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Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

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Re: Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

#11

Post by tomhoward »

I’m writing this comment so that people who want to know more about alternative theories of consciousness (to materialism/physicalism [1]) can know where to go to find well-argued positions on the topic.

(To be clear, I’m not here to argue about the topic or try to persuade anyone of any position – that’s a waste of everyone’s time).

I recommend seeking out discussions involving:

- Federico Faggin: inventor of silicon-gate technology and developer of the earliest microprocessors;

- Bernardo Kastrup: Ph.D. in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence), former CERN engineer at the LHC;

- Donald D. Hoffman: Ph.D. in computational psychology, professor in Cognitive Sciences at UC Irvine.

On YouTube you can find plenty of discussions involving these figures, some with each other, and plenty more with others.

I’d suggest it’s particularly important to explore these discussions as dispassionately as possible if you regard materialism as the only theory of mind that has any scientific credibility or validity.

As Christopher Hitchens reminds us in his legendary oration on John Stuart Mill and free speech [2], it’s only by thoroughly understanding the opposing view that we can thoroughly understand our own position on any topic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism

[2] https://youtu.be/zDap-K6GmL0?t=120

Re: Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

#12

Post by ben_w »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #3

We don't even know whether other human beings are conscious, man. The only thing which we might say with much certainty is that things which are more "like us" along some metric are more likely to be actually conscious, and things which are less "like us" are less likely to be so. Maybe everything is conscious. Maybe nothing except one's own self. But you'll never truly know one way or another, even if humanity inven…

I know that at least one other human is conscious, otherwise the term would never have been invented.

But you have no way to tell if I am as conscious as I claim to be, or if I'm just a large language model trained by humanity :P

Re: Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

#13

Post by seydor »

xvector wrote: post #6

I really do hope ASI gets us to gradual replacement-based uploading. Having something as glorious as sapience trapped in a delicate and temporary bag of flesh kinda sucks.

I m still conflicted what we do with the bag of flesh after the fact. Are we bag holding forever?

Re: Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

#14

Post by codetrotter »

grishka wrote: post #10

For all we know, it might be that consciousness is not fully contained in the physical structure of the brain. It might as well be something that partially exists on another layer of reality we have no idea about yet.

True. Which leads one to wonder, could those same kinds of consciousness that inhabit us also be capable of inhabit an AI. Or even, could there be other kinds of consciousnesses in those or other dimensions that are not currently able to exist on earth because there doesn’t exist anything yet that they are able to inhabit. But that our computers would eventually, when we arrive at some specific combination of hardware and software, enable them to inhabit those. Bringing a new kind of consciousness from outside of the universe to earth that is unlike all others outside already present here (in us, the animals, the plants, etc).

Re: Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

#15

Post by danielbln »

grishka wrote: post #10

For all we know, it might be that consciousness is not fully contained in the physical structure of the brain. It might as well be something that partially exists on another layer of reality we have no idea about yet.

It might be a pink elefant that lives in the 7th dimension and contains every person's consciousness in the shape of a magic peanut. Or it may not.

Re: Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

#16

Post by mindcrime »

tomhoward wrote: post #11

I’m writing this comment so that people who want to know more about alternative theories of consciousness (to materialism/physicalism [1]) can know where to go to find well-argued positions on the topic. (To be clear, I’m not here to argue about the topic or try to persuade anyone of any position – that’s a waste of everyone’s time). I recommend seeking out discussions involving: - Federico Faggin: inventor of silico…

Frederico Faggin: inventor of the silicon gate which led to the development of microprocessors;

And who, by the way, has a new book coming out shortly:

https://www.amazon.com/Irreducible-Consciousness-Computers-H...

Re: Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

#17

Post by strogonoff »

tomhoward wrote: post #11

I’m writing this comment so that people who want to know more about alternative theories of consciousness (to materialism/physicalism [1]) can know where to go to find well-argued positions on the topic. (To be clear, I’m not here to argue about the topic or try to persuade anyone of any position – that’s a waste of everyone’s time). I recommend seeking out discussions involving: - Federico Faggin: inventor of silico…

A philosophical framework in which creating an artificial entity that is conscious and self-aware in a human-like manner is as straightforward as modeling the human brain is monistic materialism.

Of course, it’s not the only framework available. Among the modern takes, Donald Hoffman’s interface theory of perception (explored in, say, his Objects of Consciousness paper[0]) is an interesting one that appears to align with monistic idealism, for example.

Being wrong about this is generally not that impactful, until it concerns policies around ML. Adopting the former means we may have conscious software, which presumably should be granted human rights. However, if we hold the latter, manufacturing a “true” artificial consciousness may be unachievable using the means we employ (it might be just a philosophical zombie).

[0] I don’t personally endorse the paper or his views, but they can be an acceptable starting point for a technical person interested in exploring monistic idealism: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....

Re: Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

#18

Post by Dibby053 »

So far, the concept of consciousness is basically metaphysics. It doesn't have a role, it can't be measured... If I may suggest a starting point to get over this hurdle: let's create a "consciousness captcha": some task that is easy for conscious beings, but hard for algorithms. Consciousness evolved, therefore it must have provided an advantage. We just have to find it.

Re: Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

#19

Post by strogonoff »

danielbln wrote: post #15
grishka wrote: post #10

For all we know, it might be that consciousness is not fully contained in the physical structure of the brain. It might as well be something that partially exists on another layer of reality we have no idea about yet.

It might be a pink elefant that lives in the 7th dimension and contains every person's consciousness in the shape of a magic peanut. Or it may not.

Gödel’s incompleteness theorem says that pink elephants may indeed well exist.

Re: Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

#20

Post by throwaway5371 »

MyFirstSass wrote: post #9
gokuldas011011 wrote: post #5

Yes, the beauty of nature is, there is no magic. Everything is governed by laws, when we uncover it, we can replicate it.

The more i've studied i've come to the opposite conclusion. Nature is >99% magic and though some tiny slices of human friendly interfaces of reality are replicable much more is chaos, weird emergence, fields, probabilities and stuff so bizarre to our mammalian logic that we might as well call it magic, god, the simulation or just bleeding edge physics as the whole field is getting weirder and weirder. The whole notio…

i have moved to this camp as well, and i don't mean in the "we don't understand it so we call it magic", i mean it seems more and more like actual magic.

people are talking about timing attacks on state updates in the universe, hopefully we can exploit it

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