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> Whether or not it's conscious along the way is largely irrelevant. Exactly. It's the distinction between programming consciousness and physically reproducin

by unabst 9y ago

> Whether or not it's conscious along the way is largely irrelevant. Exactly. It's the distinction between programming consciousness and physically reproducing it. The latter is for physicists and biologists. Equating abstractions with what it's abstracting is a mistake, but assuming something cannot be programmed or simulated is also a mistake. Anything observable can be abstracted. But to then think something can be accurately simulated without a good understanding of its nature is another mistake. So programmers should be following physics and biology. And finally, to equate the two when the simulation is accurate is yet another mistake. It's like mistaking the gravity in a video game for real gravity. They are never the same. But they are related: One is a simulation of the other.

mixedbit 9y ago
> But to then think something can be accurately simulated without a good understanding of its nature is another mistake. So programmers should be following physics and biology. Biological systems work and evolved into intelligent self conscious beings without anyone who understands how they work guiding this evolution. Similarly self conscious AI can emerge without people having good understanding of the source of the consciousness.
- unabst 9y ago
  > Similarly self conscious AI can emerge without people having good understanding of the source of the consciousness. Any evidence? It's fun to think about, but most people who think this are guilty of one of the mistakes I've listed. Or don't consider it a mistake. Or are not programmers. AI, as long as it is software, is programmed with a very specific understanding of what is being programmed. Every line of code is intentional. Nothing exists in between the lines. > guiding this evolution AI is perfectly guided. Every program is completely understood (insert incompetent programmer joke here). Every symbol is typed with purpose on purpose. The point is, Roger Penrose is not talking about programs. He's talking about physics. When a programmer successfully emulates consciousness, every line will be deliberate, and they will know exactly how they did it. Not only that, if their program behaves like real consciousness, the programmer will have had to have knowledge of real consciousness. Otherwise what they've built would be something else. Something exciting I'm sure, but something else. All of our models (and programs) are based on our understanding of the real world. Hence, they are simulations. The deeper our understanding of the real world, the more accurate our simulations.
  - haberman 9y ago
    > When a programmer successfully emulates consciousness, every line will be deliberate, and they will know exactly how they did it. I am not so sure. The current success of deep learning seems to be a direct counterexample to this. These techniques are yielding great success by imitating some patterns we observe in the brain, but the resulting inferences more or less defy rigorous explanation. We might fully understand the structure of a neural network but explaining the "why" behind its decisions seems to elude us.
    - Koshkin 9y ago
      Right. A programmer will never "emulate consciousness", not directly anyway. Rather, a programmer will create a "software brain", which, then, will be subjected to all kinds of experiences, which, in turn, will result in this brain becoming conscious - gradually.
      - unabst 9y ago
        Right. But that "software brain" will be completely deliberate. > subjected to all kinds of experiences, which, in turn, will result in this brain becoming conscious - gradually. Again, there is no evidence that "all kinds of experiences" will result in gradual emergence of consciousness from anything we have observed. To a computer, experience is just data. So we're not talking about computers. Phrases like "software brain" and "conscious machines" are ways of adding something that is not software to computers. But trust me, if we're talking about software, the programmer will know every line of their code. Now, if you want to get meta, we can consider programs that write programs. But again, the first program will be written by a human, and we will know exactly what we are doing. > resulting inferences more or less defy rigorous explanation We have written programs that take input and produce data models. There is no consciousness here. Humans take input and produce models too. But I fear you may be confusing learning with consciousness and agency. These not to be found in the code of learning machines, nor in the models they've learned. I am sorry, but it's just not there. For every abstraction there is an implementation. That is physics. With no implementation, we have metaphysics. Here, "consciousness" is the abstraction. The physics of it is the physical implementation, and is what Roger Penrose and other scientists are working on identifying. The simulation will have a coded implementation. Meaning, whether we generate it or we build something that generates it, when we have "consciousness" we will have the code that backs it. To be able to do this without any understanding of what consciousness is would be analogous to monkeys typing Shakespeare.
Koshkin 9y ago
> It's the distinction between programming consciousness and physically reproducing it. Except that there is none: consciousness is "programmed" into our brains (by hard-wiring + social experiences); artificial intelligence is "physically reproduced" as a mesh of transistors and higher-level structures built from them - logic cells, LUTs, FPGAs, PSMs, CPUs, HPC clusters, etc.). (Partially relying on software is not an issue: even a brain completely simulated in software could, in principle, exhibit consciousness just as well as a "wetware" one can.)
- rocqua 9y ago
  While I completely agree, your arguments only work for materialist views. To dualists, it is anything but obvious that consciousness arises from physical processes in the brain.
  - castle-bravo 9y ago
    Sure, but the dualist hypothesis doesn't explain any phenomena that can't be explained by the materialist hypothesis. There is no reason in principle why consciousness couldn't emerge from purely physical processes.
- unabst 9y ago
  Intelligence is not consciousness, nor is it conscious. When I make a decision, I tap into my data and my knowledge, but the "I" is not inside that data nor did I emerge from it. The topic of artificial consciousness would be Artificial Consciousness or Artificial Agency. The ability to get things right is not to be confused with knowing what is right. Or put another way, you could be a complete idiot and still exhibit your will and perfect agency.

by unabst 9y ago

mixedbit 9y ago

> But to then think something can be accurately simulated without a good understanding of its nature is another mistake. So programmers should be following physics and biology. Biological systems work and evolved into intelligent self conscious beings without anyone who understands how they work guiding this evolution. Similarly self conscious AI can emerge without people having good understanding of the source of the consciousness.

unabst 9y ago
> Similarly self conscious AI can emerge without people having good understanding of the source of the consciousness. Any evidence? It's fun to think about, but most people who think this are guilty of one of the mistakes I've listed. Or don't consider it a mistake. Or are not programmers. AI, as long as it is software, is programmed with a very specific understanding of what is being programmed. Every line of code is intentional. Nothing exists in between the lines. > guiding this evolution AI is perfectly guided. Every program is completely understood (insert incompetent programmer joke here). Every symbol is typed with purpose on purpose. The point is, Roger Penrose is not talking about programs. He's talking about physics. When a programmer successfully emulates consciousness, every line will be deliberate, and they will know exactly how they did it. Not only that, if their program behaves like real consciousness, the programmer will have had to have knowledge of real consciousness. Otherwise what they've built would be something else. Something exciting I'm sure, but something else. All of our models (and programs) are based on our understanding of the real world. Hence, they are simulations. The deeper our understanding of the real world, the more accurate our simulations.
- haberman 9y ago
  > When a programmer successfully emulates consciousness, every line will be deliberate, and they will know exactly how they did it. I am not so sure. The current success of deep learning seems to be a direct counterexample to this. These techniques are yielding great success by imitating some patterns we observe in the brain, but the resulting inferences more or less defy rigorous explanation. We might fully understand the structure of a neural network but explaining the "why" behind its decisions seems to elude us.
  - Koshkin 9y ago
    Right. A programmer will never "emulate consciousness", not directly anyway. Rather, a programmer will create a "software brain", which, then, will be subjected to all kinds of experiences, which, in turn, will result in this brain becoming conscious - gradually.
    - unabst 9y ago
      Right. But that "software brain" will be completely deliberate. > subjected to all kinds of experiences, which, in turn, will result in this brain becoming conscious - gradually. Again, there is no evidence that "all kinds of experiences" will result in gradual emergence of consciousness from anything we have observed. To a computer, experience is just data. So we're not talking about computers. Phrases like "software brain" and "conscious machines" are ways of adding something that is not software to computers. But trust me, if we're talking about software, the programmer will know every line of their code. Now, if you want to get meta, we can consider programs that write programs. But again, the first program will be written by a human, and we will know exactly what we are doing. > resulting inferences more or less defy rigorous explanation We have written programs that take input and produce data models. There is no consciousness here. Humans take input and produce models too. But I fear you may be confusing learning with consciousness and agency. These not to be found in the code of learning machines, nor in the models they've learned. I am sorry, but it's just not there. For every abstraction there is an implementation. That is physics. With no implementation, we have metaphysics. Here, "consciousness" is the abstraction. The physics of it is the physical implementation, and is what Roger Penrose and other scientists are working on identifying. The simulation will have a coded implementation. Meaning, whether we generate it or we build something that generates it, when we have "consciousness" we will have the code that backs it. To be able to do this without any understanding of what consciousness is would be analogous to monkeys typing Shakespeare.

Koshkin 9y ago

> It's the distinction between programming consciousness and physically reproducing it. Except that there is none: consciousness is "programmed" into our brains (by hard-wiring + social experiences); artificial intelligence is "physically reproduced" as a mesh of transistors and higher-level structures built from them - logic cells, LUTs, FPGAs, PSMs, CPUs, HPC clusters, etc.). (Partially relying on software is not an issue: even a brain completely simulated in software could, in principle, exhibit consciousness just as well as a "wetware" one can.)

rocqua 9y ago
While I completely agree, your arguments only work for materialist views. To dualists, it is anything but obvious that consciousness arises from physical processes in the brain.
- castle-bravo 9y ago
  Sure, but the dualist hypothesis doesn't explain any phenomena that can't be explained by the materialist hypothesis. There is no reason in principle why consciousness couldn't emerge from purely physical processes.
unabst 9y ago
Intelligence is not consciousness, nor is it conscious. When I make a decision, I tap into my data and my knowledge, but the "I" is not inside that data nor did I emerge from it. The topic of artificial consciousness would be Artificial Consciousness or Artificial Agency. The ability to get things right is not to be confused with knowing what is right. Or put another way, you could be a complete idiot and still exhibit your will and perfect agency.