9 ms·

The AI delusion: why humans trump machines

65 points by sebg 7y ago

philipkglass 7y ago
In Koch’s picture, then, the Turing Test is irrelevant to diagnosing inner life. What’s more, it implies that the transhumanist dream of downloading one’s mind into an (immortal) computer circuit is a fantasy. At best, such circuits would simulate the inputs and outputs of a brain while having absolutely no experience at all. It will be “nothing but clever programming… fake consciousness—pretending by imitating people at the biophysical level.” For that, he thinks, is all AI can be. These systems might beat us at chess and Go, and deceive us into thinking they are alive. But those will always be hollow victories, for the machine will never enjoy them. This is really damning humans with faint praise. "Machines may eventually do every job better than we can, and be immortal, but I promise that humans will remain superior in some completely undetectable way."
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- htk 7y ago
  Koch believes “that consciousness is a fundamental, elementary property of living matter.” Consciousness is “magic” then. Even if we build machines to mimic a real brain, “it’ll be like a golem stumbling about,” he writes: adept at the Turing Test perhaps, but a zombie. This guy created a whole moat of unfalsifiability around his views.
  - vanusa 7y ago
    Consciousness is “magic” then. That doesn't follow at all.
    - clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
      They're in the camp that since you can't measure subjective experience its magic. Well, they're here reading this, since they cant measure their experience they must not exist. /s
  - ben_w 7y ago
    Your second quote sounds like a fairly straightforward description of P-zombies to me: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie However, to add to the criticism you have of this article about this book, your two quotes taken together appear to be contradictory: if consciousness is a fundamental element of living matter, then given that we can make new living matter, why should there be any reason we can’t make a conscious artificial machine?
    - edflsafoiewq 7y ago
      P-zombies are magical nonsense.
      - goatlover 7y ago
        Magic has nothing to do with it. P-zombies are a philosophical thought experiment against physicalism. The point of the argument is to demonstrate that a purely physical description leaves out conscious experience. Nagel made the same point regarding bat sonar consciousness and science’s view from nowhere.
  - goatlover 7y ago
    No more magic than anything else fundamental. I don’t know whether consciousness is fundamental, but magical has nothing to do with being fundamental, unless existence itself is magical.
- rosybox 7y ago
  How would Koch see a mechanism where neurons or other cells in a human brain are sequentially replaced over time with synthetic components that simulate their function, is the consciousness lost along the way? Is there consciousness as long as there is at least one biological cell left?
  - mgolawala 7y ago
    I wonder if an intelligence higher than ours were to figure out exactly how our brain worked. Every neuron, every synapse, every hormone and neurotransmitter.. How memories were made, stored and retrieved. Would we appear to them to merely be "simulating" consciousness through the use of these mechanisms.
  - thedirt0115 7y ago
    You should write a book, "The Cyborg of Theseus" :)
- fdsfdsgad 7y ago
  I am a "panpsychist," or whatever, and I don't really see the silver lining in any of this, either. I really don't care if DeepMind or Stockfish are enjoying how much they can drag me through the mud, because I already don't. It's a huge non sequitur to respond to such things with "it doesn't matter, it's just fake thought." And it is one the most embarassing things to see people going down that lane, alongside that other road, of "but can machines make art?"
- lachlan-sneff 7y ago
  I've never understood why people feel that way. As far as I can tell, there is no evidence that consciousness is not able to be emulated by a machine.
  - fdsfdsgad 7y ago
    Emulation is fine, is whether machines are able to achieve "consciousness" that is at stake. I don't know if anyone feels strongly on the matter either, at least on the academic level. But it's the same as with other odd philosophical position: people run into problems with other alternatives, go like "why not..." and suddenly they have an odd belief.
    - lachlan-sneff 7y ago
      Personally, I don't see the difference.
      - jonkho 7y ago
        The difference is that a physical process makes specific physical state changes to the physical world while an emulation does not. A computer simulation of an ice cube melting does not and cannot make state changes to the physical world as a physical ice cube can. For example, if you wanted to chill your beverage, dropping an ice-cubed sized computer running the algorithmic emulation of an of an ice cube melting will not chill your drink no matter how perfect your emulation is, while a physical ice cube can perform that physical state change of your drink. Is consciousness a physical phenomenon? If it's not physical, then what is it? Is it an algorithm? Well, for one, there is no precedent. Nothing else in the material world is purely an algorithm...except maybe a computer running an algorithm...
        perl4ever 7y ago
        "If it's not physical, then what is it? Is it an algorithm? Well, for one, there is no precedent. Nothing else in the material world is purely an algorithm...except maybe a computer running an algorithm..." I don't see the distinction you're making. I think I want to say "ok, so nothing is purely an algorithm". A computer relies on the rest of the universe just like your brain and I guess it's therefore a "physical phenomenon"? In order to draw a distinction, perhaps one could say that a "pure algorithm" is something that can run on "many" substrates, so the difference between a "pure algorithm" and a "physical phenomenon" is about the variance in the substrates maybe? But everything is physical. Statements about abstractions are statements about patterns of physical things.
- stared 7y ago
  In this case, Koch really needs to read Daniel Dennett's "Consciousness Explained". Even though it does not explains consciousness, it takes it seriously to dispel myths and magical thinking about consciousness.
  - JackFr 7y ago
    He makes the point that there’s no magic, but the tell is that he’s not able to explain it. His religion is that it’s explainable.
- Gatsky 7y ago
  Is there some proof that we can never detect consciousness?
- unishark 7y ago
  I think the author is being a bit fast and loose with Koch's quotes. Koch is not postulating that computers can never be conscious, he's generally saying current approaches to making computer systems are not based on feedback hence can't be conscious because IIT requires feedback. This paraphrase "Koch believes the theory establishes that machines built along the lines of our current silicon-chip technology can never become conscious, no matter what awesome degree of processing power they possess." would seem to come from this statement: "Whether or not a network has this property of influencing itself depends on its architecture. If information is merely “fed forward” to convert inputs to outputs, as in digital computers, then IIT insists it can only generate zombie intelligence." However all IIT (and presumably therefore Koch) requires we do to solve this is use a different architecture (i.e. some kind of self-modifying feedback approach in the computer). "In Koch’s words, consciousness is “a system’s ability to be acted upon by its own state in the past and to influence its own future.”"
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Rury 7y ago
>It will be “nothing but clever programming… fake consciousness—pretending by imitating people at the biophysical level.” For that, he thinks, is all AI can be. These systems might beat us at chess and Go, and deceive us into thinking they are alive. But those will always be hollow victories, for the machine will never enjoy them. Mostly agree with Koch, but I'd take it a step further... There's major problems behind the concepts of AI and even intelligence itself - and it's difficult to articulate why. It’s as if these terms require aggrandizing to the point of impossibility or they lose all their apparent meaning. Which is why I feel we'll never achieve what we call (Strong/General) AI, or if we do, we will always find ways to be unimpressed by it... I mean, is it that absurd to consider that the ideal concept beholden to intelligence isn't a reality - even in humans? If you pull back enough layers on how or why humans think or do the things they do - we arrive at things we can't explain. We don't know what causes intelligence and have trouble coming up with an adequate definition for it; similar to the concept of life. For all we know we might be just highly complex biomechanical machines operating on stimuli, analogous to what current computers already do. Where's the fine line between making something conscious/unconcious?
- blueadept111 7y ago
  The fine line is around whether a machine can actually experience conscious perception, such as actually feeling pain, for example. Of course, there's no way to know...
  - Rury 7y ago
    Pain is a signal to your brain, which causes you to react to a stimuli. Computers react to electrical inputs, and on some level can be considered reacting to a stimuli. Is a computer therefore conscious?
    - blueadept111 7y ago
      Does it feel pain? I think not.
      - 7y ago
nohat 7y ago
Koch (or perhaps just the reporter quoting him) contradicts himself. Even in his own definition of consciousness a machine architecture merely needs a feedback loop to be conscious, something hardly unheard of in computer programs. Now arguably that definition isn't terrible because human consciousness does seem like a supervisor -- something that synthesizes all the subprocess work and makes sure it has a coherent story.
- skosch 7y ago
  Don't worry: Tononi (and, by extension, Koch) have thought about IIT much more than the author of this article. You are correctly pointing out the conflict between computationalism ("consciousness is what certain computations feels like from the inside") and physicalism ("consciousness is what certain computations feel like from the inside, when they take place on physical substrates, perhaps requiring the involvement of quantum decoherence"). One of the best primers on the current state of academic hypotheses on these topics is the whitepaper "Principia Qualia" by the good folks at the Qualia Research Institute [0]. [0] https://opentheory.net/PrincipiaQualia.pdf https://opentheory.net/PrincipiaQualia.pdf
ctoth 7y ago
Recognition of the powerful pattern matching ability of humans is growing. As a result, humans are increasingly being deployed to make decisions that affect the well-being of other humans. We are starting to see the use of human decision makers in courts, in university admissions offices, in loan application departments, and in recruitment. Soon humans will be the primary gateway to many core services. The use of humans undoubtedly comes with benefits relative to the data-derived algorithms that we have used in the past. The human ability to spot anomalies that are missed by our rigid algorithms is unparalleled. A human decision maker also allows us to hold someone directly accountable for the decisions. However, the replacement of algorithms with a powerful technology in the form of the human brain is not without risks. Before humans become the standard way in which we make decisions, we need to consider the risks and ensure implementation of human decision-making systems does not cause widespread harm. To this end, we need to develop principles for the application for the human intelligence to decision making. https://behavioralscientist.org/principles-for-the-application-of-human-intelligence/ https://behavioralscientist.org/principles-for-the-applicati...
- jodrellblank 7y ago
  Myron Aub, a low grade Technician, discovers how to reverse-engineer the principles of pencil-and-paper arithmetic by studying the workings of ancient computers which were programmed by human beings, before bootstrapping became the norm—a development which is later dubbed "Graphitics". The discovery is appropriated by the military establishment, who use it to re-invent their understanding of mathematics. They also plan to replace their computer-operated ships with lower cost, more expendable manned ships to continue the war. Aub is so upset by the appropriation of his discovery for military purposes that he commits suicide. As Aub's funeral proceeds, his supervisor realizes that even with Aub dead, the advancement of Graphitics is unstoppable. He executes simple multiplications in his mind without help from any machine, which gives him a great feeling of power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power
oklol123 7y ago
Don’t want to drag down the enthusiasm, but we really should distinct between data analytics, actor systems, etc. and of course „artificial intelligence“.
- masswerk 7y ago
  Also, we should make a distinction between multi-layered, hierarchical information, classification and decision finding systems in general and a possible machine implementation thereof. Those systems have shown remarkable performance when operated by humans, e.g., the Dowding System [0]. (I don't think that any ML/AI systems are able to surpass this currently.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowding_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowding_system (The article contains only a quite crude and basic representation of the operations of the filter room.)
  - oklol123 7y ago
    The point is that looking at artificial intelligence like this is naive. There are some things Actor systems excel, but fail at others. There are some things NN can do pretty well, but suck at others. Comparing humans to all applications of AI is naive and no definitive answer can be given, because it really depends. I think that this will be the status quo in the future.
    - masswerk 7y ago
      This was more about comparing multi-layered systems to single actor ones and about us more or less ignoring, what humans could achieve and historically have been achieving with those, rather taking multi-layered information processing as a defining characteristic of algorithmic systems. (Actually, this isn't new, it had been deployed with massive success, and we are repurposing it with mixed results.)
gfodor 7y ago
Brain-neural interfaces or other high bandwidth sensory tools (like VR) seem to be a good path to start answering the falsifiable hypotheses around consciousness. It seems imminently possible to link minds, either physical minds or a physical-virtual duality, and start experimenting with the qualia that emerge. I’d conjecture that a highly dedicated individual today, with clever hacking, could actually perform crude experiments using available hardware to deduce if they can shift their consciousness to a form of duality with a virtual agent by sufficient sensory override.
- kranner 7y ago
  > if they can shift their consciousness to a form of duality with a virtual agent by sufficient sensory override. Can you explain what you mean? It seems we already have this with naïve use of consumer VR devices on most VR experiences. For instance, while playing Richie's Plank Experience, the player already feels qualia due to: 1. virtual self in virtual world: looking down the plank in mid air where the plank is virtual and being in mid air outside a tall building is virtual 2. physical self in physical world: if a friend nudges you from behind (or out of sight of virtual self), or you have a fan blowing wind that would correspond to the breeze you would expect to feel in the virtual world, or you're walking on a real plank to which the virtual plank has been resized/calibrated (this one is a true hybrid real+virtual 'quale': you see the virtual plank but feel the real plank with your feet). If you meant the virtual agent would have separate agency from the player, please explain as I don't quite follow.
  - gfodor 7y ago
    Well, there are a variety of theses around if one could transfer ones consciousness into a computer. Presumably, if this were possible, it would also be possible to partially transfer ones consciousness into a computer. Now, this is going to be a subjective measure (at least for now, unless we find a way to measure consciousness.) However, if someone were able to self report that their consciousness were transferred into a computer, that would at least be something. So, inductively, if a person were able to self report that their consciousness were partially transferred into a computer, in some form or another, that would be some evidence a more meaningful transfer could occur. So the question reduces down to what mechanisms exist today that would potentially allow such a partial transfer. I think a huge gate opens if you get a high bandwidth brain/computer interface. But until then, an experiment like the following may give us a glimpse of the tractibility of such transfer: - First, you need a full audio and visual override of one eye and one ear (basically over-ear headphone in one ear, and over-eye VR goggle.) - You also need to be able to track something on a person that a) is underutilized in the 'real' world and b) has sufficient bandwidth to convey some kind of agency of control over a virtual agent. For example, you could wire things up so a person's toe orientations could measured, or internal teeth motion, or subvocalization, etc. You could have dual-use mechanics, like a dedicated hand controller that still gives you freedom to use your hand, but I'd argue this might compromise the experiment. - Combined with these two, with the hardware on and the inputs working, connect this person bi-directionally with a virtual agent in a simulation. (Basically a modern first person video game would probably suffice.) The video and audio feedback is obvious, you'd need to come up with a mapping of the inputs. Give the person some goals to accomplish in the simulation that are non-trivial and take concerted mental and physical effort to do. At the end of say a months worth of this dual immersion in both the physical body and the virtual, have the person self-assess their conscious state. I think it's even odds that they feel like they are playing a video game still, or are actually manifested consciously as inhabiting two places at once, whatever the hell that means. The experiment is predicated on the idea that brain plasticity would start to allow the person to experience a level of conscious experience and control over the virtual agent similar to the physical world, since their sensory inputs and agency is at some level of parity in time and bandwidth between both physical and virtual. It's far from total parity, but it's well beyond what has been possible to do in recent history, so may be past the tipping point necessary for changes in conscious experience. If the latter were to occur, and the person feels a duality of presence, the subjective experience of say, closing off the person's other remaining senses which are attached to the physical world (ie their free eye and ear, etc.) and waiting another month, may actually result in a representitive experience of what a consciousness transfer would feel like.
deathanatos 7y ago
> In some circumstances it has been surpassed already. It’s not an unfamiliar experience today to wonder whether we’re interacting online with a human or an AI system, and even alleged experts have been taken in by bots like “Eugene Goostman,” which, posing as a Ukrainian teenager, fooled a panel of Royal Society judges in 2014 into thinking it was human. No, the Turing test has not been surpassed. The "panel" was not fooled; one judge on the panel was fooled. And how, I don't know. The sample dialog on the Wikipedia page for that bot is the sort of pointless trivia questions that a bot can answer and a human can get wrong, and it won't tell you anything about who you're interrogating. If you instead try holding context across multiple inquiries, the charade will quickly reveal itself, (">" = human, "<" = bot's reply.) > Hello. < Nice to meet you! Please tell me how you found me and what you'd like to discuss :-) > Through Wikipedia. Tell me about somewhere you've visited. < May I ask you about the real reason of your interest? Maybe, let's talk about something else? What would you like to discuss? > Curious about your history. Why do you not want to discuss it? < How do you know? I thought nobody could guess that! Could you tell me what are you? I mean your profession. The previous reply is nonsense, and the constant evasion is typical of chat bots like Cleverbot. Clearly bot. I know I'm not blind, but I think we're kidding ourselves to equate this with the dialogue capabilities of a human. It took 3 queries to get to that. Even more recent attempts, like AI dungeon, fall apart after 2-3 queries that require context and understanding.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  On the other hand, I regularly get phone (sometimes email) support that seems to have similar flaws and I know (I think I know) it's humans. It seems quite dramatic the difference when the person on the other end does handle context and analytic thinking. Maybe there's a bifurcation going on, and some people are converging with AI and others are not?
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > On the other hand, I regularly get phone (sometimes email) support that seems to have similar flaws and I know (I think I know) it's humans. Conversational bots for support are increasingly common, and the voices are getting better, and even outside of actual conversational bots humans following flowcharts that essentially render them into conversational bots have been a thing for quite a long time.

65 points by sebg 7y ago

In Koch’s picture, then, the Turing Test is irrelevant to diagnosing inner life. What’s more, it implies that the transhumanist dream of downloading one’s mind into an (immortal) computer circuit is a fantasy. At best, such circuits would simulate the inputs and outputs of a brain while having absolutely no experience at all. It will be “nothing but clever programming… fake consciousness—pretending by imitating people at the biophysical level.” For that, he thinks, is all AI can be. These systems might beat us at chess and Go, and deceive us into thinking they are alive. But those will always be hollow victories, for the machine will never enjoy them. This is really damning humans with faint praise. "Machines may eventually do every job better than we can, and be immortal, but I promise that humans will remain superior in some completely undetectable way."

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
htk 7y ago
Koch believes “that consciousness is a fundamental, elementary property of living matter.” Consciousness is “magic” then. Even if we build machines to mimic a real brain, “it’ll be like a golem stumbling about,” he writes: adept at the Turing Test perhaps, but a zombie. This guy created a whole moat of unfalsifiability around his views.
- vanusa 7y ago
  Consciousness is “magic” then. That doesn't follow at all.
  - clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
    They're in the camp that since you can't measure subjective experience its magic. Well, they're here reading this, since they cant measure their experience they must not exist. /s
- ben_w 7y ago
  Your second quote sounds like a fairly straightforward description of P-zombies to me: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie However, to add to the criticism you have of this article about this book, your two quotes taken together appear to be contradictory: if consciousness is a fundamental element of living matter, then given that we can make new living matter, why should there be any reason we can’t make a conscious artificial machine?
  - edflsafoiewq 7y ago
    P-zombies are magical nonsense.
    - goatlover 7y ago
      Magic has nothing to do with it. P-zombies are a philosophical thought experiment against physicalism. The point of the argument is to demonstrate that a purely physical description leaves out conscious experience. Nagel made the same point regarding bat sonar consciousness and science’s view from nowhere.
- goatlover 7y ago
  No more magic than anything else fundamental. I don’t know whether consciousness is fundamental, but magical has nothing to do with being fundamental, unless existence itself is magical.
rosybox 7y ago
How would Koch see a mechanism where neurons or other cells in a human brain are sequentially replaced over time with synthetic components that simulate their function, is the consciousness lost along the way? Is there consciousness as long as there is at least one biological cell left?
- mgolawala 7y ago
  I wonder if an intelligence higher than ours were to figure out exactly how our brain worked. Every neuron, every synapse, every hormone and neurotransmitter.. How memories were made, stored and retrieved. Would we appear to them to merely be "simulating" consciousness through the use of these mechanisms.
- thedirt0115 7y ago
  You should write a book, "The Cyborg of Theseus" :)
fdsfdsgad 7y ago
I am a "panpsychist," or whatever, and I don't really see the silver lining in any of this, either. I really don't care if DeepMind or Stockfish are enjoying how much they can drag me through the mud, because I already don't. It's a huge non sequitur to respond to such things with "it doesn't matter, it's just fake thought." And it is one the most embarassing things to see people going down that lane, alongside that other road, of "but can machines make art?"
lachlan-sneff 7y ago
I've never understood why people feel that way. As far as I can tell, there is no evidence that consciousness is not able to be emulated by a machine.
- fdsfdsgad 7y ago
  Emulation is fine, is whether machines are able to achieve "consciousness" that is at stake. I don't know if anyone feels strongly on the matter either, at least on the academic level. But it's the same as with other odd philosophical position: people run into problems with other alternatives, go like "why not..." and suddenly they have an odd belief.
  - lachlan-sneff 7y ago
    Personally, I don't see the difference.
    - jonkho 7y ago
      The difference is that a physical process makes specific physical state changes to the physical world while an emulation does not. A computer simulation of an ice cube melting does not and cannot make state changes to the physical world as a physical ice cube can. For example, if you wanted to chill your beverage, dropping an ice-cubed sized computer running the algorithmic emulation of an of an ice cube melting will not chill your drink no matter how perfect your emulation is, while a physical ice cube can perform that physical state change of your drink. Is consciousness a physical phenomenon? If it's not physical, then what is it? Is it an algorithm? Well, for one, there is no precedent. Nothing else in the material world is purely an algorithm...except maybe a computer running an algorithm...
      - perl4ever 7y ago
        "If it's not physical, then what is it? Is it an algorithm? Well, for one, there is no precedent. Nothing else in the material world is purely an algorithm...except maybe a computer running an algorithm..." I don't see the distinction you're making. I think I want to say "ok, so nothing is purely an algorithm". A computer relies on the rest of the universe just like your brain and I guess it's therefore a "physical phenomenon"? In order to draw a distinction, perhaps one could say that a "pure algorithm" is something that can run on "many" substrates, so the difference between a "pure algorithm" and a "physical phenomenon" is about the variance in the substrates maybe? But everything is physical. Statements about abstractions are statements about patterns of physical things.
stared 7y ago
In this case, Koch really needs to read Daniel Dennett's "Consciousness Explained". Even though it does not explains consciousness, it takes it seriously to dispel myths and magical thinking about consciousness.
- JackFr 7y ago
  He makes the point that there’s no magic, but the tell is that he’s not able to explain it. His religion is that it’s explainable.
Gatsky 7y ago
Is there some proof that we can never detect consciousness?
unishark 7y ago
I think the author is being a bit fast and loose with Koch's quotes. Koch is not postulating that computers can never be conscious, he's generally saying current approaches to making computer systems are not based on feedback hence can't be conscious because IIT requires feedback. This paraphrase "Koch believes the theory establishes that machines built along the lines of our current silicon-chip technology can never become conscious, no matter what awesome degree of processing power they possess." would seem to come from this statement: "Whether or not a network has this property of influencing itself depends on its architecture. If information is merely “fed forward” to convert inputs to outputs, as in digital computers, then IIT insists it can only generate zombie intelligence." However all IIT (and presumably therefore Koch) requires we do to solve this is use a different architecture (i.e. some kind of self-modifying feedback approach in the computer). "In Koch’s words, consciousness is “a system’s ability to be acted upon by its own state in the past and to influence its own future.”"

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Rury 7y ago

>It will be “nothing but clever programming… fake consciousness—pretending by imitating people at the biophysical level.” For that, he thinks, is all AI can be. These systems might beat us at chess and Go, and deceive us into thinking they are alive. But those will always be hollow victories, for the machine will never enjoy them. Mostly agree with Koch, but I'd take it a step further... There's major problems behind the concepts of AI and even intelligence itself - and it's difficult to articulate why. It’s as if these terms require aggrandizing to the point of impossibility or they lose all their apparent meaning. Which is why I feel we'll never achieve what we call (Strong/General) AI, or if we do, we will always find ways to be unimpressed by it... I mean, is it that absurd to consider that the ideal concept beholden to intelligence isn't a reality - even in humans? If you pull back enough layers on how or why humans think or do the things they do - we arrive at things we can't explain. We don't know what causes intelligence and have trouble coming up with an adequate definition for it; similar to the concept of life. For all we know we might be just highly complex biomechanical machines operating on stimuli, analogous to what current computers already do. Where's the fine line between making something conscious/unconcious?

blueadept111 7y ago
The fine line is around whether a machine can actually experience conscious perception, such as actually feeling pain, for example. Of course, there's no way to know...
- Rury 7y ago
  Pain is a signal to your brain, which causes you to react to a stimuli. Computers react to electrical inputs, and on some level can be considered reacting to a stimuli. Is a computer therefore conscious?
  - blueadept111 7y ago
    Does it feel pain? I think not.
    - 7y ago

nohat 7y ago

Koch (or perhaps just the reporter quoting him) contradicts himself. Even in his own definition of consciousness a machine architecture merely needs a feedback loop to be conscious, something hardly unheard of in computer programs. Now arguably that definition isn't terrible because human consciousness does seem like a supervisor -- something that synthesizes all the subprocess work and makes sure it has a coherent story.

skosch 7y ago
Don't worry: Tononi (and, by extension, Koch) have thought about IIT much more than the author of this article. You are correctly pointing out the conflict between computationalism ("consciousness is what certain computations feels like from the inside") and physicalism ("consciousness is what certain computations feel like from the inside, when they take place on physical substrates, perhaps requiring the involvement of quantum decoherence"). One of the best primers on the current state of academic hypotheses on these topics is the whitepaper "Principia Qualia" by the good folks at the Qualia Research Institute [0]. [0] https://opentheory.net/PrincipiaQualia.pdf https://opentheory.net/PrincipiaQualia.pdf

ctoth 7y ago

Recognition of the powerful pattern matching ability of humans is growing. As a result, humans are increasingly being deployed to make decisions that affect the well-being of other humans. We are starting to see the use of human decision makers in courts, in university admissions offices, in loan application departments, and in recruitment. Soon humans will be the primary gateway to many core services. The use of humans undoubtedly comes with benefits relative to the data-derived algorithms that we have used in the past. The human ability to spot anomalies that are missed by our rigid algorithms is unparalleled. A human decision maker also allows us to hold someone directly accountable for the decisions. However, the replacement of algorithms with a powerful technology in the form of the human brain is not without risks. Before humans become the standard way in which we make decisions, we need to consider the risks and ensure implementation of human decision-making systems does not cause widespread harm. To this end, we need to develop principles for the application for the human intelligence to decision making. https://behavioralscientist.org/principles-for-the-application-of-human-intelligence/ https://behavioralscientist.org/principles-for-the-applicati...

jodrellblank 7y ago
Myron Aub, a low grade Technician, discovers how to reverse-engineer the principles of pencil-and-paper arithmetic by studying the workings of ancient computers which were programmed by human beings, before bootstrapping became the norm—a development which is later dubbed "Graphitics". The discovery is appropriated by the military establishment, who use it to re-invent their understanding of mathematics. They also plan to replace their computer-operated ships with lower cost, more expendable manned ships to continue the war. Aub is so upset by the appropriation of his discovery for military purposes that he commits suicide. As Aub's funeral proceeds, his supervisor realizes that even with Aub dead, the advancement of Graphitics is unstoppable. He executes simple multiplications in his mind without help from any machine, which gives him a great feeling of power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power

oklol123 7y ago

Don’t want to drag down the enthusiasm, but we really should distinct between data analytics, actor systems, etc. and of course „artificial intelligence“.

masswerk 7y ago
Also, we should make a distinction between multi-layered, hierarchical information, classification and decision finding systems in general and a possible machine implementation thereof. Those systems have shown remarkable performance when operated by humans, e.g., the Dowding System [0]. (I don't think that any ML/AI systems are able to surpass this currently.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowding_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowding_system (The article contains only a quite crude and basic representation of the operations of the filter room.)
- oklol123 7y ago
  The point is that looking at artificial intelligence like this is naive. There are some things Actor systems excel, but fail at others. There are some things NN can do pretty well, but suck at others. Comparing humans to all applications of AI is naive and no definitive answer can be given, because it really depends. I think that this will be the status quo in the future.
  - masswerk 7y ago
    This was more about comparing multi-layered systems to single actor ones and about us more or less ignoring, what humans could achieve and historically have been achieving with those, rather taking multi-layered information processing as a defining characteristic of algorithmic systems. (Actually, this isn't new, it had been deployed with massive success, and we are repurposing it with mixed results.)

gfodor 7y ago

Brain-neural interfaces or other high bandwidth sensory tools (like VR) seem to be a good path to start answering the falsifiable hypotheses around consciousness. It seems imminently possible to link minds, either physical minds or a physical-virtual duality, and start experimenting with the qualia that emerge. I’d conjecture that a highly dedicated individual today, with clever hacking, could actually perform crude experiments using available hardware to deduce if they can shift their consciousness to a form of duality with a virtual agent by sufficient sensory override.

kranner 7y ago
> if they can shift their consciousness to a form of duality with a virtual agent by sufficient sensory override. Can you explain what you mean? It seems we already have this with naïve use of consumer VR devices on most VR experiences. For instance, while playing Richie's Plank Experience, the player already feels qualia due to: 1. virtual self in virtual world: looking down the plank in mid air where the plank is virtual and being in mid air outside a tall building is virtual 2. physical self in physical world: if a friend nudges you from behind (or out of sight of virtual self), or you have a fan blowing wind that would correspond to the breeze you would expect to feel in the virtual world, or you're walking on a real plank to which the virtual plank has been resized/calibrated (this one is a true hybrid real+virtual 'quale': you see the virtual plank but feel the real plank with your feet). If you meant the virtual agent would have separate agency from the player, please explain as I don't quite follow.
- gfodor 7y ago
  Well, there are a variety of theses around if one could transfer ones consciousness into a computer. Presumably, if this were possible, it would also be possible to partially transfer ones consciousness into a computer. Now, this is going to be a subjective measure (at least for now, unless we find a way to measure consciousness.) However, if someone were able to self report that their consciousness were transferred into a computer, that would at least be something. So, inductively, if a person were able to self report that their consciousness were partially transferred into a computer, in some form or another, that would be some evidence a more meaningful transfer could occur. So the question reduces down to what mechanisms exist today that would potentially allow such a partial transfer. I think a huge gate opens if you get a high bandwidth brain/computer interface. But until then, an experiment like the following may give us a glimpse of the tractibility of such transfer: - First, you need a full audio and visual override of one eye and one ear (basically over-ear headphone in one ear, and over-eye VR goggle.) - You also need to be able to track something on a person that a) is underutilized in the 'real' world and b) has sufficient bandwidth to convey some kind of agency of control over a virtual agent. For example, you could wire things up so a person's toe orientations could measured, or internal teeth motion, or subvocalization, etc. You could have dual-use mechanics, like a dedicated hand controller that still gives you freedom to use your hand, but I'd argue this might compromise the experiment. - Combined with these two, with the hardware on and the inputs working, connect this person bi-directionally with a virtual agent in a simulation. (Basically a modern first person video game would probably suffice.) The video and audio feedback is obvious, you'd need to come up with a mapping of the inputs. Give the person some goals to accomplish in the simulation that are non-trivial and take concerted mental and physical effort to do. At the end of say a months worth of this dual immersion in both the physical body and the virtual, have the person self-assess their conscious state. I think it's even odds that they feel like they are playing a video game still, or are actually manifested consciously as inhabiting two places at once, whatever the hell that means. The experiment is predicated on the idea that brain plasticity would start to allow the person to experience a level of conscious experience and control over the virtual agent similar to the physical world, since their sensory inputs and agency is at some level of parity in time and bandwidth between both physical and virtual. It's far from total parity, but it's well beyond what has been possible to do in recent history, so may be past the tipping point necessary for changes in conscious experience. If the latter were to occur, and the person feels a duality of presence, the subjective experience of say, closing off the person's other remaining senses which are attached to the physical world (ie their free eye and ear, etc.) and waiting another month, may actually result in a representitive experience of what a consciousness transfer would feel like.

deathanatos 7y ago

> In some circumstances it has been surpassed already. It’s not an unfamiliar experience today to wonder whether we’re interacting online with a human or an AI system, and even alleged experts have been taken in by bots like “Eugene Goostman,” which, posing as a Ukrainian teenager, fooled a panel of Royal Society judges in 2014 into thinking it was human. No, the Turing test has not been surpassed. The "panel" was not fooled; one judge on the panel was fooled. And how, I don't know. The sample dialog on the Wikipedia page for that bot is the sort of pointless trivia questions that a bot can answer and a human can get wrong, and it won't tell you anything about who you're interrogating. If you instead try holding context across multiple inquiries, the charade will quickly reveal itself, (">" = human, "<" = bot's reply.) > Hello. < Nice to meet you! Please tell me how you found me and what you'd like to discuss :-) > Through Wikipedia. Tell me about somewhere you've visited. < May I ask you about the real reason of your interest? Maybe, let's talk about something else? What would you like to discuss? > Curious about your history. Why do you not want to discuss it? < How do you know? I thought nobody could guess that! Could you tell me what are you? I mean your profession. The previous reply is nonsense, and the constant evasion is typical of chat bots like Cleverbot. Clearly bot. I know I'm not blind, but I think we're kidding ourselves to equate this with the dialogue capabilities of a human. It took 3 queries to get to that. Even more recent attempts, like AI dungeon, fall apart after 2-3 queries that require context and understanding.

perl4ever 7y ago
On the other hand, I regularly get phone (sometimes email) support that seems to have similar flaws and I know (I think I know) it's humans. It seems quite dramatic the difference when the person on the other end does handle context and analytic thinking. Maybe there's a bifurcation going on, and some people are converging with AI and others are not?
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > On the other hand, I regularly get phone (sometimes email) support that seems to have similar flaws and I know (I think I know) it's humans. Conversational bots for support are increasingly common, and the voices are getting better, and even outside of actual conversational bots humans following flowcharts that essentially render them into conversational bots have been a thing for quite a long time.