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Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

arxiv.org

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

#81

Post by Zambyte »

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.

You can give it a virtual device as the real time camera input to show it things that aren't there. That's not organic acid, but the target isn't organic consciousness.

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

#82

Post by TaupeRanger »

smokel wrote: post #76
DeathArrow wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But does a bug have consciousness? What about a bacteria?

I suppose the bug has, but the bacteria doesn't. I'd assume that some kind of memory is required for consciousness. I'd even go so far to say that consciousness is nothing more than having a memory of the state you were in.

Bacteria cells absolutely have types of memory. And by your definition a Python program written by any random undergrad in CS 101 has consciousness.

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

#83

Post by aeonik »

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.

A psychologist I know did their PhD in this area (also old and smart), and he called this kind of thinking "Neural Chauvanism" -> if her explanation actually requires the chemical and neural components.

PDF warning: https://gwern.net/doc/philosophy/mind/1985-cuda.pdf

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

#84

Post by bugglebeetle »

tomhoward wrote: post #59
mc32 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some countries… some countries hardly observe basic human rights much less any animal rights. Some have none on the books.

Sure but this is nitpicking, as is your GP comment, and neither refute the point that the original commenter was making: modern/advanced societies have laws to protect conscious beings from exploitation and cruelty. (As I was writing the comment I thought “ugh will someone chime in and point out that not all countries have strong animal protection laws? Do I really need to preempt that in my comment?”)

>Modern/advanced societies have laws to protect conscious beings from exploitation and cruelty.

I can think of no such society where this is generally true. One need only consider that pigs are far smarter than dogs and then the median pig’s life in said societies.

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

#85

Post by Zambyte »

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…

Julian Jaynes theory of consciousness is very interesting. At a high level, his thoery was that consciousness is A) much smaller in scope as far as what it actually is than a lot of people like to think, and B) it is not actually innate in humans, it is something we learn as we grow.

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

#87

Post by smokel »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #82
smokel wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose the bug has, but the bacteria doesn't. I'd assume that some kind of memory is required for consciousness. I'd even go so far to say that consciousness is nothing more than having a memory of the state you were in.

Bacteria cells absolutely have types of memory. And by your definition a Python program written by any random undergrad in CS 101 has consciousness.

In order for my definition to make sense, the organism or program must be able to observe the memory of the state. In the case of the bacteria and the Python program, I doubt they are able to do that in any meaningful way.

But I would not mind if a slightly more involved program, or a system of plants for that matter, would be considered conscious. The basic definition seems fairly irrelevant, and it obviously matters how much the specific type of consciousness matches our own experience for us humans to actually care.

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

#88

Post by sdiupIGPWEfh »

throwaway5371 wrote: post #20
MyFirstSass wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more i've studied i've come to the opposite conclusion. Nature is >99% magic and though some tiny slices of human friendly interfaces of reality are replicable much more is chaos, weird emergence, fields, probabilities and stuff so bizarre to our mammalian logic that we might as well call it magic, god, the simulation or just bleeding edge physics as the whole field is getting weirder and weirder. The whole notio…

i have moved to this camp as well, and i don't mean in the "we don't understand it so we call it magic", i mean it seems more and more like actual magic. people are talking about timing attacks on state updates in the universe, hopefully we can exploit it

> people are talking about timing attacks on state updates in the universe, hopefully we can exploit it

If the universe did happen to be a simulation (as opposed to just naturally holographic), I imagine exploiting it might be the only way to conclusively prove so. As an actual simulation, there would be a risk of someone and/or something observing it. If intelligence in our universe tends to eventually discover exploits and if the observers aren't fond of simulation errors, we might have ourselves an unexpected answer to the Fermi paradox.

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

#89

Post by Filligree »

chasd00 wrote: post #74
xvector wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really care if stubborn, old leaders live longer if it means I don't have to worry about my loved ones dying and get to see humanity reach the stars.

Be careful for what you wish for. There’s no guarantee immortality doesn’t result in eternal suffering.

Humans generally don’t like eternal suffering, and will fight against it. That’s a reason to think it won’t happen.

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

#90

Post by MaxPock »

Horffupolde wrote: post #53
gokuldas011011 wrote: post #5

Yes, the beauty of nature is, there is no magic. Everything is governed by laws, when we uncover it, we can replicate it.

The opposite. Laws are just conceptual representations of underlying intractable processes.

The "maths is discovered not invented " camp
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