Stephen Hawking : AI could be our worst mistake

[rh310]

Oh really, which one would that be?

If you have to ask, you don't know much about the subject.

Honeywell SCOMP ring a bell? That's just for one. Or any number of research OSes that verify instructions against specifications before executing them, use reference monitors, and have explicit mechanisms for self-protection.

Even rootless *nix systems localize malicious code penetration to a single module running under a single uid.

So yeah. It's a long-solved problem.

 

[Sentinel]

@Nostradamus: Theseus' Paradox raises the question of whether an object which has had some or all of its components replaced is still the same object. Coming up with an answer as it applied to an inanimate object such as Theseus' ship itself raised many issues in philosophy, so asking the same question about living entities and consciousness has got to be somewhat more challenging, lol. It is interesting and thought provoking to discuss these things, but there are no easy answers, sadly!

I have never heard of Theseus' Paradox or Ship but will look up and see. But don't you think the idea of "object" is just a concept you are creating and then you get puzzled over issues your concept creates.

You put bricks together to make a wall. You call it a wall. Then you add a brick to it. The brick is part of the wall. You add a gate to it. Is the gate part of the wall or not. etc. I could put together stuff lying on my table and give it a name. Does that make it something. Just by gluing things together does that make it something ?

This is what we were discussing in the "free will" thread. From the moment of the big bang, matter has been assembling and breaking apart. It has never stopped changing. So how do you put a label and call it something, at any point ?

The funny thing is that the atoms in my body, have probably been in everyone elses body at some point or other. So not only is my body changing all the time, but it shares the same atoms as every other body living, or that has lived or will live. So one wonders where the "I" comes in. And who is the "I" asking the question.

 

[Sentinel]

I know billions of neurons could be reattached if you have the nano techknowldege. if you just clone your entire body including the head, then that is not you. it is replica of you but it is not you. and I don't think we will ever learn how to transfer the consciousness to another body

Read this ...
http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.0126

 

[OTMPut]

Read this ...
http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.0126

thanks senti. fascinating read.
simple math can open a lot of doors!

 

[sureshs]

suresh, your last para. what you are coming down to is a perfect or close to perfect copy of your brain. And then asking is it you ? Am i right ? If there is a technology that can make a perfect replica of you, atom by atom, at whatever level you want, while your are alive, will you still think that is you? If you don't know it was created, will you ever know it existed.

Question is what it will think.

 

[sureshs]

@Nostradamus: Theseus' Paradox raises the question of whether an object which has had some or all of its components replaced is still the same object. Coming up with an answer as it applied to an inanimate object such as Theseus' ship itself raised many issues in philosophy, so asking the same question about living entities and consciousness has got to be somewhat more challenging, lol. It is interesting and thought provoking to discuss these things, but there are no easy answers, sadly!

I assume Theseus was one of the old Greek guys? As I tell r2473 many times, many old philosophical questions are no longer relevant.

If that is all that Theseus asked, the answer is now known. At the macroscopic level, an object is what we define it to be. If we define a man with one limb amputated to be the same man, so be it. It doesn't matter because it is not a fundamental question. It might have seemed fundamental in Theseus' time.

At the microscopic level, the answer is very subtle. In theory, an atom with one electron removed is not the same atom. An atom with an electron in an excited state is not the same object as in the ground state. A proton inside a nucleus is not the same as outside the nucleus, because it loses a little mass as binding energy when inside the nucleus.

A neutron can decay into a proton and an electron in beta decay, but a neutron is not "made up" of a proton and an electron. Theseus would go nuts in today's world.

 

[Nostradamus]

Read this ...
http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.0126

consiosuness is YOU. You and your soul and your very Being. It Can't be transferred electronically.

 

[NadalDramaQueen]

consiosuness is YOU. You and your soul and your very Being. It Can't be transferred electronically.

What is a soul? Do you think "you" would remain the same if I started making alterations to your brain?

 

[LuckyR]

If you have to ask, you don't know much about the subject.

Honeywell SCOMP ring a bell? That's just for one. Or any number of research OSes that verify instructions against specifications before executing them, use reference monitors, and have explicit mechanisms for self-protection.

Even rootless *nix systems localize malicious code penetration to a single module running under a single uid.

So yeah. It's a long-solved problem.

Yer right, I am not a computer jock. Funny how this mature technology has yet to trickle down to the consumer market, seems like a huge money making opportunity if all you have to do is reach up on the shelf and slap a price sticker on it...

 

[RajS]

@Suresh: Good points, Suresh!

@Sentinel: Looks fascinating! I will see if I can make any sense out of this document, lol.

 

[OTMPut]

I assume Theseus was one of the old Greek guys? As I tell r2473 many times, many old philosophical questions are no longer relevant.

If that is all that Theseus asked, the answer is now known. At the macroscopic level, an object is what we define it to be. If we define a man with one limb amputated to be the same man, so be it. It doesn't matter because it is not a fundamental question. It might have seemed fundamental in Theseus' time.

At the microscopic level, the answer is very subtle. In theory, an atom with one electron removed is not the same atom. An atom with an electron in an excited state is not the same object as in the ground state. A proton inside a nucleus is not the same as outside the nucleus, because it loses a little mass as binding energy when inside the nucleus.

A neutron can decay into a proton and an electron in beta decay, but a neutron is not "made up" of a proton and an electron. Theseus would go nuts in today's world.

Wittgenstein famously said that all philosophy is just word play.

 

[rh310]

Yer right, I am not a computer jock. Funny how this mature technology has yet to trickle down to the consumer market, seems like a huge money making opportunity if all you have to do is reach up on the shelf and slap a price sticker on it...

It's not funny (as in 'hard to understand') at all. The way much application software is written accesses system resources in a way that is unsafe from the standpoint of making the computer virus proof. Users are accustomed to apps with the great features this type of design provides. They won't buy apps that don't have them.

Maybe that'll change in the future, and maybe not. (I think the virus problem needs to be solved some other way, myself.)

 

[Sentinel]

Question is what it will think.

Of course it will think it is you.

But what does that prove? I could hypnotize someone into believing he was somebody else. Programming a computer to believe something does not prove anything.

If your "mind" is uploaded into some drive or computer or whatever, will you think you are alive in the computer, or in your body ?

What of someone who has lost his mind ? His memories ? For you he may no longer be the same person, but he still thinks he is. I have someone in my family who has lost most of his memory, forgotten all relatives, totally confused, but he still thinks he is completely sane, and he is the same person.

So even your mind does not have to be replicated. A person can have complete amnesia and still be the same person. I don't mean "person" in the personality sense, but in what is alive.

 

[sureshs]

If your "mind" is uploaded into some drive or computer or whatever, will you think you are alive in the computer, or in your body ?

Is this before or after death?

If before, I will not know what is going on inside the computer. I may never even see the machine. I will not have any telepathic contact with the brain in the computer.

It will be like if you had an illegitimate son you did not know about.

 

[Sentinel]

Is this before or after death?

If before, I will not know what is going on inside the computer. I may never even see the machine. I will not have any telepathic contact with the brain in the computer.

It will be like if you had an illegitimate son you did not know about.

before. exactly what i was saying.
which is why i don't think one can continue living as an uploaded mind.
Why do you bring in death ?

What difference does an uploaded mind make once we die ? As i was saying it's just like having a perfect clone somewhere that can live forever.

 

[sureshs]

before. exactly what i was saying.
which is why i don't think one can continue living as an uploaded mind.

The continued living is for others, not for the person whose brain was uploaded.

For example, people could have their parents with them long after they are dead.

Imagine having a pet Einstein with you to solve your problems. Gandhi could still be giving speeches today. And Hitler too.

 

[Sentinel]

The continued living is for others, not for the person whose brain was uploaded.

For example, people could have their parents with them long after they are dead.

Imagine having a pet Einstein with you to solve your problems. Gandhi could still be giving speeches today. And Hitler too.

Maybe they uploaded Hitler's mind into N. Modi's brain !

 

[Nostradamus]

I know he said that right after he watched this movie.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JJH3FDE/ref=pd_sim_mov_aiv_8

 

[OTMPut]

Imagine having a pet Einstein with you to solve your problems. Gandhi could still be giving speeches today. And Hitler too.

Nothing unique about Gandhi and Hitler.
What Gandhi said was said by Stoics hundreds of years ago.
What Hitler did, was done and being done, albeit at a different scale since the inception of organised human tribes.

 

[Sentinel]

Nothing unique about Gandhi and Hitler.
What Gandhi said was said by Stoics hundreds of years ago.
.

I would not agree with you guys about Gandhi. He did not just talk or give speeches. He actually lived non-violence. I don't think anyone in history (please educate me if i am wrong) really lived it to that extent. Although, my history is extremely weak, but from whatever I have heard, he probably understood non-violence better than anyone.

Pls correct me if i am wrong -- with some facts preferably.

 

[sureshs]

Nothing unique about Gandhi and Hitler.
What Gandhi said was said by Stoics hundreds of years ago.
What Hitler did, was done and being done, albeit at a different scale since the inception of organised human tribes.

Then there is nothing unique about Nadal - he just plays like I do, only on a different scale.

 

[Sentinel]

^ LOL




But Nadal can't poast at your scale.

 

[sureshs]

Read this ...
http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.0126

I read the paper carefully. Its basic tenet seems to be that consciousness is the result of sensory inputs whose memories get compressed and stored in a dispersed way with other memories, so that isolation of them in the future becomes impossible. This property is not shared by non-conscious sensors where the inputs are separable, like recovering a video between two times from the memory of a video cam. But at the end of the paper, the authors also say that if the brain obeys the laws of physics, then it is always reversible and you can get back what you put in.

 

[Sentinel]

I read the paper carefully. Its basic tenet seems to be that consciousness is the result of sensory inputs whose memories get compressed and stored in a dispersed way with other memories, so that isolation of them in the future becomes impossible. This property is not shared by non-conscious sensors where the inputs are separable, like recovering a video between two times from the memory of a video cam. But at the end of the paper, the authors also say that if the brain obeys the laws of physics, then it is always reversible and you can get back what you put in.

Wow ! You actually read the whole thing, and carefully too.

As per your last line, i am not sure how possible that is, since memory seems to get corrupted even as it is stored. It seems that each time we recollect it changes again. Also, what we put in gets colored by our past, but I suppose that is not really relevant in this case.

The reason I could not finish that paper is that like a lot of others they seem to be confusing what is happening above with what it is registered on. Even without memory there should be consciousness. And even without perception (as is the case when someone in paralysed, or is unable to feel or sense anything).

Or take someone who cannot store memories. Of course he is conscious.

To me this sounds a bit weird, how some people try to reduce "x" to some set of assumptions or whatever, not realizing that they have lost "x" in the process.

 

[KineticChain]

we have a driving force that guides most of our actions for the goals of reproduction and survival. these chemical and electrical processes were fine tuned throughout our evolution to become the conquerors and survivors we are today. i don't really see these same primal principles or driving forces to be necessary in a designed intelligence that never had to battle for survival. if we can create a super intelligence, could we not create it's driving force or goals? i don't see a necessary logic pathway that says a super intelligent AI's ultimate goal has to be survival and reproduction. i can imagine a super intelligence that simply wouldn't be bothered by something as insignificant as it's own destruction. however, i think designing a super intelligence with animalistic goals would be the end of us if we succeeded.

edit: and actually, I can imagine the animalistic super intelligence might pitty us in the same way we pitty or undermine the intelligence of a child or monkey. as long as humans don't bother the super intelligence or get in the way of it's survival and well-being, it may be indifferent to us. like the passage in the OP mentioned, i think the far greater threat would be the people who are in control of the AI rather than the AI itself

 

[OTMPut]

Then there is nothing unique about Nadal - he just plays like I do, only on a different scale.

In the hallowed circle of dirt-ballers nothing unique about nadal. He hits the same top spin forehand and backhand. He just hits them more consistently.

Really, i have not seen any creative plan B from him to extricate himself out of a tough situation. Other than MTOs i mean.

Now on the other hand a Madeline Albright who deemed 500,000 dead iraqi children were "worth it" was not dissimilar to Hitler. Are 600,000 dead children a greater evil act than 500,000 dead children?

Gandhi fought oppression. He liberally used "Ram". He personally did not do violence. His masses did commit acts of violence. Isn't that true for many leaders fighting oppression?

 

[sureshs]

Even without memory there should be consciousness. And even without perception (as is the case when someone in paralysed, or is unable to feel or sense anything).

Or take someone who cannot store memories. Of course he is conscious.

1. The person who is paralyzed most likely was normal before that. So we associate consciousness with him.
2. If it was one of those unfortunate kids who are from birth like that, they still carry out bodily functions which we associated with conscious people.
3. The famous "memory-less man" and "identity-less man" of neuroscience were normal people before their injuries, and even after their injury, could function normally to some extent. So we associate consciousness with them.

There is no form of life which doesn't sense stimuli, and higher forms have memory too. So we equate life with consciousness. We cannot imagine consciousness without life.

 

[RajS]

@Suresh, Sentinel: I also read the paper - skipping the math, and looking at the qualitative result only. It is fascinating!

I buy the argument that consciousness involves information integration. It is probably not lossless, as the author assumes - we do forget things, don't we? If indeed compression can be used as the model, it is probably more like the youtube process that drops frames. Anyway, one can imagine there are endless sources of true randomness (unlike a pseudo random generator that is actually predictable) that make the integration process computationally impossible to reverse. The key sentence, which ends the paper, tells us what we need to know: "While neuroscience might shed light on the input and output functions of the brain, the quantification for integrated information we have presented here implies that it will be unable to shed light on the complex tangle that is core consciousness."

Anyway, it is a great paper that is almost within the grasp of laymen, if the math is ignored - thanks for posting this link, Sentinel!

 

[Sentinel]

Gandhi fought oppression. He liberally used "Ram". He personally did not do violence. His masses did commit acts of violence. Isn't that true for many leaders fighting oppression?

I agree, anyone who preaches peace will have followers who commit acts of violence, often even in his name. That is our nature. Which is why I was saying that Gandhi's understanding of non-violence was way beyond anyone else i have heard of.

I would love to know what Gandhi had to say about Krishna telling Arjuna to go to war. Does anyone know if he talked about this ?

 

[rh310]

More interesting paper, in my opinion:

Consciousness as a state of matter.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.1219v2.pdf

EDIT

It just struck me that a layman isn't going to be able to get through that!

Here's an article describing the work:

https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/5e7ed624986d

Nice quote from the article, consistent with some aspects of the conversation in this thread.

In 2008, Tononi proposed that a system demonstrating consciousness must have two specific traits. First, the system must be able to store and process large amounts of information. In other words consciousness is essentially a phenomenon of information.

And second, this information must be integrated in a unified whole so that it is impossible to divide into independent parts. That reflects the experience that each instance of consciousness is a unified whole that cannot be decomposed into separate components.

I'm going through the math in the original article now (as time permits) but the information integration seems to imply that there's an non-decomposable "mathematical" product that is the sense of unique self arising from the relationships between the collection of information and the experience of its acquisition.

We all know that 2 + 2 = 4. How we all came to know this is similar but different, and this relationship between the information 2 + 2 = 4 and our experience of coming to know that is what makes us conscious of being different from each other.

Said another way, the context we learn in is a sort of metadata, that accumulates separately from what we know.

Certainly seems to have some implications for AI. The accumulated metadata might be the ghost in the machine.

 

[Nostradamus]

I agree, anyone who preaches peace will have followers who commit acts of violence, often even in his name. That is our nature. Which is why I was saying that Gandhi's understanding of non-violence was way beyond anyone else i have heard of.

I would love to know what Gandhi had to say about Krishna telling Arjuna to go to war. Does anyone know if he talked about this ?

When are they coming out with one of those perfect life like replica androids ?? I would be interested ordering if and when.

when would something like this be possible ?

 

[rh310]

When are they coming out with one of those perfect life like replica androids ?? I would be interested ordering if and when.

when would something like this be possible ?

There was a Las Vegas conference a couple of years back that featured lifelike female robots that came with various "personalities" programmed in, with physical features to suit. They were specifically for the adult entertainment market, but in robotics / AI circles it sparked an interesting discussion:

At what point will a robot have the right to say "no" ?

 

[RajS]

@rh310: Interesting observations, rh310. I was also intrigued by the lines you quoted. It's like a huge database, in which when a new entity is added, every other object/table/entry in the database has new columns/indices/references added so that it is not possible to delete the new information without a major amount of work. It is a rough analogy, I agree, since it seems to happen instantaneously in the brain, and is a lot more entangled. I think what you are saying is that the sense of unique self arises from the fact that everyone's stored data/metadata is different, and new information will integrate differently for each individual, and the entangled blob that consciousness is will be therefore be instantiated differently for each individual, although following the same rules of integration.

Thanks for providing the links! I will post my thoughts/questions after I get a chance to go through them.

 

[Sentinel]

When are they coming out with one of those perfect life like replica androids ?? I would be interested ordering if and when.

when would something like this be possible ?

This fall.


I am ordering a replica of you and suresh.

 

[Sentinel]

@rh310: Interesting observations, rh310. I was also intrigued by the lines you quoted. It's like a huge database, in which when a new entity is added, every other object/table/entry in the database has new columns/indices/references added so that it is not possible to delete the new information without a major amount of work. It is a rough analogy, I agree, since it seems to happen instantaneously in the brain, and is a lot more entangled. I think what you are saying is that the sense of unique self arises from the fact that everyone's stored data/metadata is different, and new information will integrate differently for each individual, and the entangled blob that consciousness is will be therefore be instantiated differently for each individual, although following the same rules of integration.

Thanks for providing the links! I will post my thoughts/questions after I get a chance to go through them.

Isn't something just there that is aware of this information. Isn't that underlying "sheet" what consciousness is, and not what imprints on it ?

 

[Sentinel]

@rh310: Interesting observations, rh310. I was also intrigued by the lines you quoted. It's like a huge database, in which when a new entity is added, every other object/table/entry in the database has new columns/indices/references added so that it is not possible to delete the new information without a major amount of work. It is a rough analogy, I agree, since it seems to happen instantaneously in the brain, and is a lot more entangled. I think what you are saying is that the sense of unique self arises from the fact that everyone's stored data/metadata is different, and new information will integrate differently for each individual, and the entangled blob that consciousness is will be therefore be instantiated differently for each individual, although following the same rules of integration.

Thanks for providing the links! I will post my thoughts/questions after I get a chance to go through them.

Hey, wait, is this all conjecture or is there some science behind this whole thing of integrating the new info. Surely, only a tiny fraction of the info will be touched. You surely do not mean that the entire database of memory is affected by a new experience. Even if you say/they say an event today affects the other events today, and cannot be removed, is there proof that the events of today are stored in some way that they can be picked up for a time period (like say sequentially).

So there is an unconscious process (or subconscious) that can retrieve my memory which even I may not be able to consciously ? I am aware that "related information" can get picked up by the brain. Whenever you hear a certain piece of music you might immediately recall some feelings or memories associated with it, and each time they come back. But here there is a clear association happening. Two things are linked in memory. Picking one brings the other, but not necessarily vice-versa.

Recalling memories has to be a physical process in the brain. It has to take time, it has to have an expense. One cannot just read up millions of entries, and just color them up and write them back at random.

If I am not consciously recalling something at this moment, can the brain be recalling it at some unconscious level and modifying it right now? Like a background process I am not aware of ?

I'd like to know whether this is actually what is proven by the neuro guys and not just some theory.

 

[Nostradamus]

There was a Las Vegas conference a couple of years back that featured lifelike female robots that came with various "personalities" programmed in, with physical features to suit. They were specifically for the adult entertainment market, but in robotics / AI circles it sparked an interesting discussion:

At what point will a robot have the right to say "no" ?

I am talking about real life like skin and tissues that you can't tell if it is real human or android. I am not sure how close we are to making such a android ? with cloning tech perfected this would be possible, I think.
and Robots can't say no because they are just a item we own. Can your hair dryer say no to you. of course not

 

[rh310]

I am talking about real life like skin and tissues that you can't tell if it is real human or android. I am not sure how close we are to making such a android ? with cloning tech perfected this would be possible, I think.
and Robots can't say no because they are just a item we own. Can your hair dryer say no to you. of course not

Ah, so you want a Replicant (reference: Blade Runner). According to the movie, those are available by 2019.

Sorry to be glib, but your comments are impossible to take seriously. As we get increasingly close to creating a mechanism that is indistinguishable from a human being, we'll eventually approach the limit that distinguishes "us" from "them."

For an easy-to-relate-to exposition of why this would be inevitiable, just go watch Blade Runner.

What happens if you fall in love with your indistinguishable-from-human robot ?

What happens when your robot says it loves you, too ?

 

[rh310]

Isn't something just there that is aware of this information. Isn't that underlying "sheet" what consciousness is, and not what imprints on it ?

Hey, wait, is this all conjecture or is there some science behind this whole thing of integrating the new info. Surely, only a tiny fraction of the info will be touched. You surely do not mean that the entire database of memory is affected by a new experience. Even if you say/they say an event today affects the other events today, and cannot be removed, is there proof that the events of today are stored in some way that they can be picked up for a time period (like say sequentially).

So there is an unconscious process (or subconscious) that can retrieve my memory which even I may not be able to consciously ? I am aware that "related information" can get picked up by the brain. Whenever you hear a certain piece of music you might immediately recall some feelings or memories associated with it, and each time they come back. But here there is a clear association happening. Two things are linked in memory. Picking one brings the other, but not necessarily vice-versa.

Recalling memories has to be a physical process in the brain. It has to take time, it has to have an expense. One cannot just read up millions of entries, and just color them up and write them back at random.

If I am not consciously recalling something at this moment, can the brain be recalling it at some unconscious level and modifying it right now? Like a background process I am not aware of ?

I'd like to know whether this is actually what is proven by the neuro guys and not just some theory.

1) You have a very poor understanding of the word "theory" in a scientific context. The word that reflects what you appear to mean is 'hypothesis' -- i.e., imperfect but informed conjecture that is consistent with some large percentage of the available evidence.

2) Are you conflating the terms "consciousness" and "self" ? It seems like you are.

 

[Nostradamus]

Ah, so you want a Replicant (reference: Blade Runner). According to the movie, those are available by 2019.

Sorry to be glib, but your comments are impossible to take seriously. As we get increasingly close to creating a mechanism that is indistinguishable from a human being, we'll eventually approach the limit that distinguishes "us" from "them."

For an easy-to-relate-to exposition of why this would be inevitiable, just go watch Blade Runner.

What happens if you fall in love with your indistinguishable-from-human robot ?

What happens when your robot says it loves you, too ?

if it is in love with me and I will love it back, of course. You love your dog, correct. it is just a pet that you and I own but we care about them like it is like our own family. but they don't get cars or sent to college.

 

[sureshs]

More interesting paper, in my opinion:

Consciousness as a state of matter.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.1219v2.pdf

EDIT

It just struck me that a layman isn't going to be able to get through that!

Here's an article describing the work:

https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/5e7ed624986d

Nice quote from the article, consistent with some aspects of the conversation in this thread.



I'm going through the math in the original article now (as time permits) but the information integration seems to imply that there's an non-decomposable "mathematical" product that is the sense of unique self arising from the relationships between the collection of information and the experience of its acquisition.

We all know that 2 + 2 = 4. How we all came to know this is similar but different, and this relationship between the information 2 + 2 = 4 and our experience of coming to know that is what makes us conscious of being different from each other.

Said another way, the context we learn in is a sort of metadata, that accumulates separately from what we know.

Certainly seems to have some implications for AI. The accumulated metadata might be the ghost in the machine.

Nice paper. Max Tegmark is a great guy.

But why doesn't the paper comment on whether consciousness is the same as life or not? Certainly a bacterium is an independent entity, perceives stimuli, and changes itself internally largely in its own self-interest. Whether it has memories and integration I don't know.

If it has consciousness, then the problem for these theorists becomes very difficult. If we go smaller and smaller, right down to the origins of life, and if it turns out that a bunch of self-catalyzing chemicals entered into a reaction and formed life, then you would either have to say that simple life is not conscious, or admit that there is nothing great about consciousness.

Max, whom I have seen on TV many times, postulates that consciousness is a state of matter, like solid or liquid. But solids to liquids is not an abrupt process even though there is a melting point. If inanimate->conscious is a phase transition, then why should that be abrupt?

If they claim that consciousness is only in higher life, at which point in evolution did consciousness suddenly appear?

 

[rh310]

if it is in love with me and I will love it back, of course. You love your dog, correct. it is just a pet that you and I own but we care about them like it is like our own family. but they don't get cars or sent to college.

Yes, but your dog isn't something that is indistinguishable from a human being. I presume you want this robot to be able to talk to you? If so, what are you talking with ?

EDIT: Added quote, corrected spelling

 

[rh310]

Nice paper. Max Tegmark is a great guy.

But why doesn't the paper comment on whether consciousness is the same as life or not? Certainly a bacterium is an independent entity, perceives stimuli, and changes itself internally largely in its own self-interest. Whether it has memories and integration I don't know.

If it has consciousness, then the problem for these theorists becomes very difficult. If we go smaller and smaller, right down to the origins of life, and if it turns out that a bunch of self-catalyzing chemicals entered into a reaction and formed life, then you would either have to say that simple life is not conscious, or admit that there is nothing great about consciousness.

Max, whom I have seen on TV many times, postulates that consciousness is a state of matter, like solid or liquid. But solids to liquids is not an abrupt process even though there is a melting point. If inanimate->conscious is a phase transition, then why should that be abrupt?

If they claim that consciousness is only in higher life, at which point in evolution did consciousness suddenly appear?

Maybe consciousness is manifested in various degrees, depending on the representation capacity of the underlying memory storage medium -- i.e., maybe there's no single experience of consciousness that all living things either have or don't have.

So maybe amoebas are lit by consciousness, but it's a very low watt bulb because there it's such a simple organism.

Our own notion of being in the zone is a very particular type of consciousness -- one locked into "now" where everything else dissolves away. In that sense, we're much more primitive, but we also tap into a larger part of our animal heritage and so can feel much more alive in that state than any other.

There are all sorts of degrees of consciousness, even in ourselves. I've certainly met people I thought were either substantially much more or much less "aware" than I feel I am.

So in this sense, maybe consciousness is a continuum, and there is no abrupt transition from being unaware to conscious.

EDIT: Additions

So if consciousness is a continuum, and constrained on its upper bound by the state complexity of the organized structure, then consciousness is not life. Consciousness is not even self-awareness, which is consciousness with accessible information along with context as described in the paper.

So a computer of today can be conscious in the sense that there is an information processing state it is in, but it is not self-aware (yet! maybe never) and not alive.

 

[RajS]

@Sentinel: I only drew an analogy to a database. I don't think anyone really knows how the information in the brain is actually organized... yet! The neuro guys, as I understand it, can tell us what physical processes take place in the brain under different circumstances, like when a stimulus is received from different organs. They can measure signals between neurons that occur when the brain is performing different functions or thinking different thoughts. But I don't think they have figured out how information within the brain is organized.

Who knows how recall works! Maybe there is a pattern matching engine within the brain, that takes a visual/auditory/nasal stimulus and fetches all the matches or close matches within the brain's information store, and puts it in the brain's equivalent of working memory or cache, lol. Apparently chess players memorize a huge number of moves, and the moves they make are based on recall. I imagine it is a physical process. What we call "intelligence" may be tied to how much information the brain's store contains, how fast recalls happen, and who knows, maybe an inference engine embedded within the brain, or encoded in our genes, or both, and/or something else...

Since consciousness involves this complex memory store, it is reasonable to assume that it evolved along with the brain. Thus I find it reasonable also to assume that other species (dogs, dolphins, elephants, whales, primates) have some degree of consciousness, albeit more primitive than ours.

@rh310: I am still trying to understand how all this relates to self and awareness, and what constitutes a good analogy to "being in the now". Good food for thought!

 

[rh310]

^^^ please see my additions to my last post.

 

[RajS]

@rh310: Ah, just saw the additions. Makes sense. I will spend some time later today, after work ends, reading the papers and in pleasant reflection upon these matters!

 

[sureshs]

So in this sense, maybe consciousness is a continuum, and there is no abrupt transition from being unaware to conscious.

Can a non-living thing have consciousness? Is there any such thing out there?

 

[OTMPut]

We have issues in trying to model something and study something scientifically if we cannot define it precisely.

Seems we have a wholly anthropocentric view on this matter.

 

[OTMPut]

Can a non-living thing have consciousness? Is there any such thing out there?

I will turn it around. When does a non-living thing becomes a living thing?
Surely all living things become non-living things at a suitably micro scale (molecules, atoms, particles, etc).

Is it simply a question of aggregation?

Is milky-way a living thing or non-living thing?

 

[SuperSpinner]

there is nothing great about consciousness.

This is the correct answer. That consciousness even exists is conjured up by consciousness itself. It couldn't be any other way. It can't be imagined any other way. How is it even possible for anyone to imagine anything but a life with consciousness. In fact, asking or delving into what consciousness is, is somehow implying we are above it in a way that we can study it. Consciousness is like space, there is nothing special about it.