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There's no evidence that human intelligence is anything more than associative memory and very elaborate multi-level pattern matching. IMHO any cognitive task ca

There's no evidence that human intelligence is anything more than associative memory and very elaborate multi-level pattern matching. IMHO any cognitive task can be described as a combination of associative lookups, domain transformation and trial-and-error stateful processing. I don't see any reason to believe there's more to intelligence/consciousness than a combination of such elements/processes. I guess domain transformation is something which is hard to visualize. But it was visualized in style transfer: there are NNs which can decompose a picture into a subject and style and then take the same subject and apply a different style. Same works with text -- you can take a sentence and rewrite it to be in Victorian epistolary style. Or take a story about humans and rephrase it to be a fairy tale with animals. GPT-3 can also do this. This means it's possible to take a sentence and decompose it into different layers, then manipulate layers individually and reassemble.

browsergap 6y ago
Cool. I don't like to include consciousness in this reduction, I consider that something sacred. The field that permeates all of us and everything. The thinking part of it, I think there's a chance it could be as you describe, with our brains coming with algorithms (or the ability to form similar algorithms) that do domain transformation, stateful processing, associate lookups, memory. I like to think of the consciousness, as simply being aware of this, and I guess "gently guiding" it through intention. It's what tunes us into our thinking and let's us perceive it. But the thinking could occur without that "supervisor". But perhaps somehow consciousness is the spark which gives us life, because when it leaves the body, the body and brain no longer function, or at least no longer animate. And consciousness can seem to exist within and outside the body. Maybe what we call intelligence, and what we are trying to create with AI is just "how a brain" thinks. That version of AI definitely seems achievable, it's a;sp interesting to think what consciousness is, when it seems that people have been able to perceive things outside their body, while it was dead, and then return to that body upon it being revived, and being able to bring verifiable details back with them...Or a consciousness being able to recall things inbetween incarnations in bodies....Those impressions must involve pattern matching and thinking as well...But there's no substrate it seems. Just the universe itself. Which is pretty bizarre...Makes you wonder why our brains need to be so complex at all, if our souls can think and remember too... Perhaps even more scary and bizarre (and not what I believe) but what if having a soul (as in some consciousness part that exists separate to the body) is actually real but not common. So the strange anecdotes of these occurrences are not more widespread simply because, for whatever reason, most bodies don't have souls...I'm sure it's not like that...but since we're speculating, may as well take this to where it goes, which is, if that's the case then consciousness (which we all have, otherwise the body is anesthetized), and the soul (which it seems some people have, owing to how they have disembodied memories that are factual) might be separate. So if the body has consciousness that's entirely embodied, maybe AI's can have consciousness as well. Then what's the soul? And what is the soul doing when a person's brain and consciousness is doing the thinking? Or if we all have a soul (a disembodied consciousness) why can only very few people seem to have disembodied memories? If we make the right AI substrate for consciousness, will it attract souls, like moths to a light?
- deleted 6y ago
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ImprobableTruth 6y ago
Then you probably don't know what 'consciousness' means, because none of these processes give an explanation as to why or how qualia arise. Also, "trial-and-error stateful processing" is so vague and broad that I don't feel that it meaningfully describes anything more than 'computation'.
- killerstorm 6y ago
  There's no evidence that qualia are anything more than clusters within some vector space which is useful to describe sensory inputs. They arise because they are useful for making sense of the external world. I know that philosophers like to believe in some mystical bullshit about a whole different category of things, but if you believe in evolution, things are simple. An animal receivers a sensory input, it tries to use it to improve its survival chances. It usually makes sense to tell signal from noise, by clustering and transforming it. You cannot derive any useful information from a single vibration of air, but if you transform from time domain to frequency domain, you can observe that certain frequencies relate to information about outside world, such as presence of predators, etc. If you do several layers of such transformations you arrive to qualia. If you study signal processing and NNs, these things become obvious. If you give a signal processing guy a task to detect human speech, for example, he will filter frequencies, then estimate loudness and compare to background noise. If you train NN, it will do the same -- you will likely get a neuron which represents "loudness in human speech". Same if you train a computational process using evolutionary process: loudness in specific frequency range carries out useful information, so no matter what process you use, you will have some representation of this quality. Same with "color red" or whatever other qualia you can think of -- it's just a region in a space which arises from useful transformations of the incoming signals which maximize useful information.
  - jkhdigital 6y ago
    Yeah I think we need to maintain this distinction between a scientific understanding of the world and what human beings actually are, and the abstractions we invent in order to ensure we don’t destroy ourselves as a species. I firmly believe that without the latter we are doomed, which is why I intentionally deceive myself with ideas like the existence of a singular benevolent unifying presence (often referred to as “God”) in order to shape my own behavior.

browsergap 6y ago

Cool. I don't like to include consciousness in this reduction, I consider that something sacred. The field that permeates all of us and everything. The thinking part of it, I think there's a chance it could be as you describe, with our brains coming with algorithms (or the ability to form similar algorithms) that do domain transformation, stateful processing, associate lookups, memory. I like to think of the consciousness, as simply being aware of this, and I guess "gently guiding" it through intention. It's what tunes us into our thinking and let's us perceive it. But the thinking could occur without that "supervisor". But perhaps somehow consciousness is the spark which gives us life, because when it leaves the body, the body and brain no longer function, or at least no longer animate. And consciousness can seem to exist within and outside the body. Maybe what we call intelligence, and what we are trying to create with AI is just "how a brain" thinks. That version of AI definitely seems achievable, it's a;sp interesting to think what consciousness is, when it seems that people have been able to perceive things outside their body, while it was dead, and then return to that body upon it being revived, and being able to bring verifiable details back with them...Or a consciousness being able to recall things inbetween incarnations in bodies....Those impressions must involve pattern matching and thinking as well...But there's no substrate it seems. Just the universe itself. Which is pretty bizarre...Makes you wonder why our brains need to be so complex at all, if our souls can think and remember too... Perhaps even more scary and bizarre (and not what I believe) but what if having a soul (as in some consciousness part that exists separate to the body) is actually real but not common. So the strange anecdotes of these occurrences are not more widespread simply because, for whatever reason, most bodies don't have souls...I'm sure it's not like that...but since we're speculating, may as well take this to where it goes, which is, if that's the case then consciousness (which we all have, otherwise the body is anesthetized), and the soul (which it seems some people have, owing to how they have disembodied memories that are factual) might be separate. So if the body has consciousness that's entirely embodied, maybe AI's can have consciousness as well. Then what's the soul? And what is the soul doing when a person's brain and consciousness is doing the thinking? Or if we all have a soul (a disembodied consciousness) why can only very few people seem to have disembodied memories? If we make the right AI substrate for consciousness, will it attract souls, like moths to a light?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

ImprobableTruth 6y ago

Then you probably don't know what 'consciousness' means, because none of these processes give an explanation as to why or how qualia arise. Also, "trial-and-error stateful processing" is so vague and broad that I don't feel that it meaningfully describes anything more than 'computation'.

killerstorm 6y ago
There's no evidence that qualia are anything more than clusters within some vector space which is useful to describe sensory inputs. They arise because they are useful for making sense of the external world. I know that philosophers like to believe in some mystical bullshit about a whole different category of things, but if you believe in evolution, things are simple. An animal receivers a sensory input, it tries to use it to improve its survival chances. It usually makes sense to tell signal from noise, by clustering and transforming it. You cannot derive any useful information from a single vibration of air, but if you transform from time domain to frequency domain, you can observe that certain frequencies relate to information about outside world, such as presence of predators, etc. If you do several layers of such transformations you arrive to qualia. If you study signal processing and NNs, these things become obvious. If you give a signal processing guy a task to detect human speech, for example, he will filter frequencies, then estimate loudness and compare to background noise. If you train NN, it will do the same -- you will likely get a neuron which represents "loudness in human speech". Same if you train a computational process using evolutionary process: loudness in specific frequency range carries out useful information, so no matter what process you use, you will have some representation of this quality. Same with "color red" or whatever other qualia you can think of -- it's just a region in a space which arises from useful transformations of the incoming signals which maximize useful information.
- jkhdigital 6y ago
  Yeah I think we need to maintain this distinction between a scientific understanding of the world and what human beings actually are, and the abstractions we invent in order to ensure we don’t destroy ourselves as a species. I firmly believe that without the latter we are doomed, which is why I intentionally deceive myself with ideas like the existence of a singular benevolent unifying presence (often referred to as “God”) in order to shape my own behavior.