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Here is an even more interesting question: if an ML algorithm can be considered conscious, do you even need to "run" it (whether on a computer or by a "group of
by jbotz 7y ago
Here is an even more interesting question: if an ML algorithm can be considered conscious, do you even need to "run" it (whether on a computer or by a "group of people doing calculations by hand") for that consciousness to exist? An algorithm is fully deterministic... it will always produce the same result, always "think the same thoughts" given the same input. So where is the consciousness, in the execution, or in the algorithm?
Think of Conway's Game of Life, which has been shown to be turing-complete. The various "creatures" that exist in its worlds exist even without the program being run. We run the program only to observe them... the execution is for the external observer's benefit, the creatures exist in the "mathematical space" of the cellular automaton, not on the computer where the simulation is run. If an algorithm can be conscious, then so can one of this game's creatures, and its consciousness will be observing and interacting with the Game's mathematical reality, which will seem quite physical to that creature even without ever being simulated on any "physical" (to us) hardware.
Maybe all of existence is like that, no? There are people who say that maybe our Universe is a simulation. I say sure, but it doesn't need to be "running" on anything... it just exists because the rules it follows exist mathematically. It does get simulated, to an approximation however... inside our conscious observation of it! The Universe "exists" mathematically, but a subset of it "runs" in the brains of the observers to which it gives rise... it is the ultimate strange loop, forever eating its own tail.
- ryukafalz 7y agoThis is something I’ve been thinking about a lot ever since reading Permutation City, which touches on that at one point. I’d highly recommend it if you haven’t read it. You’ve put the idea more succinctly than I could have, so thanks for that.
- psychoslave 7y ago>An algorithm is fully deterministic... Well, the ideality one project in its representation of an algorithm surely might feels like that. An execution of a software in perpetually moving execution stack in a broader network of extremely volatile context is an other affair.
- visarga 7y ago> An algorithm is fully deterministic... it will always produce the same result, always "think the same thoughts" given the same input. Well, these are not just algorithms, they are actual agents. So they are embodied and embedded in the environment. Each action or movement can change the information that this algorithm learns from. So different previous experiences mean different agents. Also, the learning process is reliant on noise, and this can cause different outcomes. You would have to reproduce the whole environment in order to get to a situation that an agent will produce the same results given the same input. Also, laws of physics are like a fixed algorithm our brains run on. > So where is the consciousness, in the execution, or in the algorithm? Consciousness is in the triad formed of environment, agent and reward signals. It's a continuous loop of perception, judgement and action, followed by observing the reward signals. The purpose of this loop, for biological agents, is self reproduction - so it is a self reliant ultimate purpose, it needs no external purpose except this one.
- n4r9 7y ago> do you even need to "run" it ... for that consciousness to exist? Is a human in deep freeze considered conscious?
- SupplyChainGuy 7y agoAn algorithm is deterministic based on a given 'input'. Consciousness is just your 'perception' and 'will' given certain inputs. One of the fundamental constraints of consciousness is the ability to make predictions and 'confirm' those predictions. By confirm I mean to a reasonable degree of certainty that 'you' are comfortable with. There's no real 'truth' (besides maybe from a physics standpoint?) only what the conciouss entity, or collective 'concious entities' deem to be a truth. Unfortunately, this is what a bias also is. Most of these ideas came from Jeff Hawkings thousand mind theory