Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

deepmind.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 157 posts

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#41

Post by kelseyfrog »

jyounker wrote: post #17

Yawn. We have no understanding of what consciousness actually is. Therefore attempting to prove whether a system can or cannot be conscious is something we can't prove or disprove at this point.

I'd go a step farther than that. Consciousness sits in the same social location as Nous or Chi did for ancient Greek and Chinese societies. We've dressed it up in scientific language but likewise other cultures used an authoritative register to talk about their bodily/mental mysteries.

My point is that this is a category problem. We have a name for a social ontological relation and we're desperately searching for physical evidence for it in order to justify its existence. Why? It's like searching for physical evidence of property ownership, physical evidence for the value of money, or physical evidence of friendship. These things exist in our minds. That's fine. The drive to reify is real, but we can choose not to do it.

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#42

Post by vsri »

GMoromisato wrote: post #24

I think this is a circular argument. It defines a separation between computation and experience (between the abstraction and the "mapmaker") and then concludes that computation cannot be experience because they are in separate categories. There are really only two solutions to the Hard Problem of Consciousness: 1. Consciousness is an unknown physical something (force/particle/quantum whatever). 2. Consciousness is an…

I resonate with this. I think some folks will object to the word "illusion" and it's connotations but I think it is resolved with:

1. Consciousness is a material thing (that we haven't found yet)

2. Consciousness is not a material thing (and therefore we cannot "find" it, and thus cannot be "known")

2 is the weirder proposition of course. It asserts a category of things that can't be conceived, but of course it feels like we are talking about it because we are using words to contain it. But of course, the words have no direct referent. That's the illusion.

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#43

Post by awei »

If we agree that consciousness is a physical process part of our universe, I think the better and simpler question is whether or not computers can simulate any physical process. Currently quantum processes might still be a frontier but quantum computers and their hardware should allow us to simulate them.

If we can simulate any physical process, it then becomes more philosophical in my opinion. Whether the simulation is the same as the real thing even though it is exactly the same. It becomes the same kind of question then for example whether or not your teleported self is still you after having been dematerialized and rematerialized from different atoms. The answer might be no, but you rematerialized self still definitely thinks it is yourself.

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#44

Post by slopinthebag »

Pretty crazy how the author's 10+ years of academic research on computational neuroscience + 14 years with DeepMind is not enough to make claims in this topic, but hacker news commentators know better after quickly skimming the abstract. This was barely posted ~30 minutes ago and yet commentators are just outright dismissing it based on their own (probably) incorrect interpretation of the paper based on the title and abstract.

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#45

Post by jampekka »

If I understand this correctly based on a quick read, it argues that subjective experience arises at the (or in the) "alphabetization" process where continuous physical states (e.g. voltage) are mapped to discrete logical states (roughly like e.g. a bit) or "concepts" (figure 2).

Per this reading, implementing something in ASIC would make it have (a different) experience, as opposed to CPU/GPU. Not sure what would be the case for FPGAs.

It also seems to rely on the classical "GOFAI" idea of symbol manipulation, and e.g. denies experience that isn't discretizable into concepts. Or at least the system producing such concepts seems to be necessary, not sure if some "non-conceptual experiences" could form in the alphabetization process.

It reads a bit like a more rigorous formulation of the Searle's "biological naturalism" thesis, the central idea being that experience can not be explained at the logical level (e.g. porting an exact same algorithm to a different substrate wouldn't bring the experience along in the process).

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#46

Post by ribosometronome »

GMoromisato wrote: post #35
metalcrow wrote: post #13

I've attempted desperately to understand this paper after thoroughly reading it and have made 0 progress. Can anyone who does understand it attempt to explain? Currently my understanding is that this paper is claiming that "concepts" are a fundamental building block of experience (which relates to consciousness), and can only be built by a mapmaker which is something that directly converts continuous physical phenome…

It starts by saying that a simulation of something is not the real thing. A simulation of a hurricane is not a hurricane. That's certainly true and even obvious. Then they say that current AI is just a simulation of consciousness and therefore is not real consciousness. Moreover, it can never be real consciousness because it is just a simulation. But that's a circular argument: they are defining AI as a simulation. B…

>A simulation of a hurricane is not a hurricane

If we simulated a hurricane by somehow inducing a rotating, organized system of clouds and thunderstorms over warm tropical waters with wind speeds over 75+ mph, the difference could end up being fairly unimportant to those in the simulation's path.

Computer simulations of hurricanes obviously lack those important properties of what makes something a hurricane. I'm not so sure that the same would apply to something as abstract and difficult to define as consciousness.

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#47

Post by revetkn »

jyounker wrote: post #17

Yawn. We have no understanding of what consciousness actually is. Therefore attempting to prove whether a system can or cannot be conscious is something we can't prove or disprove at this point.

I find papers like this strange for the same reason. Maybe I'm missing something...

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#49

Post by colordrops »

GMoromisato wrote: post #24

I think this is a circular argument. It defines a separation between computation and experience (between the abstraction and the "mapmaker") and then concludes that computation cannot be experience because they are in separate categories. There are really only two solutions to the Hard Problem of Consciousness: 1. Consciousness is an unknown physical something (force/particle/quantum whatever). 2. Consciousness is an…

What is a "real" thing and not an "illusion" if you go with #2? Is a car a real thing, or just a collection of atoms? Is an atom a real thing? Or a collection of processes? Is it not turtles all the way down? What is "real"?

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#50

Post by dsign »

GMoromisato wrote: post #24

I think this is a circular argument. It defines a separation between computation and experience (between the abstraction and the "mapmaker") and then concludes that computation cannot be experience because they are in separate categories. There are really only two solutions to the Hard Problem of Consciousness: 1. Consciousness is an unknown physical something (force/particle/quantum whatever). 2. Consciousness is an…

Hm. It only takes a life of study and a lot of pain to understand that #2 is the thing. But most of us get to experience the latter without experiencing the former, so for most people #1 is the preferred option.

#1 leads to theism and offers an immediate balm. Unfortunately, it mostly excludes #2, and that leaves us in the merciless hands of God.

Post reply on HN