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Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

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

#141

Post by warewolfe »

Yes, it is possible. But a more important question would be "What are the benefits from creating an artificially conscious(A.C.) system?" There are a myriad of uses for smarter computer systems that can problem solve with minimal guidance from humans. But what practical use is there for A.C?

  Howabout re-phrasing the original question into "Do you think it is possible to genetically enhance and selective breed apes into a race of human-level+ super-apes". Sure, it's possible, but why do it?
If you are trying to create a controllable human-like intelligence, then ethically it is the same as creating a slave race, and practically it is just overkill for any real-world use. And if you are trying to create a human-like intelligence with free-will, then you are creating a competitor/replacement.

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

#142

Post by run_zeno_run »

More helpful would be to look up the Church-Turing-Deutsch principle, aka the physical Turing thesis or strong Turing thesis. It is more intent in proposing that everything in the universe, including the universe itself, is computable. If you hold to this principle, then machine consciousness is obviously feasible. -------- Another way of asking your question is: why wouldn't machine consciousness be possible? Why would there be some special sauce in the brain that is off limits to being understood and/or modeled? -------- And lastly, to address you're worry of wasting your life, there are many, many applications of AI/Cog.Sci. that would improve the human condition immensely without needing fully 'conscious' artificial machines. Also, the main reason why I in particular am dedicated to AI/Cog.Sci (and really the best reason for devoting yourself to anything) is because it is the most damned interesting thing I've ever been exposed to, IMHO.

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

#143

Post by Liron »

First of all, we've seen that low-level physical models of our universe don't gain explanatory power by trying to take "consciousness" as an ontological primitive. It's clear that consciousness is a high-level property of patterns of tinier things.

So the algorithm you use to decide that a clump of neurons satisfies the "consciousness" predicate will almost certainly work by observing high-level properties of the neuron configuration. Since the consciousness predicate abstracts away low-level details, it's hard to see why neurons should be better than other computational substrates at forming predicate-satisfying configurations.

Reductionists can't be neuro-chauvinists.

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

#144

Post by dkersten »

Ignoring you're question; AI isn't as much about machine consciousness and human-like intelligence as people like to think. Theres a lot of very good AI used every day: classifiers, pattern recognition, googles pagerank, recommendation systems, optimization algorithms and so on.

On to your question: Do I think something that looks like consciousness is possible? Yes. How soon depends on how conscious it looks and how much this is faked and real.

I think we're still a bit of a way away, but it will happen. Do I think the machine will be actually conscious like humans? No, I don't. Appearance and actually being are different things. A machine can be programmed to appear conscious by following decision making patterns similar to humans, by incorporating emotion (perhaps as a weighting system to deal with certain scenarios, or maybe not include emotion at all and go for pure practical efficiency..), self preservation, priorities and so on. But, this won't make them conscious like a human. I think theres more than a biological computer in us humans. Religious people like to call it a soul; I prefer to use that term to refer to some overall control system which is outside of the biological control systems: if the brain and nervous system is our hardware and our thought processes our software, then the soul is our firmware. I don't think we will ever completely understand what makes us conscious, for this reason, and therefore cannot ever make truely conscious machines BUT I believe we will, eventually, get very close to it.

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

#145

Post by stevedekorte »

polos wrote: post #124

Some things a machine will never be able to: - spontaneously ask itself where it is coming from - spontaneously ask itself what it will become after its own destruction - having spontaneous thoughts - having free will Why do I say spontaneous? Because our thoughts aren't coming from our mind, but from our soul (that is, from the principle of life, which is invisible by nature). Come on, these are all obvious things;…

But we do all those things and we are machines. Biological machines, yes, but still machines.

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

#146

Post by coffeeaddicted »

kalid wrote: post #140
coffeeaddicted wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About those economic forces - I'm betting on games to get there first. With Creatures and Sims there have been already two examples that the public is absolutely keen on getting software that features lifelike behaviour. And the wide distribution of games also means that games can get access to a lot of distributed processing power beating even supercomputers. Also game AI programmers are probably the one with the mo…

That brings up interesting ethical issues -- could you play a FPS game knowing the bad guys were 'conscious'?

I play Multiplayer FPS even though I know my opponents are conscious. Doesn't prevent me from shooting them because I know I only kill their avatar and not themselves. Same with AI - I shoot at an avatar I won't destroy it's code.

The ethical issues will rather be the moment when AI's are clever enough that they can be teached. What will humans teach them? Personally I believe the best protection from abuse will be to get that learning process in the public (as compared to AI's learning from companies or military for specific purposes). So my own long term target are distributed virtual worlds in which AI's improve by getting passed around. A single computer user might still teach them bad stuff, but I hope some sort of selection based on many people watching and exchanging bots will get the best possible results even though completely preventing abuse won't be possible.

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

#147

Post by dkersten »

byoung2 wrote: post #22
reynolds wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are humans at a place where we can write and rewrite our own DNA?

The computer equivalent of human DNA would have more to do with hardware than code. When I talk about computers rewriting code, I'm talking more about rewriting patterns of thought processing. While humans can't rewrite DNA on the fly, we can definitely teach ourselves new ways of approaching problems.

An FPGA of sorts?

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

#149

Post by tetha »

joubert wrote: post #77
Freaky wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then we'll make machines out of "human organic compounds" to exploit those processes. We're machines. That we may not have made a machine of the same class ourselves is an implementation detail. Maybe a large one, but still not really an argument against making conscious intelligent machines. Biology can do it, sooner or later so can we.

We are biological. So if we do it, it is really just a phenotypical expression of our genes. Perhaps the disagreement is about when do machines (keeping in mind they're mechanical by definition) cross over to becoming more and more like biological entities (replication). And once they do, is it still coherent to think of them as machines as we use the term today. Or would we then think machines have been elevated to…

This is certainly a good point. At least I somewhen crossed the line when I just started to see things as input-output-devices with more or less complicated algorithms in the middle.

The human has a hideous complicated algorithm in there, involving a live-long history, internal feedback and reflection and arbitrary side constraints.

A spider for example is much simpler. 'If the net shakes, walk where it shakes and eat.' (Certainly, + a batch of regulations to be able to walk and sense, but the point stands).

However, imo at a certain point, a computer program passes the complexity of, say, a spider. Just consider modern compilers. These things are of baffling complexity and do things inside no human can imagine in details :) Or, imagine data mining software, or even just very complicated, security aware network guards. All of these softwares are very, very complicated in their input-output-behaviour, and even though they are not as complicated as a human, they certainly can compete with a spider, at least for me.

And exactly this view is what caused some pretty nasty discussions for me, since some people are just not crossing the line of 'everything is an input-output device of different forms' and they stand hard on the ground that machines and animals are different, because they are machines and animals (and some go ridiculous ways, 'god made animals, humans made machines', and whatsoever, not even some 'but the spider might be more complicated than FOO, because, which whould be a nice discussion :) ).

So, overall, I, as a person who is working hard on being a tolerant, non-racist person (which is really hard), don't see a reason to exclude the possibility of machines and robots being conscious, just because 'they are electrical and not organic' (which has a ring of "he is black, he CANNOT do science" to me. Sorry if I just offended a lot of people).

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

#150

Post by schnalle »

while i belief in machine consciousness, i don't think human-like intelligence - as described in popular science fiction culture - is likely (though not impossible). intelligence: yes. superhuman intelligence: yes. but human-like intelligence, as in "thinks like a human, reasons like a human"; no * . the bodies, senses, cultures, etc would be just too different.

so silicon-based intelligence would be very strange and incomprehensible for us, and i doubt we'd recognize it as an intelligent being easily.

* with the possible exception of eliza

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