Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

arxiv.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 604 posts

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

#61

Post by ben_w »

whoitwas wrote: post #54
everdrive wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consciousness seems to be a word that is poorly defined. You see this a lot, and one of the more popular instances are questions like "is cereal a salad?" It plays on the fact that the definition of a salad is relatively loose, and because it's loose items which aren't usually associated with the word do actually fit the definition. Consciousness feels much the same way: there's a very loose definition which is collo…

There's no definition because we haven't been able to quantify it.

That's not the problem.

There are 40 different definitions of consciousness, some of which we can quantify, we just don't all agree on which one we mean in any given context and indeed sometimes conflate them without realising it in the middle of a sentence.

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

#62

Post by 13415 »

I believe that computationalism is by far the best foundational explanation of higher cognitive phenomena, as all other explanations involve some unscientific form of mysticism at one point or another. From this perspective, the answer to the question in the paper's headline is trivially true. Computationalism implies multiple realizability.

It's worth noting that computationalism is independent from physicalism and monist materialism in general. It's not surprising that it's always paired with physicalism, but IMHO it's also the best foundational explanation for dualists.

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

#63

Post by DeathArrow »

smokel wrote: post #41
strogonoff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> we may have conscious software, which presumably should be granted human rights A dog (most likely) has consciousness, but no human rights.

But does a bug have consciousness? What about a bacteria?

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

#64

Post by IshKebab »

yreg wrote: post #52

I can accept (and to be honest even like) the idea, that consciousness somehow emerges from the complex structures in an animal brain, that there is no soul, no other planes of reality, no special quantum phenomena needed, etc. Maybe we could create a synthetic artificial conscious mind. At worst we could simulate a full human brain at whatever level is necessary. I can accept that. What's crazy to me is the followin…

I think that probably is the logical conclusion. There are a fair number of sci-fi books along those lines, e.g. Permutation City.

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

#65

Post by xvector »

vixen99 wrote: post #37
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.

Nothing particularly glorious about sapience trapped in a permanent bag of flesh especially one with a rather fixed view about the world about it. Never mind dictators; how about: 'The President of Global Enterprises Inc. is today 150 years old and currently holds the record for the longest serving president in the Company's history'. A cause for celebration?

I don't really care if stubborn, old leaders live longer if it means I don't have to worry about my loved ones dying and get to see humanity reach the stars.

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

#67

Post by xvector »

alex_duf wrote: post #23
seydor wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Something tells me the bag might change its mind about the whole operation once the upload is finished and it realises what's up next. So yeah not sure I like the idea.

Hence the "gradual replacement" part of my comment :)

Scan and copy never made sense to begin with, as you point out. Not sure why it's the default when people think of mind uploading.

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

#68

Post by ben_w »

johnaspden wrote: post #49

Who cares? And how would we tell?

I care, because getting it wrong in either direction is bad.

Brain uploads will bring significant benefits regardless of if they are conscious.

Thinking "this brain upload is conscious" when it isn't, means we'll get an empty future where the lights are on and nobody's home.

Thinking "this brain upload isn't conscious" when it is… I've not seen most of Black Mirror, but it is the plot summary of many episodes given on Wikipedia. Also of the Westworld TV show, which I have seen. Some of the characters in the We Are Bob series.

How would we tell, is, unfortunately, a complete unknown at this point.

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

#69

Post by xvector »

thr0w4w4yHNabc wrote: post #50
alex_duf wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something tells me the bag might change its mind about the whole operation once the upload is finished and it realises what's up next. So yeah not sure I like the idea.

So far the only idea that I've read about and might feasibly result in uploading instead of copying is gradual replacement of each cell by a nanobot simulating that cell. So at the end of it, there'd be no bag to change its mind.

You can simplify it a bit. Yes, gradual replacement is likely the way to go, but you probably don't need to replace individual neurons one at a time. Individual neurons don't really matter or meaningfully contribute to our consciousness.

You can likely replace the large "functional groups" of neurons instead, with the group size threshold being the maximum that doesn't meaningfully affect our consciousness. This might well be many billions of neurons at a time.

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

#70

Post by IshKebab »

dist-epoch wrote: post #32
Dibby053 wrote: post #18

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.

> It doesn't have a role ... Consciousness evolved, therefore it must have provided an advantage. We just have to find it. That's a pretty wild claim, considering that the only animal proven to have a consciousness is the apex-predator of the whole world.

It's a pretty out-there idea that we're the only conscious animals. Along the lines of "animals don't have feelings" which seems to be mostly pushed by Christians.
Post reply on HN