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To throw a dissenting voice into the mix: I do not think intelligence is a consequence of structure. Transparency is a consequence of how light interacts with

To throw a dissenting voice into the mix: I do not think intelligence is a consequence of structure. Transparency is a consequence of how light interacts with objects. There is no "transparent gold". And being transparent is not something we can program gold to do. Programming is the application of an electric field across a silicon surface: this can no more transmute silicon into gold as it can into a nervous system. Consciousness is a biological activity. It is not something wood, silicon, sand, metal, glass, water, etc. can do by virtue of moving around in an interesting pattern. To me, this is akin to believing magic, or to thinking that the issue with Bug's Bunny's consciousness is that the ink wasnt laid out in the right way. Rather, there isnt any. As scientists we should begin very clearly by identifying the target phenomenon. Line up everything in the known universe that is conscious and you will find that it engages in a highly specific biochemical activity that requires a whole set of highly specific chemical interactions. To believe these can be achieved by applying an electric field across some silicon seems like the victorian superstition that a person could be raised from the dead by doing likewise. Rather, all we are able to do is imitate in the weakest sense. People fooled by chatbots are no more enlightened than the early victorians who were shocked to watch the movie of a train coming at them. Fooling people is a very easy thing to do. And esp. in the area of consciousness when "alertness to things that might be conscious" seems a deep psychological preoccupation of almost every animal to the point of absurdity (eg. being scared at the wind).

sanxiyn 9y ago
Who said anything about consciousness? Intelligence does not equal consciousness.
- mjburgess 9y ago
  Line up all the things in the universe that are intelligent. They are all conscious. Unless you mean "imitating intelligence", but that's not what AGI (artificial general intelligence) is targeting. An AGI robot would be one to include in any future line-up of "all the things that are intelligent". My view is that unless an AGI robot has a nervous system, it will never belong in that category. It is fashionable in tech today to speak metaphorically with abandon and to call whatever we like "intelligent" (and to have, machine "learning", etc.). These systems are no more intelligent than an abacus: upon inventing a wood-to-lcd converter, we could run Win95 on a few million wooden beads. Metaphorically, these are intelligent. They fill the role of prior uses of genuine intelligence -- ie., they can help us calculate and therefore substitute our calculative conscious behaviours for non-conscious substitutes. They are tools. My hammar is no more intelligent than my laptop however. Neither possess thoughts, nor can conceptualize or understand anything. A concept is a (biochemical) technique an animal acquires through a biochemical interaction with the world: an electric field can not have concepts. The argument that machines-which-seem-intelligent are intelligent is only a fallacy of ambiguity. What we mean, of machines, is a tool-which-helps-conceptualizing. We we mean of general intelligence is conceptualizing. The former and the latter are not the same. In a universe only of tools, nothing thinks to use them.
  - ben_w 9y ago
    > Line up all the things in the universe that are intelligent. They are all conscious. The words “intelligent” and “conscious” are not sufficiently well defined to make that claim. By “intelligence”, do you mean: 1) “the ability to learn or understand or deal with new or trying situations”? Even current AI can do that. 2) “the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one’s environment”? That’s another rabbit hole itself. 3) “think abstractly as measured by [tests]”? I think current AI fails at this. 4) the thing which is separate to “body” in Cartesian Dualism? I don’t believe in that (i.e. souls) any more, so I can’t claim any AI would pass this test (nor any human). And “conscious”? Is that: 1) Opposite of unconscious? I’d say they are. 2) Opposite of subconscious? ‍️ 2)a) As in, not just autonomous functions like breathing or the equivalent for a robot? I’d say they are. 2)b) As in, “System 2 thinking”? ‍️I don’t know. 3) Critical self-evaluation? Generative adversarial networks pass, other than that I think AI fail this test. 4) Mirror test? Pass, but in a special case I don’t know the details of and which might well be newspaper fluff rather than proper AI.
    - mjburgess 9y ago
      > Even current AI can do that. No it can't. A machine's output is not deterministic from its input and can be sensitive to conditions not anticipated at-programming-time. That isn't understanding. A spinning top may spin on many surfaces not anticipated by the designer and acquire all sorts of interesting behaviors by doing so. "The opposite of consciousness" is not a meaningful criterion of interest. I'm not even sure it's a meaningful term. It seems to commit the buddhist fallacy that causal processes at work in the universe are differentiated into opposites. That whatever causes rocks to fall must be the opposite of the thing that causes fire to rise. It isnt -- there isnt really anyway to define "opposite" with respect to what causes what. Many of these tests you're outlining arent relevant to the question "does this robot have what we are interested in". Ie., is this piece of lead actually gold. Not "is it shiny with a brass coating" -- but can it participate in all the causal interactions gold can. I'm not concerned with how good the tool is, or how close we are to fooling people, i'm concerned with whether the robot can think. Does the robot posses any concept? Any idea? Any understanding? No, only metaphorically. It seems as-if it does to people who use it to aid in their understanding. It is only a trick, no more than an ancient human being being scared of a spinning top and wondering how it is so well able to navigate around the grain of the wood -- better than any beetle! Intelligence as it is possessed by the relevant subset of animals which we're targeting possess concepts. They are biochemically connected to their environment. The understand it. The dog's finding its bone is NOT the same as the spinning top find its grove. Only by an extremely confused metaphor. The dog puts to use thoughts, concepts, ideas, imagination (and many other things besides) that are about its environment. That it has acquired in its direct understanding of its environment. The spinning top merely topples towards its final point as-if it understood. Machines are rivers of electrical current that topple toward and outcome that it sensitive to their current state, like a top spinning about a board. They have no active, navigating, biochemical motivated concernful goal-directed action. My view is that they never will, since on all the best evidence, skillful concernful action is a neuro-bio-chemical process.
asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
Where do you think human consciousness comes from?
- mjburgess 9y ago
  I think all consciousness (a feature of most animals) is a specific kind of neuro-bio-chemical process. To put it another way, to improve your focus I can give you Modafinil. To stabilize your mood lithium. To give you hallucinations, lsd. To distort your visual perception, ketamine. To make you more empathetic, trusting and less hostile: mdma. To speed up your thinking, cocaine. To make you aggressive, too much cocaine. And this applies across the animal kingdom, in large part. Where in this list is a program? A program source is a description. A running programming is an electrical field across a piece of silicon. A description has no causal effect (the mere act of writing a description down does nothing). An an electrical field across a piece of silicon has effects, but none meaningful on consciousness. Consciousness is not hiding somewhere. It takes only a baseball bat to deprive someone of it. And its various parameters are easily enough mapped about by chemical manipulation. The modern (general/strong) AI sort follow in the tradition of Descartes who imagined that consciousness was its own sort of substance apart from the body. That its effects and structure were idealizable. Whether we call this idealization a "soul" or a "program" seems to make no odds to the mistake being made... Consciousness is something animal bodies do. It is not a pattern in the sand, or a current in a wire. An certainly not a soul, a number, a program (which is only a number) or any other idealized abstraction. To be even more explicit: no, you will not be able to upload your consciousness. The suggestion and its homology to heaven ought concern anything modern thinking scientist. A description of water (H20) is not some water. I can no more upload a drink to amazon, than I can upload a thought you are thinking. A thought is a biochemical reaction. A description of a thought, even if very accurate, doesnt think. The internet may one day hold very detailed descriptions of people's brains. These will sit like textbooks and tombs though, and not care/wish for/consider/want/desire/understanding anything.
  - asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
    > An certainly not a soul OK we agree on the basics - that consciousness is not due to some mystical external factor but that it is contained within a brain. However, your description of consciousness is a particular combination of electrical fields (NB that those chemicals are acting by changing how electricity is transmitted)...
yorwba 9y ago
> Transparency is a consequence of how light interacts with objects. There is no "transparent gold". And being transparent is not something we can program gold to do. Your remark made me research this, and apparently transparent gold exists, we can create it, and you can buy it [1]. The trick appears to be making the gold thin enough. > Line up everything in the known universe that is conscious and you will find that it engages in a highly specific biochemical activity that requires a whole set of highly specific chemical interactions. Line up everything in the known universe that engages in this highly specific biochemical activity, and you'll find a whole lot of things that most people wouldn't call "conscious". So the biochemical activity can't be enough on it's own to create "consciousness". If you compare those "unconscious" organisms with "conscious" ones, you'll find that that the "conscious" organisms have a large amount of cells with this biochemical activity arranged in an intricate network structure. Now why do you think it's not this structure that creates "consciousness"? Why do the details of the biochemical activity matter beyond being a particular physical realization of some differential equations? Why would a machine made out of silicon, when it precisely emulates the behavior of that biochemical activity, be unable to replicate it's large-scale properties (including "consciousness")? [1] http://www.reynardcorp.com/products/optical-components/coating-services/conductive-coatings/11-protected-gold-transparent-conductive-coating.html http://www.reynardcorp.com/products/optical-components/coati...
- mjburgess 9y ago
  Sure, I meant we cannot impart the property of transparency to a gold bar by "programming" it. Programming isnt a magical spell that can rewrite the causal interactions that take place in the universe. > and you'll find a whole lot of things that most people wouldn't call "conscious" I disagree. I cannot think of anything with a nervous system engaging in the particular neurochemical reaction I'm talking about not being conscious. No example comes to mind? I dont mean any old reaction. As, the digestion of wheat. I mean the specific kind that define neurological systems. > why do the details of the biochemical activity matter beyond being a particular physical realization of some differential equations Because the "details" we're talking about are the causal effects. > precisely emulates the behavior of that biochemical activity For the same reason you cannot programme a gold bar into transparency. Or program a table into an elephant. Or to put it another way, a program which "precisely emulates the behavior of gold" doesnt turn machine into gold. A program which "precisely emulates the behavior of digestion" does not digest pizza. A program which "precisely emulates the behavior of" consciousness isnt conscious. By "emulation" you mean, "imitation in form". Since it is only the FORMS the program and the nervous system share (or, gold, whatever). Ie., that they can be both described to an extreme level of abstraction in the same way. But the universe isnt abstract. It isnt a form. A program simulating a gold bar may be an instance of some equation that a gold bar is -- but possesses none of the properties that make it gold. A machine which imitates some highly abstract equational description of thought is as close to thinking as a bird is to an aeroplane. The bird's heart will burn as much jet fuel as your machine will think. The universe isnt taking place in the abstract, it's taking place in the concrete. You have no soul. Your mind is not a program. You consciousness is not ideal. It isnt a number. A pattern, a structure, an equation. These are descriptions. Your mind is something your body is doing -- as so it is for every known thing that has a mind. To speak as if the mind could be abstracted enough to a description that may be realized in silicon is to believe in an almost magical power of electric.
modzu 9y ago
the problem with your suggestion is that it is merely affirming the consequent: brains are conscious and robots are not brains therefore robots are not conscious. actually the real question is why are brains conscious? if we could answer that, then we could gather conscious things together (human brains, dog brains, slime mold, not trees, not grass) -- you see. its not sufficient to just say "brain" or "organic matter". the diversity of life (ex bird brain vs squid brain while both creatures demonstrate self awareness) suggests a compelling hypothesis: multiple realizability. if multiple realizability is true then perhaps the explanation is that it is not the substrate that is relevant but the arrangement, the programming, whatever... point being, im guessing you have a bio background and so you're a skeptic about virtual minds and in the more strict sense that is a very valid point -- most in the field of AI do not have any bio background at all and as you say, the only thing known for certain to be conscious being your own mind, well, you'd think understanding the bio would yield some insights. well actually it has, ex hinton's work is very much inspired by actual biology (neurology) /end rant

sanxiyn 9y ago

Who said anything about consciousness? Intelligence does not equal consciousness.

mjburgess 9y ago
Line up all the things in the universe that are intelligent. They are all conscious. Unless you mean "imitating intelligence", but that's not what AGI (artificial general intelligence) is targeting. An AGI robot would be one to include in any future line-up of "all the things that are intelligent". My view is that unless an AGI robot has a nervous system, it will never belong in that category. It is fashionable in tech today to speak metaphorically with abandon and to call whatever we like "intelligent" (and to have, machine "learning", etc.). These systems are no more intelligent than an abacus: upon inventing a wood-to-lcd converter, we could run Win95 on a few million wooden beads. Metaphorically, these are intelligent. They fill the role of prior uses of genuine intelligence -- ie., they can help us calculate and therefore substitute our calculative conscious behaviours for non-conscious substitutes. They are tools. My hammar is no more intelligent than my laptop however. Neither possess thoughts, nor can conceptualize or understand anything. A concept is a (biochemical) technique an animal acquires through a biochemical interaction with the world: an electric field can not have concepts. The argument that machines-which-seem-intelligent are intelligent is only a fallacy of ambiguity. What we mean, of machines, is a tool-which-helps-conceptualizing. We we mean of general intelligence is conceptualizing. The former and the latter are not the same. In a universe only of tools, nothing thinks to use them.
- ben_w 9y ago
  > Line up all the things in the universe that are intelligent. They are all conscious. The words “intelligent” and “conscious” are not sufficiently well defined to make that claim. By “intelligence”, do you mean: 1) “the ability to learn or understand or deal with new or trying situations”? Even current AI can do that. 2) “the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one’s environment”? That’s another rabbit hole itself. 3) “think abstractly as measured by [tests]”? I think current AI fails at this. 4) the thing which is separate to “body” in Cartesian Dualism? I don’t believe in that (i.e. souls) any more, so I can’t claim any AI would pass this test (nor any human). And “conscious”? Is that: 1) Opposite of unconscious? I’d say they are. 2) Opposite of subconscious? ‍️ 2)a) As in, not just autonomous functions like breathing or the equivalent for a robot? I’d say they are. 2)b) As in, “System 2 thinking”? ‍️I don’t know. 3) Critical self-evaluation? Generative adversarial networks pass, other than that I think AI fail this test. 4) Mirror test? Pass, but in a special case I don’t know the details of and which might well be newspaper fluff rather than proper AI.
  - mjburgess 9y ago
    > Even current AI can do that. No it can't. A machine's output is not deterministic from its input and can be sensitive to conditions not anticipated at-programming-time. That isn't understanding. A spinning top may spin on many surfaces not anticipated by the designer and acquire all sorts of interesting behaviors by doing so. "The opposite of consciousness" is not a meaningful criterion of interest. I'm not even sure it's a meaningful term. It seems to commit the buddhist fallacy that causal processes at work in the universe are differentiated into opposites. That whatever causes rocks to fall must be the opposite of the thing that causes fire to rise. It isnt -- there isnt really anyway to define "opposite" with respect to what causes what. Many of these tests you're outlining arent relevant to the question "does this robot have what we are interested in". Ie., is this piece of lead actually gold. Not "is it shiny with a brass coating" -- but can it participate in all the causal interactions gold can. I'm not concerned with how good the tool is, or how close we are to fooling people, i'm concerned with whether the robot can think. Does the robot posses any concept? Any idea? Any understanding? No, only metaphorically. It seems as-if it does to people who use it to aid in their understanding. It is only a trick, no more than an ancient human being being scared of a spinning top and wondering how it is so well able to navigate around the grain of the wood -- better than any beetle! Intelligence as it is possessed by the relevant subset of animals which we're targeting possess concepts. They are biochemically connected to their environment. The understand it. The dog's finding its bone is NOT the same as the spinning top find its grove. Only by an extremely confused metaphor. The dog puts to use thoughts, concepts, ideas, imagination (and many other things besides) that are about its environment. That it has acquired in its direct understanding of its environment. The spinning top merely topples towards its final point as-if it understood. Machines are rivers of electrical current that topple toward and outcome that it sensitive to their current state, like a top spinning about a board. They have no active, navigating, biochemical motivated concernful goal-directed action. My view is that they never will, since on all the best evidence, skillful concernful action is a neuro-bio-chemical process.

asfdsfggtfd 9y ago

Where do you think human consciousness comes from?

mjburgess 9y ago
I think all consciousness (a feature of most animals) is a specific kind of neuro-bio-chemical process. To put it another way, to improve your focus I can give you Modafinil. To stabilize your mood lithium. To give you hallucinations, lsd. To distort your visual perception, ketamine. To make you more empathetic, trusting and less hostile: mdma. To speed up your thinking, cocaine. To make you aggressive, too much cocaine. And this applies across the animal kingdom, in large part. Where in this list is a program? A program source is a description. A running programming is an electrical field across a piece of silicon. A description has no causal effect (the mere act of writing a description down does nothing). An an electrical field across a piece of silicon has effects, but none meaningful on consciousness. Consciousness is not hiding somewhere. It takes only a baseball bat to deprive someone of it. And its various parameters are easily enough mapped about by chemical manipulation. The modern (general/strong) AI sort follow in the tradition of Descartes who imagined that consciousness was its own sort of substance apart from the body. That its effects and structure were idealizable. Whether we call this idealization a "soul" or a "program" seems to make no odds to the mistake being made... Consciousness is something animal bodies do. It is not a pattern in the sand, or a current in a wire. An certainly not a soul, a number, a program (which is only a number) or any other idealized abstraction. To be even more explicit: no, you will not be able to upload your consciousness. The suggestion and its homology to heaven ought concern anything modern thinking scientist. A description of water (H20) is not some water. I can no more upload a drink to amazon, than I can upload a thought you are thinking. A thought is a biochemical reaction. A description of a thought, even if very accurate, doesnt think. The internet may one day hold very detailed descriptions of people's brains. These will sit like textbooks and tombs though, and not care/wish for/consider/want/desire/understanding anything.
- asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
  > An certainly not a soul OK we agree on the basics - that consciousness is not due to some mystical external factor but that it is contained within a brain. However, your description of consciousness is a particular combination of electrical fields (NB that those chemicals are acting by changing how electricity is transmitted)...

yorwba 9y ago

> Transparency is a consequence of how light interacts with objects. There is no "transparent gold". And being transparent is not something we can program gold to do. Your remark made me research this, and apparently transparent gold exists, we can create it, and you can buy it [1]. The trick appears to be making the gold thin enough. > Line up everything in the known universe that is conscious and you will find that it engages in a highly specific biochemical activity that requires a whole set of highly specific chemical interactions. Line up everything in the known universe that engages in this highly specific biochemical activity, and you'll find a whole lot of things that most people wouldn't call "conscious". So the biochemical activity can't be enough on it's own to create "consciousness". If you compare those "unconscious" organisms with "conscious" ones, you'll find that that the "conscious" organisms have a large amount of cells with this biochemical activity arranged in an intricate network structure. Now why do you think it's not this structure that creates "consciousness"? Why do the details of the biochemical activity matter beyond being a particular physical realization of some differential equations? Why would a machine made out of silicon, when it precisely emulates the behavior of that biochemical activity, be unable to replicate it's large-scale properties (including "consciousness")? [1] http://www.reynardcorp.com/products/optical-components/coating-services/conductive-coatings/11-protected-gold-transparent-conductive-coating.html http://www.reynardcorp.com/products/optical-components/coati...

mjburgess 9y ago
Sure, I meant we cannot impart the property of transparency to a gold bar by "programming" it. Programming isnt a magical spell that can rewrite the causal interactions that take place in the universe. > and you'll find a whole lot of things that most people wouldn't call "conscious" I disagree. I cannot think of anything with a nervous system engaging in the particular neurochemical reaction I'm talking about not being conscious. No example comes to mind? I dont mean any old reaction. As, the digestion of wheat. I mean the specific kind that define neurological systems. > why do the details of the biochemical activity matter beyond being a particular physical realization of some differential equations Because the "details" we're talking about are the causal effects. > precisely emulates the behavior of that biochemical activity For the same reason you cannot programme a gold bar into transparency. Or program a table into an elephant. Or to put it another way, a program which "precisely emulates the behavior of gold" doesnt turn machine into gold. A program which "precisely emulates the behavior of digestion" does not digest pizza. A program which "precisely emulates the behavior of" consciousness isnt conscious. By "emulation" you mean, "imitation in form". Since it is only the FORMS the program and the nervous system share (or, gold, whatever). Ie., that they can be both described to an extreme level of abstraction in the same way. But the universe isnt abstract. It isnt a form. A program simulating a gold bar may be an instance of some equation that a gold bar is -- but possesses none of the properties that make it gold. A machine which imitates some highly abstract equational description of thought is as close to thinking as a bird is to an aeroplane. The bird's heart will burn as much jet fuel as your machine will think. The universe isnt taking place in the abstract, it's taking place in the concrete. You have no soul. Your mind is not a program. You consciousness is not ideal. It isnt a number. A pattern, a structure, an equation. These are descriptions. Your mind is something your body is doing -- as so it is for every known thing that has a mind. To speak as if the mind could be abstracted enough to a description that may be realized in silicon is to believe in an almost magical power of electric.

modzu 9y ago

the problem with your suggestion is that it is merely affirming the consequent: brains are conscious and robots are not brains therefore robots are not conscious. actually the real question is why are brains conscious? if we could answer that, then we could gather conscious things together (human brains, dog brains, slime mold, not trees, not grass) -- you see. its not sufficient to just say "brain" or "organic matter". the diversity of life (ex bird brain vs squid brain while both creatures demonstrate self awareness) suggests a compelling hypothesis: multiple realizability. if multiple realizability is true then perhaps the explanation is that it is not the substrate that is relevant but the arrangement, the programming, whatever... point being, im guessing you have a bio background and so you're a skeptic about virtual minds and in the more strict sense that is a very valid point -- most in the field of AI do not have any bio background at all and as you say, the only thing known for certain to be conscious being your own mind, well, you'd think understanding the bio would yield some insights. well actually it has, ex hinton's work is very much inspired by actual biology (neurology) /end rant