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

71–80 of 604 posts

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

#71

Post by phrotoma »

ryandvm wrote: post #42

Consciousness is an evolved information system requirement in all life forms that are complex enough to be capable of computationally modelling their environment, and importantly, their own place in that environment. You cannot model the world and your place in it without consciousness. Also, consciousness is not binary (present or not), it is a gradient. I am more conscious than I was this morning when I groggily op…

> You cannot model the world and your place in it without consciousness.

At any high school you can find a robot which models its place in the world without consciousness.

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

#72

Post by wouldbecouldbe »

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…

To be fair, that's all we know. That's all we are. That's all we can truly say exists in our world.

All the theories, names & everything we have are mental models around what we call objective reality.

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

#73

Post by smokel »

tomhoward wrote: post #59
mc32 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some countries… some countries hardly observe basic human rights much less any animal rights. Some have none on the books.

Sure but this is nitpicking, as is your GP comment, and neither refute the point that the original commenter was making: modern/advanced societies have laws to protect conscious beings from exploitation and cruelty. (As I was writing the comment I thought “ugh will someone chime in and point out that not all countries have strong animal protection laws? Do I really need to preempt that in my comment?”)

I was not nitpicking, but I could have spent more time on my reply.

What I was hinting at is that it is not simply consciousness that gets us these laws. Laws have been around for a long time, and have many different reasons for existing and persisting to exist. The most rational reason for laws is probably that it helps us to thrive as a species.

IMHO laws do not easily extend to animals or other organisms, let alone AI systems. What is the use of animal rights laws if you can simply get killed to be eaten (cows, pigs), or if you are considered a nuisance (bugs). What would be the reason to provide AIs with protection laws if they have no memory, no emotion, and no pain?

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

#74

Post by chasd00 »

xvector wrote: post #65
vixen99 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Be careful for what you wish for. There’s no guarantee immortality doesn’t result in eternal suffering.

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

#75

Post by tsimionescu »

lumb63 wrote: post #57
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…

But how do you know another human is “conscious”? Certainly there is an intuitive sense to it that would be very difficult to put into words, but that is the crux of the matter. Every other human, whose brain you have no ability to peer into, could be an unconscious yet sufficiently advanced computer, or a machine built to make the exact motions, words, decisions, etc., that you perceive, and you wouldn’t be able to…

I think mnay people believe that consciousness is what consciousness does. That is,

> Every other human, whose brain you have no ability to peer into, could be an unconscious yet sufficiently advanced computer, or a machine built to make the exact motions, words, decisions, etc., that you perceive, and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

Makes no sense, in this conception of consciousness, any more than you can fake intelligence. Basically consciousness might just be what we call the inner workings of the mind of a sufficiently advanced agent, one capable at least of meaningfully interacting with other agents around it.

I'm not saying this is the correct theory, but it's a perfectly valid theory of consciousness, just like all the others.

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

#76

Post by smokel »

DeathArrow wrote: post #63
smokel wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I suppose the bug has, but the bacteria doesn't. I'd assume that some kind of memory is required for consciousness.

I'd even go so far to say that consciousness is nothing more than having a memory of the state you were in.

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

#77

Post by tsimionescu »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #34
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.

This is a puzzle with a known solution, although we have obviously not found an algorithm that passes. Casually isolate the being/algorithm from known conscious beings, put it with a bunch of its friends instead, and see if it starts arguing with them about qualia. This will of course require creating an AI self-training algorithm strong enough to invent language independently (otherwise you get LLMs which are likely…

This might be sufficient, but it wouldn't be necessary. A lot of humans (though not all) believe that at least some mammals, like dogs or chimps, are conscious, though we know for a fact that they don't discuss their qualia.

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

#78

Post by neom »

My mum is a shrink, and very old, and smart, and hates technology. I was talking her through how some primitive "AGI" could happen with 4o (basically just explained this: https://b.h4x.zip/agi)

That got us talking about consciousness, and at the end, she thought about it for about a minute and then said "if I can't give it lysergic acid and make it see god, it's not conscious" and went back to making her dinner.

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

#79

Post by southernplaces7 »

T-A wrote: post #27
grishka wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it still an "artificial" intelligence if it's made with real consciousness, though?

Intelligence != consciousness

Agreed on this to a certain extent. Right here on earth in the present day and without taking into account innovative technological advances in AI, we have examples of highly sophisticated intelligence (at least in a functional way) belonging to things that have little or no known consciousness.

First example, large hive insect nests, such as those of termites and certain ants. Their internal construction is extremely complex and often built in useful (to them) ways that would challenge even the abilities of smart human engineers trying to do the same with similar tools (sharp digging instruments, organic cementing liquids, raw scavenged building materials and nothing else) Yet any individual termite in a nest of millions shows only, maybe, the most minuscule and debatable signs of consciousness. They instead act like biological, physical pieces of an algorithmic process.

Second, obvious example, evolution itself: Here we have a process that produces organic, biological systems of such complexity and self direction that we with all our cognition are barely capable of grasping them robustly let alone emulating any major part of them, yet it's entirely mindless. Sure, it has billions of years to do its thing through the imperatives of brute survival mechanisms, but it's still incredible how on a macro scale none of it involves the least bit of known cognition.

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

#80

Post by alchemist1e9 »

neom wrote: post #78

My mum is a shrink, and very old, and smart, and hates technology. I was talking her through how some primitive "AGI" could happen with 4o (basically just explained this: https://b.h4x.zip/agi ) That got us talking about consciousness, and at the end, she thought about it for about a minute and then said "if I can't give it lysergic acid and make it see god, it's not conscious" and went back to making her dinner.

> She thought about it for about a minute and then said "if I can't give it lysergic acid and make it see god, it's not conscious" and went back to making her dinner.

That’s probably going to be pretty easy, just scramble some attention heads randomly in portions of the transformer network and the AGI will probably think “it sees god”.

Post reply on HN