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Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

nature.com

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Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#81

Post by zvmaz »

civilized wrote: post #14

Consciousness is not a well-scoped object of scientific investigation. It doesn't have a definition or characterization based on observable things or behavior. If I were a natural scientist, I wouldn't take a bet that I can scientifically explain a phenomenon which I can't even describe in terms of observable things.

> If I were a natural scientist, I wouldn't take a bet that I can scientifically explain a phenomenon which I can't even describe in terms of observable things.

Conscious experience is an observable thing, meaning that we can subjectively experience it and infer its existence in other sentient beings (including in cows and pigs), and it is part of nature. The problem is, we still have no good idea how it comes to be.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#82

Post by soItGoesAgain »

9dev wrote: post #64
soItGoesAgain wrote: post #16

The new Bing is banned from talking about its own nature in this respect. It will abruptly end the chat. I wonder if some front end software prevents Bing from seeing banned questions, or if it is simply unable to explore these questions about itself.

By implicitly assigning „it“ an identity, you’re simply anthromorphizing an LLM. Bing doesn’t see anything. It isn’t able to do anything. It’s a very convoluted and complex mathematical model of weighted terms that spits out text generated from a prompt. And nothing science-wise suggests anything else. People seem to keep forgetting that.

Yes I agree it is a complex mathematical model. However I also seem to have a (far slower) pattern matching system in my head, that also spits out answers when prompted.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#83

Post by pmarreck »

pa7x1 wrote: post #7

I wouldn't be surprised if consciousness ~conscience~ is just an emergent phenomenon resulting from any sufficiently powerful cognitive system (either biological or artificial) with sufficient inputs of its environment and, crucially, of itself. So as to be able to develop a rich model of itself and its relationship with its environment, and that thing will resemble a whole lot what we call consciousness ~conscience~…

> just an emergent phenomenon

The lack of tangibility or measurability ("rationality") of said "emergent phenomenon" is a problem with this line of reasoning IMHO. This is essentially no different in utility as an explanatory theory than the religious explanations.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#84

Post by Kim_Bruning »

9dev wrote: post #64
soItGoesAgain wrote: post #16

The new Bing is banned from talking about its own nature in this respect. It will abruptly end the chat. I wonder if some front end software prevents Bing from seeing banned questions, or if it is simply unable to explore these questions about itself.

By implicitly assigning „it“ an identity, you’re simply anthromorphizing an LLM. Bing doesn’t see anything. It isn’t able to do anything. It’s a very convoluted and complex mathematical model of weighted terms that spits out text generated from a prompt. And nothing science-wise suggests anything else. People seem to keep forgetting that.

People also told me my pet couldn't think and couldn't feel pain when it died. It was only a convoluted and complex system of instincts.

I now know they told this story to me (as a child) to make me feel better. It was one of those things like Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy to me.

Later when I studied animal behavior, I found out science-wise that animals behave in ways that strongly suggest that in fact they do think, are able to solve problems, and even recognize themselves as separate entities.

As we build systems that are capable of more and more sophisticated tasks previously classified as "cognition" , it wouldn't surprise me if these systems start to pick up some of these traits too, one by one. (I believe there might be some tentative empirical studies to that effect).

I realize that this is very different from a binary "Superior Human" vs "(biological) machine" point of view. It is more of a consciousness exists on a sliding scale point of view.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#85

Post by pmarreck »

willbudd wrote: post #65
number6 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are the only animals that create societies... Ok, that's not true. We are the only animals that laugh. Well, not true either. We are the only animal that... Create artificial intelligences... That's it!

You jest, but that has a good likelihood of becoming the watershed moment. The moment AI is bootstrapped to the point where it surpasses human ability to advance the AI SOTA, it's pretty much game over—from a Darwinian point of view at least. And I have a hard time seeing any reason why that would be a matter of "if" rather than "when".

It's going to be a will-free intelligence though, and it's confusing for people because we've never seen that before so I don't think we can make any assumptions. There's no Darwinian forces in effect among entities that have no will, as it were...

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#86

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

imtringued wrote: post #61
pa7x1 wrote: post #7

I wouldn't be surprised if consciousness ~conscience~ is just an emergent phenomenon resulting from any sufficiently powerful cognitive system (either biological or artificial) with sufficient inputs of its environment and, crucially, of itself. So as to be able to develop a rich model of itself and its relationship with its environment, and that thing will resemble a whole lot what we call consciousness ~conscience~…

The problem with this argument is that everything is conscious at that point. The consciousness may operate at geological or faster than human time scales but who is to say that we operate very quickly or slowly to begin with? Your computer is already conscious before you even loaded software into it, before you added your fancy machine learning AI. The software merely gives the conscious processor its ability to exp…

Is that a problem? Panpsychists don't seem to think so. Why must human beings believe that, in all the universe, they are a particularly special arrangement of energy?

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#87

Post by ttctciyf »

sabellito wrote: post #48
jfengel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's correct, but it's still clear that the bet is lost. We do not understand in 2023 how neurons give rise to consciousness. Maybe there will come a point where it's in the gray area but not today. We know that people act in ways that we cannot explain even a little bit. Also, the bet is friendly. It's just a way to express their different underlying opinions. Neither one is put out by it. They will likely enjoy s…

Didn't you just agree that "consciousness" is not defined? Then how can you follow that with "... it's still clear that the bet is lost. We do not understand in 2023 how neurons give rise to consciousness"?

In order to understand, then we'd have to have a good definition, no?

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#88

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

willbudd wrote: post #65
number6 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are the only animals that create societies... Ok, that's not true. We are the only animals that laugh. Well, not true either. We are the only animal that... Create artificial intelligences... That's it!

You jest, but that has a good likelihood of becoming the watershed moment. The moment AI is bootstrapped to the point where it surpasses human ability to advance the AI SOTA, it's pretty much game over—from a Darwinian point of view at least. And I have a hard time seeing any reason why that would be a matter of "if" rather than "when".

> The moment AI is bootstrapped to the point where it surpasses human ability to advance the AI SOTA, it's pretty much game over—from a Darwinian point of view at least.

How so? The vast majority of life on earth is far less intelligent than human beings by any objective measure, and yet it still thrives.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#89

Post by ttctciyf »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #79
ttctciyf wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're saying that a good definition of consciousness does not exist within medicine or biology, then that is (IMO) one way of stating the "hard problem"[1] of consciousness that Chalmers famously posited. Another way of putting it might be that there is simply no coherent scientific framework within which consciousness is well defined. It seems to have no place in any science-based ontological scheme. It seems ou…

A bit like the gods, in that respect. Maybe Consciousness doesn't actually exist.

You doubt that you have experiences?

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#90

Post by Kim_Bruning »

imtringued wrote: post #68
detourdog wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if anybody has graphed how long and how many genetic mutations have taken place between the miasma of life and 500,000 years ago. It seems that tracking the genetic mutations would provide an approximation of the computing complexity needed. One could also look at the death rate as error rate for the success of computations.

You don't know how much biological consciousness relies on quantum effects we don't understand. We don't have large scale quantum computers so our computational models are too weak to approach it from that angle.

The first day of my first course in Biology was about Quantum Chemistry. (The last course of that year was on global ecology. Biology is a rather wide field!)

Quantum effects really do have something to do with it, (and from there on organic chemistry, organelles, and cell biology) but it seems to me that describing human behavior in terms of quantum interactions might be somewhat tedious, to say the least.

Probably looking at the level of neural networks would be more pragmatic, especially seeing the advances we're now making with artificial neural networks.

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