousness is a complex adaptive process, nothing "magical".

Now that someone brought up the S-word, I can't help but paste in one of my favorite Searle quotes (http://sss.stanford.edu/others/johnsearle/), which to me very clearly indicates how much of a mental and logical struggle it is (and how much flubbery is required!) to attempt to justify his position:

'Could a machine think?' My own view is that only a machine could think, and indeed only very special kinds of machines, namely brains and machines that had the same causal powers as brains. And that is the main reason strong AI has had little to tell us about thinking, since it has nothing to tell us about machines. By its own definition, it is about programs, and programs are not machines. Whatever else intentionality is, it is a biological phenomenon, and it is as likely to be as causally dependent on the specific biochemistry of its origins as lactation, photosynthesis, or any other biological phenomena. No one would suppose that we could produce milk and sugar by running a computer simulation of the formal sequences in lactation and photosynthesis, but where the mind is concerned many people are willing to believe in such a miracle because of a deep and abiding dualism: the mind they suppose is a matter of formal processes and is independent of quite specific material causes in the way that milk and sugar are not.

Even if the guy's a freaking idiot (which he is), you've gotta appreciate the way he tries to turn the "dualist" label against the people that are most opposed to dualism, while that's almost exactly what he's arguing for. He would have made a great politician; unfortunately, he's made his career arguing about something that he doesn't really understand, which is a damn shame, I hate to see so much mental energy spent fighting a lost battle...

Re: Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

#93

Post by dkasper »

nwatson wrote: post #53
Mentat_Enki wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bah....I call bullshit. This is pure anthropomorphism. Humans think they are the shit, but in fact they are only story-telling animals (which does give us an evolutionary advantage, incidentally. We are not limited in our information transfer inter-generationally by genes alone.) We are limited by the same physics as the chips we make. This innate quality you speak of is pure vapor. Even if humans were somehow able t…

humans are unique in the universe among all life forms and inanimate objects, are more than the sum of their physical parts, have a connection with something larger than the universe, and though in an insignifcant corner of an insignificant galaxy have an eternal significance.

There's no way to prove we're unique in the universe. At most you could say the known universe, but even then you're going to have a hard time convincing people of that.

Re: Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

#94

Post by ewjordan »

kevbin wrote: post #28
drcode wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't you agree that it feels awfully "weird" to be a living, breathing human? Doesn't it seem to be beyond what can be expressed by mere computer algorithms? I realize it is not a defensible argument to say that the human experience is just to "weird" to be computable- I wish I had a better argument for defending my position... Nonetheless, I find it hard to understand people, such as yourself, that are probably…

Weird compared to what? I have no experience being anything other than a living, breathing human. Thomas Nagle wrote up the classic "qualia" argument you're making as "What is it like to be a Bat?" (here: http://www.clarku.edu/students/philosophyclub/docs/nagel.pdf... , it seems persuasive: that there is a certain subjective quality to consciousness & conscious experience— it must feel like something to be a bat, or…

If you're digging into Hofstadter (and if you aren't, you should be, whether or not you agree with him, almost every word he's ever written is worth reading, including the seemingly irrelevant stuff about translations), I Am A Strange Loop (http://www.amazon.com/Am-Strange-Loop-Douglas-Hofstadter/dp/...) is a good read, as well.

Re: Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

#95

Post by kevinpet »

christopherolah wrote: post #82
kevinpet wrote: post #8

If we assume that humans are conscious, then yes, it is possible for a machine to be conscious. The only arguments categorically differentiating humans from electronic machines are religious in nature. I define consciousness as having an internal model of the world that includes yourself, as well as your own though processes (at a lower degree of fidelity). This says how you compute things, not what you are computing…

I'm not sure I agree. For several reasons: a) The phenomena of qualia remains unexplained. This has no bearing on making something that can mimic consciousness, but does become significant if one wants the real thing. The last argument on this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=766462 b) QM may be intrinsically linked to consciousness. (see Roger Penrose, _The Emperor's New Mind_) Of course, this a mute point given…

The fact that qualia are an inherently internal experience means that there can be no way to communicate them to anyone else. We are willing to accept that the other minds problem isn't a problem because we believe they are similar to us. This is why I say that machine intelligence would have to display a very high level of consciousness for us to accept it as conscious. Humans get a pass.

I discount Penrose's argument because he offers no phenomena that actually require his QM effects to explain and offers no plausible evolutionary path by which human minds could have evolved the mechanisms relying on QM. Do other primates have QM effects in their brains? What do these explain, given that the current models of the brain that we have are capable of explaining everything that we see? (Though we don't yet have the practical capability to simulate an entire complex brain and suitable io.)

Re: Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

#96

Post by Locke1689 »

mlLK wrote: post #70
Locke1689 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must protest your lack of LaTeX/TeX use in your crummy paper. Knuth's line terminating algorithm has made me forever hate Word's aesthetics.

I'll join your protest in my paper's lack of LaTeX; although I must admit that I've never felt or even considered anything I've ever published (for someone of higher academic seniority) a serious scientific contribution. Nevertheless, shame on you for introducing the two following ideas in a complete sentence, Knuth's line terminating algorithm and Word's aesthetics . o_O As soon as my words are worth it, I swear to…

Can't argue with that. Ever since freshman year of college I've just sworn off writing a paper in anything but LaTeX. Rather simple after you get used to it and a PDF is nice and portable too. Of course, I also tend to use a lot of math, especially in my theoretical computer science pieces, at which Word is just absolutely lousy. Anyway, just passing along my thoughts. :)

Re: Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

#97

Post by wensing »

joubert wrote: post #90
joeyo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but how is a constructed object and a ... (randomly? naturally? what ever word you want to use) evolved object quantitatively different? One could follow all the steps involved in getting a human from his evolutionary ancestor to his current state by using a pair of magic tweezers to make each mutation in the genome happen at the right time and in the right way. Could you tell the difference based on the result?

Yes, you can easily tell the difference between entities that have evolved by natural selection, and constructed entities. (BTW, mutation is random, but evolution is not a random process). Two example quantitative differences (although, I'm not sure why the specific exclusion of qualitative differences): 1) The human eye, for example, has flaws (that are solved in other similarly evolved eyes) that an engineer laughs…

The human eye, for example, has flaws (that are solved in other similarly evolved eyes) that an engineer laughs at

What are those flaws, if you happen to know? I'm curious.

Re: Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

#98

Post by ewjordan »

codexon wrote: post #29
kevinpet wrote: post #8

If we assume that humans are conscious, then yes, it is possible for a machine to be conscious. The only arguments categorically differentiating humans from electronic machines are religious in nature. I define consciousness as having an internal model of the world that includes yourself, as well as your own though processes (at a lower degree of fidelity). This says how you compute things, not what you are computing…

You are assuming that there is no innate quality of human organic compounds and processes that differentiates us from electrical components. It may very well be the case that this is either true or false. We simply don't have enough evidence. And given the fact that we are discovering new properties of matter and organic reactions all the time, there is a bias towards this being false.

You are assuming that there is no innate quality of human organic compounds and processes that differentiates us from electrical components.

It may very well be the case that this is either true or false. We simply don't have enough evidence.

It's true, we can't prove it one way or the other at the moment, but that usually just means that Occam's razor should guide our speculations and assumptions. Since the brain seems like all it's doing is performing some computations, why would we ever assume that its true function is to do something more than that?

And given the fact that we are discovering new properties of matter and organic reactions all the time, there is a bias towards this being false.

There's a good chance that the way the brain achieves its computations is indeed a bit more complex than, for instance, an artificial neural network, absolutely. But that's an implementation detail, and there's certainly no reason to assume that there's no computational model that can account for it - biologists are very close to having full working models of individual neurons already. Further, it's highly likely that the brain does its job in a biologically convenient way, not a logically convenient one, and I'd give good odds that there are a lot of logical simplifications that could be made to end up with a cleaner architecture that performs the exact same tasks.

Re: Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

#99

Post by Diakronik »

Grad student in Cognitive Science, here. My focus is language, but consciousness is an ongoing side interest.

The answer: Yes and no, depending on what you mean by "consciousness".

If you mean something like "access to internal states" (and maybe reportability thereof), then yes. Arguably there are extant, albeit crude, versions of this form of machine consciousness.

If, on the other hand, you mean something that starts to look like qualia (i.e. "raw feels"/"what's it's like"/"the hard problem"/etc cf. the Chalmers references already made), then no.

Of course, my "no" essentially echoes Dan Dennett's, in that I don't think people are conscious in this way, either. I suspect a lot of our "feelings" are internal post-hoc stories (made possible by enabled by command of private language) that rationalize/create causal attributions for the physiological correlates of stress ("four Fs" situations).

That being said, I could be wrong, and finding a way to get at these hypotheses empirically would be a genuine advance, whether they were supported or refuted. So by all means pursue this...as someone else pointed out, it's likely the "final" answers won't be known in your lifetime, and if it brings you fulfillment in your lifetime, then giv'er.

As for where to apply, there are loads...some have already pointed out several researchers (Hofstadter, Koch, etc.), so you could always apply where they are. There's also UCSD, UArizona, Carleton University (in Canada), etc...

Re: Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

#100

Post by ewjordan »

bkovitz wrote: post #38
kevbin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird compared to what? I have no experience being anything other than a living, breathing human. Thomas Nagle wrote up the classic "qualia" argument you're making as "What is it like to be a Bat?" (here: http://www.clarku.edu/students/philosophyclub/docs/nagel.pdf... , it seems persuasive: that there is a certain subjective quality to consciousness & conscious experience— it must feel like something to be a bat, or…

The "weirdness" (or whatever you want to call the enormous explanatory gap between our mental lives and inanimate matter) deserves an answer. It's not something to sweep under the rug as "subjective" or "unscientific" or "poorly defined". I agree, though, Hofstadter and Dennett have done an extraordinary job of devising such an answer. There is lots more work to be done, of course.

The "weirdness" (or whatever you want to call the enormous explanatory gap between our mental lives and inanimate matter) deserves an answer. It's not something to sweep under the rug as "subjective" or "unscientific" or "poorly defined".

But what if the answer to the "weirdness" question is, in fact, that it's just an ill-formed question? What if it's just an illusion, and your brain is tricked into seeing something magical about itself where there is nothing there?

Apart from a mystical explanation, I cannot imagine any satisfying answer to the question (i.e. one that doesn't leave you feeling uneasy like Hofstadter's answer does to most people), which usually means that there's something wrong with what we're asking, not with how we're trying to answer it.

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