
The Cognitive Short-Circuit of 'Artificial Consciousness' - tomhoward
http://www.scienceandnonduality.com/the-cognitive-short-circuit-of-artificial-consciousness/
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rybosome
The author's dismissal of the "emergent property" argument on the grounds that
it is a convenient explanation without proof is intellectually dishonest. We
have no universally accepted, measurable definition of consciousness - how can
this solution be dismissed for simplicity?

I think about a hard drive with a fresh version of Ubuntu installed to it. If
an alien civilization found the hard drive, perhaps they'd be able to measure
all of the physical properties of it. But they'd have no idea that an
operating system was an emergent property of the drive because they didn't
have an understanding of, at minimum, the following:

    
    
        - Binary representation
        - Processor architecture (including the specific processor for which this was compiled)
        - Big-endian / little-endian representation
        - Disk formats
        - File systems (hell, the concept of files in general)
    

It's entirely possible that we could observe and measure consciousness if we
knew what to look for.

~~~
tomhoward
An operating system isn't an emergent property of a hard drive. An operating
system emerges out of the minds of the many programmers who work on it, out of
the interactions these programmers have with each other and with their users,
and out of the society in which they live. It then gets installed on a hard
drive by a human, after which it can function by interacting with the
computer's hardware.

This is really the point the author is making. There is no reason to be
certain that consciousness (the reflective, emotional, inner experience that
is distinct from logical intelligence) emerges out of the hardware of human
(and other animal) bodies and brains, as no empirical evidence for such a
process has yet been found, after several decades and vast sums of money
invested looking for it.

Just as an operating system is a separate entity that needs to be installed
onto the computer for it to be able to work, it (in the view of the author) is
plausible that consciousness is something distinct from the physical matter of
the body and brain.

 _It 's entirely possible that we could observe and measure consciousness if
we knew what to look for._

Well yes, exactly, and Kastrup's point is that the conventional fixation on
matter (which to date has proven fruitless) is a distraction from other
possible answers.

~~~
rybosome
> An operating system isn't an emergent property of a hard drive. An operating
> system emerges out of the minds of the many programmers who work on it, out
> of the interactions these programmers have with each other and with their
> users, and out of the society in which they live. It then gets installed on
> a hard drive by a human, after which it can function by interacting with the
> computer's hardware.

Perhaps I am using the term "emergent property" incorrectly, but your argument
does not seem to contradict my point. That the operating system exists because
many programmers intentionally developed it while interacting with one another
and society at large, and that the OS only functions when the drive is
connected to a functioning computer is immaterial. Intelligent consciousness
was crafted by evolution rather than human hands, and it requires the hardware
of a human body to function (as far as we know) rather than a computer, but
the result is the same, is it not? That is, under the right conditions, a
unique property appears that was not readily apparent from the existing
components.

Incidentally: I should have said, "...an emergent property of the particular
arrangement of bits on a hard drive" to be more precise, but I think you knew
what I meant.

> Just as an operating system is a separate entity that needs to be installed
> onto the computer for it to be able to work, it (in the view of the author)
> is plausible that consciousness is something distinct from the physical
> matter of the body and brain.

Ok, consider the example of just the core components of a computer; CPU and
RAM, and the hardware for them to communicate. This can be thought of as a
very complex circuit from which the emergent property of computation arises
when interpreted correctly. Without an understanding of clock timing, the
CPU's instruction set architecture, binary and many other concepts, the
ability to measure the voltages of various components does not make the large
operation or organization apparent.

Ultimately my point was that the author was incorrect in stating, "We can
deduce the characteristics of all known emergent properties by examining their
constituent elements", and I wanted to give an example of a system for which
we would likely not understand the emergent property had we not built it
ourselves. Although I agree with the author's point that we cannot be certain
of the origin of consciousness, I disagree strongly with his certainty that it
is not an emergent property.

------
Animats
Oh, "consciousness" again.

Here's an new counter-argument: self driving cars are conscious. They're aware
of their surroundings, in considerable detail and with useful understanding.
They're not passive, waiting for questions; they have an ongoing stream of
intellectual activity, so they have an "inner life". They learn from
experience. They have goals, some of which are more important than others.
They try to predict the future ("will that car ahead try to make a left
turn?"). They interact with others (lane merging requires this.) It's not
human-level consciousness, but it's consciousness.

So there.

~~~
c54
Exactly this.

The more interesting question might be: "What is the nature of our experience
of consciousness?" and from there "What is the experience of a self driving
car, if any, and at what degree of complication (or other metric,
interconnectedness, etc) does this experience exist in a way familiar to us"

Similarly, "what is the experience of a rock?".

~~~
nickbauman
The word you're looking for is Qualia.

------
dvanduzer
The author lays out a case that consciousness can't emerge from mere matter.
The better explanation, of course, is that consciousness somehow _is_ the
universe (like Spinoza's God), and humans obtain a portion of it... somehow.

Characterizing Turing's argument this way misses the mark: "We can test
whether a machine is intelligent or not purely by observing its behavior in
the environment."

Turing (and _Ex Machina_ ) argue that this is the only possible test, largely
because arguments about consciousness dissolve into circular meaninglessness.
Daniel Dennett dispenses with this best in his essay Quining Qualia:
[http://cogprints.org/254/1/quinqual.htm](http://cogprints.org/254/1/quinqual.htm)

~~~
upquark
> The better explanation, of course, is that consciousness somehow is the
> universe...

What is love? How can an uncaring chunk of bones and flesh feel love? But we
do fall in love, so it must exist in some form. Hence, love is the universe
itself. Checkmate

~~~
fsargent
Baby don't hurt me, Don't hurt me, No more.

~~~
upquark
Just say the safe word

------
nemo1618
I don't see how the author can reconcile his (implied) belief that
consciousness cannot be created with the entirely reasonable assertion that
some beings are inherently more conscious than others. A fertilized egg, for
example, contains little to no consciousness, but over time it develops a
"full" human-level consciousness. Where does this additional consciousness
spring from? Surely, if a being can become more conscious, then it stands to
reason that there is some as-yet-unknown physical property or process that we
can associate with consciousness. And once it has been identified, it can be
replicated artificially.

~~~
andybak
The correlation of consciousness in with certain physical structures doesn't
necessarily mean it's created or even caused by them. This is where the
distinction between 'intelligence' and 'consciousness' becomes crucial. The
more we study the brain, the more we can identify things that are obviously
the result of physical processes and the less remains to be explained by
'consciousness'. However the question becomes 'once thinking and intelligence
is fully understood, does anything else remain?'

This is why thought experiments about zombies and chinese rooms are
interesting. It's about exploring what would be left out (if anything) once a
full physical explanation had been achieved.

------
danans
tl;dr + opinion:

The usual metaphysically couched argument that consciousness is a primary
substance and matter is secondary, ergo scientists/engineers pursuing a
materialist explanation/synthesis of consciousness are fools barking up the
wrong tree, all topped off with this <sarcasm>gem of a</sarcasm> conclusion:

"The computer engineer’s dream of birthing a conscious child into the world
without the messiness and fragility of life is an infantile delusion; a
confused, partial, distorted projection of archetypal images and drives. It is
the expression of the male’s hidden aspiration for the female’s divine power
of creation."

~~~
dasil003
Yeah that's a pretty painful conclusion. It may well be the case that the
materialists are wrong, and artificial intelligence in silicon can never
achieve consciousness—I'm not arrogant enough to have a strong opinion either
way—but the minute you start broadly ascribing motivations to an entire field
based on very specific social hot button issues you lose all intellectual
credibility regardless of whether you are coming from the scientific or
philosophical perspective.

~~~
upquark
> I'm not arrogant enough to have a strong opinion either way > ...you start
> broadly ascribing motivations to an entire field...

Do you see a contradiction? You're broadly calling a bunch of people
"arrogant", who may have a very well informed and valid opinion on a topic.

~~~
dasil003
Uh, I'm saying it's arrogant to be self-assured about the nature of
consciousness, I'm directly addressing a specific line of thinking. That is
very different from ascribing psychological motivations to a swath of people
who almost certainly have a wide variety of motivations.

~~~
upquark
You're making a broad statement about a bunch of people without knowing what
they know or don't, and one might say that statement is insulting. Right after
that, you're criticizing a guy for making blanket statements about a bunch of
people.

Saying "I'm not arrogant enough to have a strong opinion either way" about any
statement A is itself a pretty arrogant thing to say (you are making a
statement about the collective knowledge of everyone else on the topic of A
not being too far from yours).

~~~
dasil003
I'm not saying _anything_ about a group of people, I'm saying something about
_a specific belief_. For those two things to be equivalent, there needs to be
a layer of indirection, eg. if I were to say: "people who claim to know the
nature of consciousness are doing so because they aren't comfortable with the
idea of not knowing something"— _that_ would be an equivalently arrogant
statement. As it is, my statement is definitely _not_ in that league. Do you
not see the difference?

~~~
upquark
Hmm, let me see how I can explain this more clearly. "I'm not arrogant enough
to do X" implies "Those who do X are sufficiently arrogant". Do you follow
this far?

Here's an example relating to your experience. I could claim: "I'm not
arrogant enough to use RoR for serious web development".

On the surface, I'm making a claim about myself / my beliefs. You shouldn't
feel upset over my statement, it's not about you or any other people...

~~~
dasil003
I find the pastime of trying to pin somebody as a hypocrite on the internet as
a loathsome and destitute form of debate that has become all too common.

But you're still not getting it, if you actually went back and read my replies
and attempted to understand them maybe you would see, but you don't seem to
have any interest in specifics, only in generalization. Still, I'll feed your
troll on more time.

> Here's an example relating to your experience. I could claim: "I'm not
> arrogant enough to use RoR for serious web development".

> On the surface, I'm making a claim about myself / my beliefs. You shouldn't
> feel upset over my statement, it's not about you or any other people...

This is a fallacy to assume that just because I am attacking an idea, that no
one will be offended. Of course someone can be offended if they have a belief
that I think is arrogant, that is not in question, it's a phenomenal strawman
you've set up there.

Also, it's absurd to equate the belief that it's arrogant to use some mundane
tool to the belief that the nature of consciousness is outside the bounds of
human knowledge. Is it the case that you are fully aware of the nature of
consciousness, and I'm just an ignoramus who is clueless about the state of
human knowledge? Okay, enlighten me then, I'm open to arguments about the
nature of consciousness and why we be certain about it.

Your assertion boils down to the idea that it's arrogant to believe that any
belief somebody else holds is itself arrogant, regardless of how preposterous
that belief may be. Fine, you got me, go get yourself a cookie.

------
ChuckMcM
Sigh, the writing style is off putting but there are some interesting
conjectures in there.

One of the more interesting papers I read on this topic involved neural nets
with a set of neurons associated with 'pleasure' and 'pain' such that firing a
neuron in either the 'pleasure' or 'pain' group would externally activate a
strong enhancement signal for learning and bind in a positive or negative
association. So that future things which triggered values in that learned net
would then get modified by the enhancement signal in proportion to how
strongly they correlated with the net. The math was very obtuse but as far as
I could tell it boiled down to creating an out of band signal from the
activation of specific neurons within the matrix which could influence the
weights of future associations.

~~~
danans
The out of band pleasure/pain signal is a super interesting idea, but it's
still fundamentally materialist, which is in direct contradiction with from
the author's (IMO silly) central claim that consciousness is a phenomenon
based in some non-physical medium.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I believe it depends on how you articulate it. The author is taking the
traditional 'inner life' definition of consciousness, which is to say that
entirely internal thinking is occurring, and arguing that AI based on external
stimuli will never include that.

The pleasure/pain internal path is basically adding additional stimuli sources
within the network itself. So you can modify the training just by re-running
the previous training.

A made up example of how that might work is lets say you had a 'funny' neuron.
Basically anytime its weight was adjusted by the network you got an immediate
feedback on that association as 'funny'. Now you re-run a previous association
that shares weights with the one that was tagged as 'funny' and that weight
back propagates through the network giving a previously 'not associated with
funny' association a proportional association.

What I got out of the paper was building neural networks that were pre-
disposed, though an internally hard wired linkage of some neurons, to learning
a particular form of association. The idea that an identical set of training
values would train differently on nets based on this sort of internally forced
messaging for some neurons, is the closest thing I've seen to the 'inner life'
notion of consciousness.

~~~
danans
It's fascinating to consider that an AI should have a mechanism of internal
stimulation in addition to its external stimulus.

Maybe this could be simulated by concurrently running the AI's existing models
in feedback mode on internally generated stimuli, themselves sampled from
those models, with some variations, but with limited ability to control the
AI's actuators.

The biological analogy for this might be dreaming, where our neurons seem to
engage in activity (hence experiences) which are similar to but also different
than our waking mental models, and does so while we are in a state of self-
induced paralysis - so we don't actually jump off a bridge.

------
im3w1l
>For all practical purposes, dissociation is metabolism; there is no reason to
believe it is anything else.

We have very little in the way of evidence on the question of consciousness,
so we can only really conjecture very simple ideas. The idea that everything
is consciousness is a simple idea. Metabolism is not. What is even meant by
metabolism? Creating the magic ATP spirit molecule?

~~~
Procrastes
This makes me want to write a glossy trade paper "self-help book" about "Your
Spiritual ATP Cycle" But I just can't bring myself to be that cruel.

------
jjaredsimpson
Truly, a piece of writing with zero value or insight.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
Oh, it wasn't that bad; just very self-conscious.

------
andybak
I think I've developed a foolproof method for detecting whether someone is a
zombie - in the philosophical sense of the word. (Detecting whether they are a
zombie in the '28 Days Later' sense is much simpler and consists of detecting
whether the person simultaneously rotting and homicidal).

My method consists of giving the person a basic education in a Artificial
Intelligence or Philosophy of Mind and then asking them whether they believe
that either consciousness can potentially be explained using concepts we
already possess or that in fact it isn't even in need of an explanation.

If they answer yes, then they are probably a zombie.

------
sixQuarks
IF there is a true physical reality and the universe is not only in our mind,
then artificial consciousness is a foregone conclusion. Not only that,
artificial consciousness will be many orders of magnitude more complex and
rich than anything we experience today. This is because biological
consciousness has emerged through randomness. Imagine when consciousness can
be evolved through technological means. It will be the difference between the
flight of a bird, and a SpaceX rocket.

~~~
pointernil
Hmm, imagine nature evolving "non-technological" creatures capable of space-
flight... but I better leave the reasons for and implications of such
developments to ppl. like N. Stephenson ;)

------
pointernil
Way too late to the party, but this cries simply for it:

How would this guys argue against this way of thinking about consciousness:

Michael Graziano, evolution and non-magic description of consciousness

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peHcu8LEgEE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peHcu8LEgEE)

Ah! I guess he simply questions, right out denies materialism. This is
borderline religious, right?

------
nickbauman
Simple rules yield complex and unpredictable interactions. This is the nature
of emergent behavior. An apotheosis of this axiom would be the behavior of
leaf cutter ants. Are they conscious? I believe the concept of consciousness
is deeply intertwined with the concept of randomness / sport. A machine defies
this notion.

------
bakhy
I guess his answer to that Zen koan - when a tree falls in the forest and no
one is there to here it, did it make a sound - is a simple no :D

This started out interesting, then went absurdely tentative, and finally
turned into Sokal affair material with the ending (the male’s hidden
aspiration for the female’s divine power of creation, lol).

------
ilaksh
Fundamentally this is about your belief system. Many people hold a dualist
core belief which precludes 'artificial consciousness'. This is mostly a
holdover from a certain type of religion.

I think there should be some variant of panpyschism that disguishes between
the consciousness of a mammal and that of a rock.

------
Dylan16807
Wow! If consciousness is as simple as using organic materials and having them
metabolize then the problem of consciousness is a hundred times easier than
the problem of intelligence!

But the way the author describes consciousness it sounds like a bad thing.
Like a shared delusion. Maybe the robots are better without it.

------
kwhitefoot
The foreword is by Deepak Chopra.

------
j_m_b
>Consciousness – whatever it may intrinsically be – is the only carrier of
reality anyone can ever know for sure.

> If that is the case, there is absolutely no sense in talking about creating
> consciousness, since consciousness is already there from the start. It is
> what there is. It can’t be created for it is that within which all creations
> unfold.

> If something is fundamentally beyond all forms of experience, direct or
> indirect, it might as well not exist. Because all knowledge resides in
> consciousness, we cannot know what is supposedly outside consciousness;

Just because there are limitations on our own ability to perceive the physical
world does not mean that there is a fundamental limit on what can be
perceived. For example, the Hubble space telescope can perceive light that is
beyond both the ability of us to observe inside of our atmosphere and the
wavelengths which we can see with our own eyes.

>According to my system, reality unfolds in one stream of subjectivity that I
call ‘mind-at-large.’

>As such, what we call ‘conscious entities’ are merely dissociated alters of
mind-at-large. An image of that dissociation is a human body.

>Therefore, our feeble attempts to engineer an entity with a private,
subjective inner life similar to our own aren’t really attempts to create
consciousness. Instead, they are attempts to induce dissociation in mind-at-
large, so to create alters analogous to ourselves.

After creating a veil that is unpierceable by human cognition, the author
conveniently hides his metaphysical "mind-at-large" creation behind it. It is
as if some great mind is doling out consciousness to each animal according to
its share. Because we are but fragments, mere images of this great mind we can
never hope to be able to recreate anything more than cheap reproductions.
Sound familiar?

> Going further down the chain of biological complexity, it isn’t unreasonable
> to infer that metabolism itself – that process common to all life – is the
> most basic image of dissociative processes in mind-at-large.

Engineers design chemical processes that harness chemical energy broken up
into individual steps to produce some useful product, just like metabolism
does. Indeed, chemical engineers use enzymes in some of their steps. In fact,
there is even work on creating artificial metabolisms. We are better at
replicating this mind-at-large better than the author is aware.

>Based on this understanding, do we have any reason whatsoever to believe that
the mere mimicking of the information flow in human brains, no matter how
accurate, will ever lead to a new dissociation of mind-at-large? The answer to
this question can only be ‘yes’ if you think the kidney simulation can make
the computer urinate.

False equivalence much? Creation of a physical substance from thin air is
impossible. However, given the right inputs, the Cloaca machine can create
poop from food by simulating the digestive process.

*edit - formatting

