4 ms·

Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness

61 points by lainon 9y ago

monktastic1 9y ago
I'm a fan of Scott Aaronson's take on IIT: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799
- jes5199 9y ago
  relatedly, Max Tegmark tried to do some estimates of Phi values of neural networks in his paper "Consciousness as a State of Matter" https://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.1219v2.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.1219v2.pdf And while he seems to take IIT pretty seriously, his conclusion sure seems like a refutation of the idea that IIT's definition of Phi means anything: > Information stored in Hopfield neural networks is naturally error-corrected, but 10^11 neurons support only about 37 bits of integrated information. This leaves us with an integration paradox: why does the information content of our conscious experience appear to be vastly larger than 37 bits?
  - rwnspace 9y ago
    Amateur, though I have read Tononi's book and some of his work: My suspicion is that the answer is to do with how those bits are situated. Environmental complexity (or how it co-varies with ones percepts) seems to lend a lot to the richness of conscious experience.
_-__--- 9y ago
Here's the web page of the main research group developing this theory at the moment: http://integratedinformationtheory.org/ http://integratedinformationtheory.org/ Giulio Tononi's work is very interesting. I suggest anyone interested in sleep/consciousness research take a peek at what his group is doing.
visarga 9y ago
Ten years ago I was a big fan of IIT and Giulio Tononi. But today, I prefer the reinforcement learning paradigm. It's much more powerful. Instead of consciousness, we have agents that perceive the environment and act, in order to maximize rewards. Agents are also endowed with the power to simulate / imagine possible futures so they can plan and reason. An agent is something concrete, consciousness doesn't even have a definition, that is why I appreciate the RL paradigm. It brings concreteness to an almost metaphisical research topic.
- neuronexmachina 9y ago
  What you describe reminds me of Marvin Minsky's 1986 Society of Mind theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind > A core tenet of Minsky's philosophy is that "minds are what brains do". The society of mind theory views the human mind and any other naturally evolved cognitive systems as a vast society of individually simple processes known as agents. These processes are the fundamental thinking entities from which minds are built, and together produce the many abilities we attribute to minds. The great power in viewing a mind as a society of agents, as opposed to the consequence of some basic principle or some simple formal system, is that different agents can be based on different types of processes with different purposes, ways of representing knowledge, and methods for producing results. > This idea is perhaps best summarized by the following quote: "What magical trick makes us intelligent? The trick is that there is no trick. The power of intelligence stems from our vast diversity, not from any single, perfect principle." —Marvin Minsky, The Society of Mind, p. 308
- orthoganol 9y ago
  I'm excited about the latest developments in AI too, but RL and consciousness are pretty extreme apples and oranges. I agree with Searle that it's a bit insane to wave away the role or even existence of consciousness ('metaphysical topic', etc.), especially in the context of developing a stronger AI. Just because we don't yet have a mapping of consciousness to types of structures, virtual or otherwise, that could be implemented in an AI system, doesn't mean we should pretend like we've moved beyond it.
- bykovich2 9y ago
  Isn't this explicitly not a theory of consciousness?
- wxs 9y ago
  > of consciousness, we have agents that perceive the environment and act, in order to maximize rewards I don't believe "agents acting to maximize rewards" is a good description of any human I know, or if it is the reward function is certainly unknown.
m15i 9y ago
I find it hard to believe that "consciousness" can exist in a non-neuronal (or at least non-biological system) , i.e., phi greater than 0 outside of a nervous system. But IIT suggests it can, albeit a small amount, I guess because of back propagation. "If IIT is correct in placing such constraints upon artificial consciousness, deep convolutional networks such as GooGleNet and advanced projects like Blue Brain may be unable to realize high levels of consciousness." http://www.iep.utm.edu/int-info/#SH4c http://www.iep.utm.edu/int-info/#SH4c

61 points by lainon 9y ago

I'm a fan of Scott Aaronson's take on IIT: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799

jes5199 9y ago
relatedly, Max Tegmark tried to do some estimates of Phi values of neural networks in his paper "Consciousness as a State of Matter" https://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.1219v2.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.1219v2.pdf And while he seems to take IIT pretty seriously, his conclusion sure seems like a refutation of the idea that IIT's definition of Phi means anything: > Information stored in Hopfield neural networks is naturally error-corrected, but 10^11 neurons support only about 37 bits of integrated information. This leaves us with an integration paradox: why does the information content of our conscious experience appear to be vastly larger than 37 bits?
- rwnspace 9y ago
  Amateur, though I have read Tononi's book and some of his work: My suspicion is that the answer is to do with how those bits are situated. Environmental complexity (or how it co-varies with ones percepts) seems to lend a lot to the richness of conscious experience.

_-__--- 9y ago

Here's the web page of the main research group developing this theory at the moment: http://integratedinformationtheory.org/ http://integratedinformationtheory.org/ Giulio Tononi's work is very interesting. I suggest anyone interested in sleep/consciousness research take a peek at what his group is doing.

visarga 9y ago

Ten years ago I was a big fan of IIT and Giulio Tononi. But today, I prefer the reinforcement learning paradigm. It's much more powerful. Instead of consciousness, we have agents that perceive the environment and act, in order to maximize rewards. Agents are also endowed with the power to simulate / imagine possible futures so they can plan and reason. An agent is something concrete, consciousness doesn't even have a definition, that is why I appreciate the RL paradigm. It brings concreteness to an almost metaphisical research topic.

neuronexmachina 9y ago
What you describe reminds me of Marvin Minsky's 1986 Society of Mind theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind > A core tenet of Minsky's philosophy is that "minds are what brains do". The society of mind theory views the human mind and any other naturally evolved cognitive systems as a vast society of individually simple processes known as agents. These processes are the fundamental thinking entities from which minds are built, and together produce the many abilities we attribute to minds. The great power in viewing a mind as a society of agents, as opposed to the consequence of some basic principle or some simple formal system, is that different agents can be based on different types of processes with different purposes, ways of representing knowledge, and methods for producing results. > This idea is perhaps best summarized by the following quote: "What magical trick makes us intelligent? The trick is that there is no trick. The power of intelligence stems from our vast diversity, not from any single, perfect principle." —Marvin Minsky, The Society of Mind, p. 308
orthoganol 9y ago
I'm excited about the latest developments in AI too, but RL and consciousness are pretty extreme apples and oranges. I agree with Searle that it's a bit insane to wave away the role or even existence of consciousness ('metaphysical topic', etc.), especially in the context of developing a stronger AI. Just because we don't yet have a mapping of consciousness to types of structures, virtual or otherwise, that could be implemented in an AI system, doesn't mean we should pretend like we've moved beyond it.
bykovich2 9y ago
Isn't this explicitly not a theory of consciousness?
wxs 9y ago
> of consciousness, we have agents that perceive the environment and act, in order to maximize rewards I don't believe "agents acting to maximize rewards" is a good description of any human I know, or if it is the reward function is certainly unknown.

m15i 9y ago

I find it hard to believe that "consciousness" can exist in a non-neuronal (or at least non-biological system) , i.e., phi greater than 0 outside of a nervous system. But IIT suggests it can, albeit a small amount, I guess because of back propagation. "If IIT is correct in placing such constraints upon artificial consciousness, deep convolutional networks such as GooGleNet and advanced projects like Blue Brain may be unable to realize high levels of consciousness." http://www.iep.utm.edu/int-info/#SH4c http://www.iep.utm.edu/int-info/#SH4c