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Given the idea that consciousness is related to complex quantum interactions at the molecular level, and the fact that computing power hits hard limits with reg

Given the idea that consciousness is related to complex quantum interactions at the molecular level, and the fact that computing power hits hard limits with regard to physical complexity at nano-scale, it seems unlikely that we'll be modeling human brains well enough in 20 years to reproduce conscious human thought.

Tichy 16y ago
That quantum-mumbo-jumbo brain thing was just that: an idea. I don't think Penrose has many serious followers with that one.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  He may have actually lost some credibility there.
ewjordan 16y ago
Given the idea that consciousness is related to complex quantum interactions at the molecular level Yes, that's an idea; it just so happens to be (at least outside the world of philosophy, where it's still easy to find people that don't believe in special relativity...) a fringe, unpopular one with pretty much no evidence whatsoever to back it up, because there's still no consensus on what "consciousness" even means, or whether it's definable even in principle, let alone measurable. But in any case, consciousness has absolutely nothing to do with strong AI, which is defined in terms of what the AI can do, not whether its internal states are conscious or not. it seems unlikely that we'll be modeling human brains well enough in 20 years to reproduce conscious human thought Sure thing, I can agree with that, practically as a matter of definition. Luckily, in the practical AI community "conscious human thought" is not what anyone's trying to create. They'd be perfectly happy with non-conscious, non-human thought that can learn a wide variety of things, regardless of how it's implemented.
- postfuturist 16y ago
  Fair enough. I guess I don't understand what non-conscious thought is supposed to be, exactly.
  - kragen 16y ago
    It would be great if there was an algorithm that would pick out the best 15 HN comments for me to read each morning, instead of relying on other people's votes. That algorithm would necessarily have to process human language at a high enough level to distinguish good from bad. But would it necessarily have to be self-aware, considering the absurdity of its existence in its off-hours? We don't know. Certainly there are programs today doing many tasks that once we would have thought required a self-aware entity; composing listenable music, translating badly between human languages, and part-of-speech tagging, to name a few.

Tichy 16y ago

That quantum-mumbo-jumbo brain thing was just that: an idea. I don't think Penrose has many serious followers with that one.

jacquesm 16y ago
He may have actually lost some credibility there.

ewjordan 16y ago

Given the idea that consciousness is related to complex quantum interactions at the molecular level Yes, that's an idea; it just so happens to be (at least outside the world of philosophy, where it's still easy to find people that don't believe in special relativity...) a fringe, unpopular one with pretty much no evidence whatsoever to back it up, because there's still no consensus on what "consciousness" even means, or whether it's definable even in principle, let alone measurable. But in any case, consciousness has absolutely nothing to do with strong AI, which is defined in terms of what the AI can do, not whether its internal states are conscious or not. it seems unlikely that we'll be modeling human brains well enough in 20 years to reproduce conscious human thought Sure thing, I can agree with that, practically as a matter of definition. Luckily, in the practical AI community "conscious human thought" is not what anyone's trying to create. They'd be perfectly happy with non-conscious, non-human thought that can learn a wide variety of things, regardless of how it's implemented.

postfuturist 16y ago
Fair enough. I guess I don't understand what non-conscious thought is supposed to be, exactly.
- kragen 16y ago
  It would be great if there was an algorithm that would pick out the best 15 HN comments for me to read each morning, instead of relying on other people's votes. That algorithm would necessarily have to process human language at a high enough level to distinguish good from bad. But would it necessarily have to be self-aware, considering the absurdity of its existence in its off-hours? We don't know. Certainly there are programs today doing many tasks that once we would have thought required a self-aware entity; composing listenable music, translating badly between human languages, and part-of-speech tagging, to name a few.