Can computers become conscious?: My reply to Roger Penrose • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by yarou » Fri, Jun 03, 2016, 1:23 AM UTC

scott_s wrote: post #76

Animats wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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...

You linked to the migration of a single operating system kernel. That is very different from reproducing the running state of an entire distributed system . Migrating a single kernel is not easy, but straight-forward: you have access to all of the relevant pieces (in memory process state, and state on disks) in one place. With a distributed system, that is not so, since the the running state of a distributed system w…

Why would you need to copy the entire running state of the distributed system?

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

#92

Post by yarou » Fri, Jun 03, 2016, 1:27 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #89

Consciousness is a word searching for a meaning. It's telling that this entire thread is people explaining their own personal definition of this reification that we use to separate ourselves from the animals. Consciousness is the state of being awake, hence able to react normally to sensory stimulation. Computers are nothing but consciousness, unless they're freeing memory.

> Consciousness is the state of being awake, hence able to react normally to sensory stimulation.

And how'd you go about verifying that? I know that I'm conscious, but you could be a p-zombie. That means if I poke you with a toothpick, you will scream in agony (responding to stimulus), but that doesn't give me any information about whether or not you are conscious.

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

#93

Post by brownbat » Fri, Jun 03, 2016, 1:32 AM UTC

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?

That's a reasonable question, these terms aren't very clear.

Philosophers who work on these issues tend to separate out individual aspects of conscious experience and discuss them under distinct terms, for clarity and precision.

The main article isn't really following these conventions (most people don't even know about them), but for philosophy:

Consciousness is generally the state of having subjective experiences. Like, you're conscious when you have some personal experience of things.

Sapience is the capacity to act with reflective judgment. This definition is a mess, just bear with me for now.

Self-awareness is, well, awareness of one's self. Introspection.

There are probably others I can't recall right now. All of these are slightly different aspects of a phenomena we experience as humans, and we tend to lump them all together when talking about it, especially when asking if nonhumans can exhibit any of these properties.

I think what we mean when talking about "conscious AI" is probably something more like "sapient AI" (possibly just "self-aware AI?").

A few millenia of discussion about the meaning of sapience summarized here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wisdom/

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

#94

Post by Xcelerate » Fri, Jun 03, 2016, 1:52 AM UTC

mh-cx wrote: post #75

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…

Not really a definition, but my very personal take on what conciousness is: Evolution has brought about creatures that are more successful (in regard to survival and reproduction), the more predictive power they have about their environment[1]. One could say, the better a species can simulate it's environment, the more likely it will continue to exist and be part of the ongoing evolution. Our brains are of course als…

> Conciousness is the process of simulation of reality. The "better" the simulation or the more complete and closer to "reality" it is (whatever that means) - the higher the form of conciousness.

So would you say that a supercomputer in the process of calculating the gyromagnetic ratio of an isolated electron to 12 digits of accuracy is a higher form of consciousness than we are? After all, it is performing a much better simulation of reality than our brains in that case.

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

#95

Post by sandworm101 » Fri, Jun 03, 2016, 1:58 AM UTC

e12e wrote: post #90

My initial thought about this is to reformulate the question as: "Can humans become conscious?". I don't think most people would claim that sperm and egg cells are concious. I also don't expect many people to argue that all humans come from joining these two, non-concious elements. Most (but maybe not all!) would probably agree that that embryo, consisting of a handful of cells, is not concious. Yet, we interact with…

Consciousness is no bright line rule. Humans like to believe that we are on one side of a great divide between conscious and unconscious animals. But all there is is a gradient between us and the bacteria, with infinite stops in between.

The interesting twist in Enders Game (and other scifi) is that the alien invaders do not understand humans as conscious beings. I see no reason to believe that there aren't beings on earth, animals, who are farther up the spectrum than we. There are some very large brains out there that we do not understand.

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

#96

Post by rspeer » Fri, Jun 03, 2016, 1:59 AM UTC

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #54

Zikes wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always assumed that AI consciousness would be an emergent property, not a feature we would (or even could) effectively develop towards.

Chomsky shrugs that human consciousness - or at least language; good luck separating those - is an emergent property. So yeah.

That seems downright nuanced for Chomsky talking about language. Did he really say this?

Chomsky considers language to be a thing that physically evolved in humans. Are eyes an emergent property?

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

#97

Post by tbabb » Fri, Jun 03, 2016, 1:59 AM UTC

visarga wrote: post #62

andrewla wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes.

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

#98

Post by e12e » Fri, Jun 03, 2016, 2:11 AM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #95

e12e wrote: post #90

My initial thought about this is to reformulate the question as: "Can humans become conscious?". I don't think most people would claim that sperm and egg cells are concious. I also don't expect many people to argue that all humans come from joining these two, non-concious elements. Most (but maybe not all!) would probably agree that that embryo, consisting of a handful of cells, is not concious. Yet, we interact with…

Consciousness is no bright line rule. Humans like to believe that we are on one side of a great divide between conscious and unconscious animals. But all there is is a gradient between us and the bacteria, with infinite stops in between. The interesting twist in Enders Game (and other scifi) is that the alien invaders do not understand humans as conscious beings. I see no reason to believe that there aren't beings on…

There are many interesting lines of reasoning around this. The idea of Gaia as a concious system is one. If the earth thinks at the speed of one thought every year, or 100 years -- and perhaps communicates with other such beings -- how would we know? (I don't have strong feelings about concrete ideas about Gaia as a concious system, one way or the other -- other than that I find it an interesting idea, and a good storytelling tool)

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

#99

Post by rspeer » Fri, Jun 03, 2016, 2:22 AM UTC

When Marvin Minsky described one perspective on consciousness as "hey, we don't understand consciousness, and we don't understand gravity, maybe consciousness is made of gravity", I thought he was just mocking the ever-popular idea that "maybe consciousness is made of quantum mechanics".

I didn't know that there really was a prominent thinker who postulated gravity (and quantum mechanics) as the place where subjective consciousness is hiding.

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

#100

Post by meric » Fri, Jun 03, 2016, 2:28 AM UTC

e12e wrote: post #98

sandworm101 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consciousness is no bright line rule. Humans like to believe that we are on one side of a great divide between conscious and unconscious animals. But all there is is a gradient between us and the bacteria, with infinite stops in between. The interesting twist in Enders Game (and other scifi) is that the alien invaders do not understand humans as conscious beings. I see no reason to believe that there aren't beings on…

There are many interesting lines of reasoning around this. The idea of Gaia as a concious system is one. If the earth thinks at the speed of one thought every year, or 100 years -- and perhaps communicates with other such beings -- how would we know? (I don't have strong feelings about concrete ideas about Gaia as a concious system, one way or the other -- other than that I find it an interesting idea, and a good sto…

A pair of conjoined twins can read each other's thoughts and see through each other's eyes. Are they two people, or one?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1331769/Doctors-stun...

A person has left and right hemispheres in their brain. Under some circumstances, losing one of these hemispheres will result in an almost normal functional human being. Imagine, with advances in biology and medicine, one day we can separate one person's brain, and place one half in one body, and the other half in another (artificial body or one whose original owner became brain dead), and both functioning as people. Are they two people, or one?

I think it depends on the observer. Some people would choose to see (one or both cases) as two people, and some would choose to see them as one.

But let us go back into history. The universe started from the big bang, as a big expanding cloud of hot gases. It was one point, and then it became one cloud. Billions of years and lots of things happening later, bits of that cloud grew eyes, legs and started to think for themselves. Are those individual bits of the universe, many individuals, or one universe?

I think, both. It's like asking a network of neurons, are you one, or many?

The universe is a conscious system. It can see itself through many eyes. It sees different parts of itself. It is having many thoughts.

I, a shard of the universe, have replied to you, another shard of the universe, by typing this on yet another shard of the same universe, at the same time as my own neurons are communicating to each other.