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Can computers become conscious?: My reply to Roger Penrose

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Re: Can computers become conscious?: My reply to Roger Penrose

#61

Post by andrewla »

Animats wrote: post #28
andrewla wrote: post #22

> Look, clearly we’re machines governed by the laws of physics. We’re computers made of meat, as Marvin Minsky put it. This really seem inescapable to me. The remaining arguments all seem like smokescreens. Being able to copy computer programs? Reproducing the running state of even a moderately complex distributed system is effectively impossible, so this argument bothers me not at all. Even if there is some quantum…

"Reproducing the running state of even a moderately complex distributed system is effectively impossible, so this argument bothers me not at all." That's a feature of the Xen hypervisor.[1] You can even migrate a process from one machine to another without stopping it. [1] http://wiki.prgmr.com/mediawiki/index.php/Chapter_9:_Xen_Mig...

> distributed

And even the Xen example is rough; the new copy of the system will be mostly functionally identical, but any reliance on the state of external things (like remote storage or IO or the state of unfair nondeterministic locks) will rapidly cause state to diverge.

Which only begs the question about how high-fidelity a copy has to be to be a "copy", even in the case of a hypothetical consciousness copy, and leads into the even more subtle question of the time evolution of a person and whether the me of now and the me of twenty seconds ago can be said to represent the same singular "consciousness" at all.

Re: Can computers become conscious?: My reply to Roger Penrose

#62

Post by visarga »

andrewla wrote: post #43
mariodiana wrote: post #31

Have some fun and google the following: technological analogies for the human brain in history For the last 30 or 40 years, the brain has been "a computer." Prior to that, it was: (insert latest and greatest technology). I'm sure we're on to something, but I think it best we take it all with a grain of salt.

The difference between then and now is that we have the Church-Turing Thesis, and the less precise Universal Church-Turing Thesis. A violation of the UCTT would be a Big Deal. Because of this, we now know that previous models of the human brain (as a hydraulic system, as a mechanical system of differential gears, as a weaving machine) are, in fact, also capable of expressing all computable functions (and we can even…

The only question remains - does it feel like something to be a computer? If the computer has the ability to sense like us, to reason like us, to form concepts, to imagine and to judge and act according to its goals, is this enough to consider it conscious?

Re: Can computers become conscious?: My reply to Roger Penrose

#63

Post by tim333 »

andyh2 wrote: post #42
joe_the_user wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That said, I feel that we are extremely far away from producing a computer-based consciousness Views of distance to the production of "conscious" machines are likely all over the place because there aren't really any clear ideas about what consciousness is and why it's important. * Is it one state of mind that represents another state of mind? We trivially can construct computers with states which reflect each other.…

I believe the broadest consensus defines consciousness as having a subjective experience. What's unclear, and some deem impossible, is how we can externally detect consciousness. A machine could act and respond in a manner indistinguishable from humans but still be unconscious.

>A machine could act and respond in a manner indistinguishable from humans but still be unconscious.

There are some types of behaviour that could make it clear a machine was conscious from a practical point of view. Say you had a robot teacher and threw something when it's back was turned and you tried to frame a fellow classmate but the robot saw through it and told you not to do that. It would be fairly clear it was conscious of what was going on from a practical point of view. You could of course say it's not real consciousness because it a robot but how do you know a human teacher is conscious beyond such behaviour?

A statement like "They've figured out what we're up to and are thinking how to stop us, though luckily they are not conscious." doesn't really make sense regardless of what the they is.

Re: Can computers become conscious?: My reply to Roger Penrose

#64

Post by gpderetta »

tim333 wrote: post #57
gpderetta wrote: post #47

The most interesting definition I have seen of consciousness is [1] "the mind thinking about the mind thinking", i.e. some sort of meta-level "diagnostic process". What I find interesting is that this definition supports awareness and an the existence of an 'I', but doesn't imply any sort of control or direct influence on the unconscious mind for which there seem to be experimental evidence against. Instead the resul…

Thinking about thinking might be a bit over demanding - we still tend to consider people conscious when they are reading HN for example. People definitely can think about thinking though so a system wouldn't be human level if it couldn't so that.

you are taking the 'thinking about thinking' too litteraly (that would be 'thinking about thinking about thinking'). For your HN example, reading itself would be an unconscious process, you becoming aware of the words as they get processed on your mind and acquiring meaning and triggering recollections and additional side thoughts is the conscious meta process.

Re: Can computers become conscious?: My reply to Roger Penrose

#65

Post by joe_the_user »

tim333 wrote: post #52
joe_the_user wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That said, I feel that we are extremely far away from producing a computer-based consciousness Views of distance to the production of "conscious" machines are likely all over the place because there aren't really any clear ideas about what consciousness is and why it's important. * Is it one state of mind that represents another state of mind? We trivially can construct computers with states which reflect each other.…

>there aren't really any clear ideas about what consciousness is and why it's important. I personally feel fairly clear on that though I may be wrong. It is I think awareness in the central part of the brain that beings in data from other parts and can think about it. For example if you walk across the room you don't normally have conscious awareness of your leg movements because that happens with more simple neural…

I personally feel fairly clear on that though I may be wrong.

That's the thing. Many people feel clear about their particular explanation of consciousness. These explanations build on some simple intuitions, may resonate as true to others. But often don't agree with the other explanations other people make (or are fairly trivial).

It's fine for vague social consensus but very far from an engineering spec. Yet this consciousness thing seen as being shared between people like Penrose or new agers who give pure vitalist/fluffy-cloud explanations and those who attempt to logically coherent explanation.

It is I think awareness in the central part of the brain that [bring] in data from other parts and can think about it.

- Data that reflects data? Of course computers have that.

Re: Can computers become conscious?: My reply to Roger Penrose

#66

Post by joe_the_user »

andyh2 wrote: post #42
joe_the_user wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That said, I feel that we are extremely far away from producing a computer-based consciousness Views of distance to the production of "conscious" machines are likely all over the place because there aren't really any clear ideas about what consciousness is and why it's important. * Is it one state of mind that represents another state of mind? We trivially can construct computers with states which reflect each other.…

I believe the broadest consensus defines consciousness as having a subjective experience. What's unclear, and some deem impossible, is how we can externally detect consciousness. A machine could act and respond in a manner indistinguishable from humans but still be unconscious.

I believe the broadest consensus defines consciousness as having a subjective experience.

I could go one further and say "I believe the absolute broadest consensus defines consciousness as having a conscious experience." and only say slightly less vague than your statement.

Conscious, subjectivity, awareness in some of their meanings are just synonyms for some internal experience or other. There's a sense that this internal experience reflects things in a unique way, that it's not controlled by outside constrains, that it reflects a person's unique choices not controlled by any fixed pattern or program. But it's just primarily an intuition.

Re: Can computers become conscious?: My reply to Roger Penrose

#67

Post by gpderetta »

c54 wrote: post #53
gpderetta wrote: post #47

The most interesting definition I have seen of consciousness is [1] "the mind thinking about the mind thinking", i.e. some sort of meta-level "diagnostic process". What I find interesting is that this definition supports awareness and an the existence of an 'I', but doesn't imply any sort of control or direct influence on the unconscious mind for which there seem to be experimental evidence against. Instead the resul…

So do we not mean "conscious" as the opposite of "unconscious"? As in it's possible to knock out a dog - rendering it unconscious. But when it wakes back up it's not going to think about the fact that it's a dog (as far as we know). So what's the name for a dog's normal not-unconscious waking state?

you are confusing begin unconscious, i.e. in a comatose state, with consciousness. Other than the similarity of the words, they have little in common.

Being unconscious might imply that the mind is running in a state of little or no consciousness, but it is not defined by that. Assuming a cat or dog has no consciousness, it would still be called 'conscious' in his waking state.

Re: Can computers become conscious?: My reply to Roger Penrose

#69

Post by argonaut »

modeless wrote: post #25
jbob2000 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, not really, the computer doesn't understand the images it's mixing, it's just using some clever algorithms to piece together an image. It has no awareness of the images you're giving it. I couldn't give it an image of a narwhal and an image of a horse and expect it to give me a unicorn.

> I couldn't give it an image of a narwhal and an image of a horse and expect it to give me a unicorn. You absolutely could with a generative adversarial network and the right training dataset. They can interpolate between images in a semantic way, and add and subtract components of the semantic representation. While it's not narwhals and horses, here's an example of using images of men with and without glasses along…

jbob2000 makes the error of being too vague (didn't define awareness). You're making the error of being too specific. Under no suitable definition of awareness do GANs exhibit awareness. They are a very specific and narrow statistical tool used to solve a specific problem they are trained for specifically.

Re: Can computers become conscious?: My reply to Roger Penrose

#70

Post by zardo »

Smaug123 wrote: post #30
sickbeard wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not need to be defined. "Being aware" can be observed externally (by us) from an attempt by the entity to independently influence whatever state the entity was in.

So to be aware, it is sufficient for the entity to attempt to influence its state? Is a sunflower aware? It tracks the sun. You're just pushing the difficulty into the word "independently" now.

>Is a sunflower aware? It's more aware than a rock and less aware than an insect.
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