Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

#41

Post by viraptor » Thu, Sep 10, 2009, 1:05 AM UTC

amalcon wrote: post #26

kevinpet wrote: post #8

If we assume that humans are conscious, then yes, it is possible for a machine to be conscious. The only arguments categorically differentiating humans from electronic machines are religious in nature. I define consciousness as having an internal model of the world that includes yourself, as well as your own though processes (at a lower degree of fidelity). This says how you compute things, not what you are computing…

There is one nonreligious factor that significantly differentiates humans from machines: that humans evolved, while machines were built by humans. There's an argument to be made that humans cannot understand consciousness well enough to build it, because consciousness is our only tool for doing that. Of course, this only applies to intentional creation of consciousness. It says nothing about the distinct possibility…

But we know how to get the effects of evolution... on steroids: unsupervised, feedback/effect based learning (generic algorithms, NNs, etc.)

We can already generate big enough NNs that we can understand them in general (some areas get "specialised" in some way and more active in some conditions), and we know that the result is what we expect - but there's no way someone will take a look at the weights / resulting model and tell you what it does. I think we can create consciousness intentionally, but not understanding the process completely.

Re: Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

#42

Post by 7iv3 » Thu, Sep 10, 2009, 1:05 AM UTC

What? Conscious machines already exists. Now its only a matter of coping them into different material. And maybe learning about consciousness in process.

I mean, we know almost all about the low level - neurons. They are relatively easy. Signal goes in, signal goes out. So now, even if we don't understand this whole high level emergent process we can still copy it. Its like if we had a assembler code of some big and highly complicated algorithm - even if we don't understand it we can still rewrite it to different machine and it will work.

There are about 100 billion neurons and about 500 trillion connections in brain of an adult, so you can take Moors law and estimate, not if, but when it will be possible to brute-force brain. I say 2025.

Re: Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

#43

Post by naveensundar » Thu, Sep 10, 2009, 1:05 AM UTC

rabidsnail wrote: post #12

We have no definition of consciousness, so it's impossible to say whether machine consciousness is possible, or whether we have it already.

Some philosopher said this sometime back regarding Penrose's theory: (I can't find the original so might be a bit different) "Quantum Computation in microtubules is as explanatory as magical pixie dust in the brain"

We can substitute pretty much anything for the first noun phrase: " X is as explanatory as magical pixie dust in the brain "

Re: Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

#44

Post by naveensundar » Thu, Sep 10, 2009, 1:06 AM UTC

kevinpet wrote: post #8

If we assume that humans are conscious, then yes, it is possible for a machine to be conscious. The only arguments categorically differentiating humans from electronic machines are religious in nature. I define consciousness as having an internal model of the world that includes yourself, as well as your own though processes (at a lower degree of fidelity). This says how you compute things, not what you are computing…

>I define consciousness as having an internal model of the world that includes yourself, as well as your own though processes (at a lower degree of fidelity). This says how you compute things, not what you are computing, so it is orthogonal to Church-Turing.

Do you have any proof or any testing that can be done to validate that?

Re: Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

#45

Post by Mentat_Enki » Thu, Sep 10, 2009, 1:10 AM UTC

codexon wrote: post #29

kevinpet wrote: post #8

If we assume that humans are conscious, then yes, it is possible for a machine to be conscious. The only arguments categorically differentiating humans from electronic machines are religious in nature. I define consciousness as having an internal model of the world that includes yourself, as well as your own though processes (at a lower degree of fidelity). This says how you compute things, not what you are computing…

You are assuming that there is no innate quality of human organic compounds and processes that differentiates us from electrical components. It may very well be the case that this is either true or false. We simply don't have enough evidence. And given the fact that we are discovering new properties of matter and organic reactions all the time, there is a bias towards this being false.

Bah....I call bullshit. This is pure anthropomorphism. Humans think they are the shit, but in fact they are only story-telling animals (which does give us an evolutionary advantage, incidentally. We are not limited in our information transfer inter-generationally by genes alone.) We are limited by the same physics as the chips we make. This innate quality you speak of is pure vapor. Even if humans were somehow able to become mentats, we'd still be limited by the tenants of information theory and what is computable. The fact that human intelligence is emergent leads me to believe that machine intelligence will be the same, albeit very different than a simian mammal's intelligence. Fish are smarter than we are at swimming. Think ants.

Re: Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

#46

Post by mlLK » Thu, Sep 10, 2009, 1:10 AM UTC

I'm certainly not grad student, but I wouldn't drop my pretty dime in graduate school studying AI. If anything, please not only research the current state of the field of AI but also research the history and those scientists working in the field right now.

I wrote a paper on AI a couple summer's ago and as crummy, arrogant, short-sighted, and inconclusive as it reads, if you happen to skim it, I did come away learning this. . .Turing was one of the few minds that was actually on to something, his vision of the machine and his idealistic tone reads more like that of SciFi writer, here is a most insightful re-paraphrasing of a Turing abstract (me thinks it was his first major publication):

I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?'"[8] As Turing highlighted, the traditional approach to such a question is to start with definitions, defining both the terms machine and intelligence. Nevertheless, Turing chose not to do so. Instead he replaced the question with a new question, "which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words".[8] In essence, Turing proposed to change the question from "Do machines think?" into "Can machines do what we (as thinking entities) can do?"[9] The advantage of the new question, Turing argued, was that it "drew a fairly sharp line between the physical and intellectual capacities of a man.[10]

[my crummy paper: http://www.scribd.com/doc/19590360/AI]

Re: Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

#47

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 10, 2009, 1:10 AM UTC

lacker wrote: post #10

I wouldn't bet on machine consciousness happening in your lifetime. But consciousness is a cool enough thing that solving 0.001% of the problem is useful too. Machine vision, collaborative filtering, machine learning, all of these are attacking a tiny subpart of the consciousness problem, but they're still useful. Don't worry that AI will turn out like phlogiston. The journey will yield its own rewards, and plenty of…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

#48

Post by naveensundar » Thu, Sep 10, 2009, 1:15 AM UTC

For those people who claim conscious machines exist read

"Offer: One Billion Dollars for a Conscious Robot; If You’re Honest, You Must Decline" http://www.eripsa.org/files/Bringsjord%20Robot.pdf

:)

Re: Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

#49

Post by thorax » Thu, Sep 10, 2009, 1:20 AM UTC

amalcon wrote: post #26

kevinpet wrote: post #8

If we assume that humans are conscious, then yes, it is possible for a machine to be conscious. The only arguments categorically differentiating humans from electronic machines are religious in nature. I define consciousness as having an internal model of the world that includes yourself, as well as your own though processes (at a lower degree of fidelity). This says how you compute things, not what you are computing…

There is one nonreligious factor that significantly differentiates humans from machines: that humans evolved, while machines were built by humans. There's an argument to be made that humans cannot understand consciousness well enough to build it, because consciousness is our only tool for doing that. Of course, this only applies to intentional creation of consciousness. It says nothing about the distinct possibility…

A computer-based consciousness would also be a result of evolution (albeit in a different way than things we know usually) being the byproduct of something that an evolved species created to help itself adapt.

Sometimes, when I'm getting overlogical, I see machine intelligence as being pretty much our destiny (i.e. that singularity thing) and that organic life may be very much obsolete once it gets into its own.

As organic life was to the universe before it, machine life will be to us.

Re: Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

#50

Post by joshu » Thu, Sep 10, 2009, 1:24 AM UTC

If you could simulate a brain at the atomic level, with sufficient precision, would it think?

I wonder if the mind arises in the brain because of quantum effects?

Anyway - modern AI is not generally about "strong AI" (attempting to make a humanlike intelligence) but more about "weak AI" (attempting to make things that solve problems.)