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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

#381

Post by rl3 »

skissane wrote: post #376
rl3 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think in practice, it will depend on how AIs behave. If an AI forms relationships with humans which humans experience as emotionally significant, and in which it displays individuality and autonomy, humans will begin thinking of it as a real "person", and want to endow it with the rights of a person. I can't help but feel that describes our relationship with animals we consider pets, albeit less so the individual…

> I can't help but feel that describes our relationship with animals we consider pets, albeit less so the individuality and autonomy part. Many pets have a lot of individuality and autonomy. Cats and dogs have their own individual personalities and likes/dislikes, and they have their own desires which sometimes contradict those of their human owners (e.g. your dog's desire to chew your brand new expensive shoes, vers…

>If an animal demonstrated genuine human-level intelligence, such that it was obvious to all and no one could deny it, I think the clear majority of people would be willing to extend human-level rights to that animal.

You're probably right.

Then again, recent history hasn't bode well for whales, or the 50M or so human beings that other human beings keep enslaved in 2024.

Maybe AI just needs its own Short Circuit 2 story. I'm just having a hard time seeing that play out as opposed to Johnny Five ending up as a SaaS product.

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

#383

Post by SJC_Hacker »

__loam wrote: post #311
SJC_Hacker wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is this obsession with making computers human-like? Replacement of human labor on the cheap, the most capital intensive part of many businesses. Alternatively as a productivity multiplier of human labor.

"Cheap" OpenAI loves to talk revenue but I'd like to hear more about their unit economics.

Writers of all types. Not a complete replacement but if you can get away with half as many + AI, that’s substantial savings.

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

#384

Post by m463 »

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.

Can't you train a model on LSD experiences, and use that as a prompt?

https://www.openculture.com/2017/08/artist-draws-a-series-po...

or some sort of reverse stable diffusion training?

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lsd+trip+artist&iax=images&ia=imag...

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

#385

Post by N0b8ez »

mindcrime wrote: post #16
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...

I wouldn't have predicted that the inventor of modern CPUs would be so certain that computation is a bad model for consciousness. Is that a good way to characterize him and his position?

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

#386

Post by m463 »

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…

What I find interesting is how people don't think animals are conscious, but then there will be some article where the partner of a goose is killed and the goose wails and moans like this is a surprise.

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

#387

Post by anon84873628 »

mekoka wrote: post #254
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…

As someone who's been engaged in this topic (the nature of reality and consciousness) over the past 3 years, it's very surprising to see this comment on HN. As I've suggested in a past comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36465928 ), this can potentially be one of the most transformative rabbit hole anyone can ever hope to enter. It's been fascinating to observe the dichotomy between researchers who work on…

Are you really surprised? Threads like this make the front page every 3-4 months in various forms...

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

#388

Post by skissane »

rl3 wrote: post #381
skissane wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't help but feel that describes our relationship with animals we consider pets, albeit less so the individuality and autonomy part. Many pets have a lot of individuality and autonomy. Cats and dogs have their own individual personalities and likes/dislikes, and they have their own desires which sometimes contradict those of their human owners (e.g. your dog's desire to chew your brand new expensive shoes, vers…

> If an animal demonstrated genuine human-level intelligence, such that it was obvious to all and no one could deny it, I think the clear majority of people would be willing to extend human-level rights to that animal. You're probably right. Then again, recent history hasn't bode well for whales, or the 50M or so human beings that other human beings keep enslaved in 2024. Maybe AI just needs its own Short Circuit 2 s…

> Then again, recent history hasn't bode well for whales,

That’s because the claim that whales possess human-level intelligence is controversial and unproven. You can’t have a conversation with a whale. While whale language has a certain complexity, we don’t know whether it is capable of conveying the kind of abstract conceptual ideas which human language can.

> or the 50M or so human beings that other human beings keep enslaved in 2024

Most enslavers, their disagreement is not with the idea that slaves are human or entitled to fundamental human rights, their disagreement is with the idea that fundamental human rights include a universal right not to be enslaved. And to be honest, the idea of such a universal human right is historically rather novel - in all four of Europe, Asia, Africa and the pre-Columban Americas, slavery has a history going back thousands of years, and it is only in the last couple of centuries that an (incomplete) consensus has emerged that it is universally wrong

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

#389

Post by umvi »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #341
a_random_canuck wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my take. Consciousness is overrated and probably just an emergent phenomena of the brain processing external stimuli into memory, moving memories around, etc etc, in a continuous and never ending flow. Free will is just an illusion of our deterministic but fundamentally random reality. There isn’t even an agreed upon definition for what consciousness is from a scientific perspective.

And the reason that it is overrated, is because it has to feel special for the bearers because it makes them prioritise their survival. Consciousness is largely a way to have a reward function for set of behaviours that keep you alive through reason. It appears at a level where reasoning is intelligent enough that you need a more complex reward function.

This seems like the secular version of "the devil made me do it". We can't be accountable for any of our actions because we are all just molecular machines playing out their predetermined outcome.

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

#390

Post by EasyMark »

jugg1es wrote: post #167
monstertank wrote: post #159

I never understood this. Evolution basically says humans are conscious matter...why would that not be replicatable via an intelligent designer (humans)? Randomness created consciousness from a single cell...why would that be the most efficient solution?

We can't replicate something we don't understand. The mechanism for consciousness is not understood at all right now and could actually be based on quantum effects that we haven't detected yet. It's also possible that it is only achievable in an organic machine. Until we understand how consciousness actually arises, the best we can do is a simulacrum of it.

If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. I don't understand this "we have to understand consciousness first" stuff gets so much discussion. If it acts human, and is indiscernible from human or human like, it'll fit our definition. I don't understand why "organic machine" matters, it's the "machine" part that matters, and we are machines. I think all that needs to be seriously considered. Is it ethical to end such an intelligence because it could easily evolve far quicker than us and displace us? Do we just let "natural selection" happen? big questions, but I don't think we'll understand and have universal understanding of consciousness before we stumble onto the first AGI
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