John Searle: Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence [video]

Which, well there's a whole series of responses back and forth, with different ideas about what is or is not a good response.

One idea describes a machine where each state of the program is pre-computed, and the computer steps through the states one by one, but in each state, if the next of the pre-computed states was wrong (i.e. would not be the next step of the program, following from the current state), if (e.g.) a switch was flipped, it would cause the program to be computed correctly despite the pre-computed states being wrong, and if the switch is not flipped, then it would continue along the pre-computer states. If the switch is flipped on, or if its flipped off, and all the pre-computer states are correct, the same things happen, and it does not interact with the switch at all. If all the pre-computed states are nonsense, and the switch is flipped on, then it runs the program correctly, despite the pre-computed states being nonsense.

So, suppose that if the pre-computed states are all wrong, and the switch is on, that that counts as conscious. Then, if the pre-computed states are all correct, and the switch is on, would that still be conscious? What if almost all the pre-computed states were wrong, but a few were right? It doesn't seem like there is an obvious cutoff point between "all the pre-computed steps are wrong" and "all the pre-computer steps are right", where there would be a switch between what is conscious. So then, one might conclude that the one where all the pre-computed steps are right, and the switch is on, is just as conscious as the one which has the switch on but all the pre-computed states are wrong.

But then what of the one where all the pre-computed states are right, and the switch is off?

The switch does not interact with the rest of the stuff unless a pre-computed next step would be wrong, so how could it be that when the switch is on, the one with all the pre-computations is conscious, but when it is off, it isn't?

But the one with all the pre-computations correct, and the switch off, is not particularly different from just reading the list of states in a book.

If one grants consciousness to that, why not grant it to e.g. fictional characters that "communicate with" the reader?

One might come up with some sort of thing like, it depends on how it interacts with the world, and it doesn't make sense for it to have pre-computed steps if it is interacting with the world in new ways, that might be a way out. Or one could argue that it really does matter if the switch is flipped one way or the other, and when you flip it back and forth it switches between being actually conscious and being, basically, a p-zombie. And speaking of which you could say, "well what if the same thing is done with brain states being pre-computed?", etc. etc.

I think the Chinese Room problem, while not conclusive, is a useful introduction to these issues?

I think that -- from memory -- this is approximately what Searle believes himself to be saying:

1. Imagine that you're having a conversation with a person in another room, in Chinese. You're writing stuff down on little scraps of paper and getting little scraps of paper back. It's 100% clear to you that this is a real live person you're talking to.

2. Except here's the thing, it isn't. There's actually just this guy in the other room, he doesn't speak read or write Chinese at all. He just has a whole bunch of books and ledgers that contain rules and recorded values that let him transform any input sentence in Chinese into an output sentence in Chinese that is completely indistinguishable from what a real live person who spoke Chinese might say.

3. So, it's ridiculous to imagine that someone could actually simulate consciousness with books and ledgers. There's no way. Since the guy doesn't understand Chinese, he isn't "conscious" in the sense of this example. So we can't describe him as conscious. And the idea that the books are conscious is ridiculous, because they're just information without the guy. So there actually can't be any consciousness there, even though it seems like it. Since consciousness can't be simulated by some books, it's clear that we're just interacting with the illusion of consciousness.

Meanwhile, this is what people like myself hear when he tries to make that argument:

1. Imagine that you're having a conversation with a person in another room, in Chinese. You're writing stuff down on little scraps of paper and getting little scraps of paper back. It's 100% clear to you that this is a real live person you're talking to.

2. Except here's the thing, it isn't. There's actually a system made up of books and ledgers of rules and values in the other room. There's this guy there who doesn't read or write Chinese; he just takes your input sentence in Chinese and applies the rules, noting down values as needed, transforming it until the rules say to send it back to you. That's the sentence that you get back. It's completely indistinguishable from what a real live person who spoke Chinese might say.

3. So, it's ridiculous to imagine that someone could actually simulate consciousness with books and ledgers, but we're doing it for the sake of argument because it's a metaphor that we can hold in our heads. No one would claim that the guy following the rules in the other room is the "conscious" entity that we believe ourselves to be communicating with. And no-one would claim that static information itself is conscious. So either the "conscious" entity must be the system of rules and information as applied and transformed, or else there is no conscious entity involved. If there is no conscious entity involved, and since this is a metaphor, we can substitute "books and ledgers" with "individual nerve cells with synaptic connections" and "potentials of activation", and the conclusion will still hold true; there will still be no consciousness there.

4. However, we feel that there is a consciousness there when we interact with a system of individual nerve cells, synaptically connected with various thresholds of potentiation: even if it's a system smaller by an order of magnitude or so* that the one in our skulls, like our dog has. Thus we must conclude that the "conscious" entity must be the system of rules and information as applied and transformed, or we must conclude that notion of consciousness is ill-founded and inarticulate, that our understanding of consciousness is incomplete, and that our sense of "knowing" that we or another person are conscious is likely an illusion.

*I am fudging on the figure, but essentially we're comparing melon volumes to walnut volumes, as dogs have thick little noggins.

The states were (probably) produced by computing a conscious mind and recording the result.

Follow the improbability. The behavior has to come from somewhere. That somewhere is probably conscious.

Similarly, authors are conscious, so they know how conscious characters behave.