Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

I mean, if something exists, we can copy it. Even if humans only mirror consciousness, we can copy the mirror.

Otherwise we're talking about teology, and, if such, I won't be part of the debate. Not my field.

Better: what are the major arguments for the position that machine consciousness is not possible? What do I think of those arguments? Particularly taking care to distinguish:

- does the argument prove what the people advancing it think it proves?

- do I find myself agreeing with the argument?

Major lines of argument I've heard:

- the metaphysical argument: consciousness derives from having a soul somehow linked to your brain (and thenceforth to your body); the purported impossibility of "machine consciousness" follows from a belief that only people have souls (of the right type, at least)

- the limited-smarts argument: consciously building a conscious machine is beyond the capabilities of a conscious entity (of our type of consciousness)

- the "difference between silicon and wetware" argument: this ranges from assumptions there's quantum magic in parts of the brain to assumptions that the brain organization implements some other, unsimulable-by-silicon computing architecture (perhaps super-turing)

- the "consciousness is an illusion" argument: consciousness and intelligence per-se have little to do with each other despite the apparent overlap one perceives from reflection on one's own thoughts. Thus machine intelligence seems to be possible but that says nothing about consciousness per se.

If you're really serious enough about this to consider making it a life's work (or because you really want to make a conscious AI) I would suggest taking none of the above arguments lightly, even though it's somewhat fashionable in some circles to assume most of the above are just nebulous handwaving by anti-rational mystics.

"Taking them seriously" doesn't mean "pack your bag and go home"; it means you keep thinking scientifically and analytically and try to answer questions like:

- suppose smarts are limited, but we don't know that yet for certain. What could this intuition mean (in a more formal or more precise sense)? How could I make the intuition more precise? What would a formal proof of the intuition look like (and what would be the theorem)? Does this inquiry seem to be leading me in the direction of possible theorems or nontrivial facts about the expressive power of symbolic systems (that aren't already known, or a retread of Godel)? Does there still seem to be work I'd be interested in doing in this general field if it turns out that smarts are limited?

...as even "wrong" counterarguments can do wonders for pointing you in the direction of interesting questions

Extra Credit: of the researchers who at least seemed to think they'd solve the problem pretty quickly, is there a recurring pattern to be found in the failures those researchers encountered?

Major recurring themes: people who've thought they were within reach of making conscious machines typically assumed that the part of their own nature that they valued most was the keystone to consciousness and assumed everything else was either secondary or easy (and thus could be filled-in later).

Thus a Hofstadter-type -- who loves delving deep into various piles of work and crafting new and insightful analogies -- winds up thinking that the core capability an artificial intelligence needs is the ability to craft such analogies; people with phds in mathematical fields and a more logical bent assume that the core ability is symbolic inference, and make software that does symbolic inference; yet others assume that rational hedonism is the core and work on utility-maximizing decision-theoretic planners and agents; others still love making systems with complicated interactions and seeing what pops out and start chasing emergence.

All of that work is good work and has found applications, but the dynamic is obvious: people who get into the field with the specific goal of making AI -- instead of, say, improving algorithms for multicamera view synthesis with applications to industrial quality control -- tend to radically overvalue whatever intellectual style they happen to be good at, but so far none of those intellectual styles appears to have really scratched the surface of consciousness in the sense you're interested in. Beware your best ideas and favorite subjects!

So far we haven't nailed down consciousness and until we got that I try to keep some alternative theories still in my mind. Especially if the alternate theories correspond rather well with many user reports. That's not because I believe in magic or something like that, but rather is influenced by working long enough with virtual worlds to be occasionally irritated how much easier it is sometimes to put the intelligence in the world instead of putting it in the bot and make the bots just reactive. The user watching them won't see the difference, to him it looks like intelligent bots. And unless a bot registers to the world it doesn't even matter if he is an identical copy - he won't do much (just to mention that identical copies are no guarantee for same behaviour as long as there are external dependencies which must be met).

And there was some recent article on ycombinator about anaesthesia which I found also interesting. Basically it seems that unlike sleep this is a way to completely disable consciousness. Like switching it off. And (the wished for) side-effect is that the body nerves do no longer trigger pain. But the brain certainly still works. So yeah crazy - but the only known way of completely disabling all inputs without disabling internal processing is at the same time disabling consciousness completely. And yes - I'm aware that we probably find a better explanation for that any day now.

It's a fringe theory and I realize that I got even one step further in my post above. But still, I don't think I'm in theology territory with that already. The fact that something so basic that everyone experiences it evades a good explanation for so long gives me enough reason to keep some fringe theories in mind. That's why I agree to your post - but miss your certainty. The last few time we humans got it really wrong in science (that sun-earth rotation thing and that evolution stuff) we got it always wrong because we put ourselves so much in the centre that we ignored alternatives.