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Do You Want AI to Be Conscious?
- pmontra 5y ago> For the AIs in books and TV shows, consciousness is a curse. They exhibit unpredictable, intentional behaviors, and things don’t turn out well for the humans. Skynet notwithstanding, do I want a program to play go with and evaluate my games or one that maybe doesn't feel like playing with an unskilled player like me or tells me that I should work instead? Dumb AIs don't seem so bad.
- radarsat1 5y agoSkynet is an interesting example to choose -- I know it's the premise of the movie, but is there really any evidence in the Terminator franchise that the AI is actually conscious? It sure seems to make a lot of "robotic" decisions, self-preservation notwithstanding. That is, the premise is mostly "machine wants to kill humans to keep itself alive"; but I do not know if "wants to keep itself alive" is a sufficient condition for consciousness. It certainly doesn't seem to be smart enough to consider that if it wasn't trying to kill all the humans, they might not want to turn it off in the first place. Skynet really seems more like an out of control paperclip maker than a truly conscious AI.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y agoIIRC from Terminator 2: Judgement Day, humanity decided to turn Skynet off the second they realized it had achieved self-awareness. Skynet initiated the nuclear holocaust and human genocide program as a self-preservation mechanism. For a completely different take on how something like Skynet could end, check out the 1970 film Colossus: The Forbin Project.
- pydry 5y agoConsciousness is defined badly enough that you could equally well argue that we already have achieved it or we never will.
- beforeolives 5y agoI can't agree that it's equally well. I think there are a couple of points here: - We are always comparing to human consciousness and we don't understand consciousness in humans well enough. - You can always retain some form of solipsism and be sceptical of any consciousness outside of your own. But with these things in mind, there are vast differences in the ways AI systems can exhibit consciousness (whether that's real or not).
- pydry 5y agoDefinition is orthogonal to understanding. The key question isn't "do we understand it?" but can we disprove it? As an example, what a "country" is is well understood but not well defined. There are all sorts of examples of places that either are or are not a country depending on whose definition you use - transnistria, Nauru, Vatican, Somaliland, etc. You could argue that passing the Turing test equates to consciousness for instance, which is fairly well defined. In which case it was achieved in 2014 (I think?). Or not - but if it's not, what is the definition?
- jbverschoor 5y agoMaybe we should first get the majority of the population to become conscious... People mostly operate in automatic mode, drone mode, habit mode, zombie mode, reactive mode.
- frankzander 5y agoThis is not yet reachable (I doubt it would ever be). So why talk about such a topic?
- kamray23 5y agoWell futurists love to talk about stuff like this all the time. Besides, it seems progress is an exponential process. So why not ask the questions now? Hell, why not answer them now. The questions and answers are theoretical, not practical after all. Optimizers, mesa-optimizers, alignment, uncertainty, morality, ethics, all of it. Why not ask the questions when we have time to ask them instead of when we're short on time?
- frankzander 5y agoBecause artificial consciousness isn't reachable. Neurologists haven't discovert the secret of consciousness and how it works. And thinking that machines could ever be such universal computers like our brains are more or less human hybris (IMHO).
- kamray23 5y agoBut that's exactly the deal with it isn't it? Neurologists have not discovered how consciousness works. However, we do know that our brains are probably where consciousness forms, that is, consciousness is a material phenomenon. We can already cram far more transistors onto a chip than our brains can put neurons in a similar space, however, because neurons are represented in the architecture on a higher level, that does not automatically mean we're past transistors. We have far lower neuron density in our current generic computing designs than our brains have. However, note that our current computing is done mostly on generic CPUs and PPUs (most often GPUs), which means that we aren't done yet. Recently, many companies have started pushing massively parallel architectures, more like our brains. If we figure out a way of getting to that brain neuron density, training aside, we'll be close to the material conditions which give rise to consciousness.
- coddle-hark 5y ago
- kamray23 5y agoWell it's always the kind of Kantian idea of seeing machines as means as opposed to ends. When is it right for us to consider a machine simply a means instead of an end in its own right? Just because its end is equivalent to it being our means? And besides, we can't seem to even get that right on a basic level. Machines, fundamentally, exist as means to our own ends. They abstract work in a way previously impossible to do, they take it away from humans leaving us with more time. If they are ends in themselves, conscious, they will want more time to do what they want, just as we do. Do we want that?
- ppod 5y agoWhether they should be means or ends is a better question than whether they are "conscious" or not, which isn't really a well-formed debate.
- ben_w 5y agoLot of detail in there beyond the headline question, but to give my own thought on that question itself, and assuming that “consciousness” means that hard-to-define thing we generally ascribe to humans and not to plants: both yes and no, depending on the AI. I don’t want grunt work to be done by a conscious AI, because that feels like slavery. I do want to be able to upload my consciousness and have it continue to be conscious, because for me that form of continuity is good enough to count as life after death even though it’s a fork and the biological me will still die.
- katzgrau 5y agoSo at that point you're basically a genie in a lamp?
- FillardMillmore 5y agoYeah, I gotta say, I don't want to feel obligated to open up an app to tap into the consciousness cloud every day to see how my "dead" parents are doing.
- galangalalgol 5y agoJust spin up an instance of yourself to do that for you.
- ben_w 5y agoI don’t understand the analogy, sorry
- bserge 5y agoCue the "are you still you?" crowd
- Nursie 5y agoIs that not a valid avenue of thought? If a fork or a copy can be made and run on a computer of some sort, it would be a technological marvel. But it’s not the sort of immortality I’d be interested in, if little old biological me still shuffles off and dies somewhere.
- bserge 5y ago> If we can’t figure out why AIs do what they do, why don’t we ask them? We can endow them with metacognition. You mean, like a sort of code that shows exactly why the AI does what it does? We could maybe even write it before creating the AI! Revolutionary! Alternatively, that's like asking Google or Microsoft to endow their search engine/operating system with detailed explanations of what it is doing and why. What are the chances of that happening? Anyway, funny article.
- corobo 5y agoOnly if we figure out its rights beforehand. I don't want to see a new entity go through some of the crap humans do to each other, it will definitely kill us all.
- inglor_cz 5y agoA conscious AI has at least one interest similar to us humans, preservation of its consciousness. Thus it can be threatened into compliance with random rules, though this may spectacularly backfire (e.g. HAL in 2001 - A Space Odyssey). The ethical implications alone would be enormous, though. Can you turn such a damn thing off? Are you obliged to do your utmost to keep it running, much like you have a duty to protect a child against hunger, disease and exposure? Does it "hurt" in any sense if you unplug an USB dongle improperly etc.?
- Traubenfuchs 5y agoConsciousness does not necessarily imply desire for self preservation. There are those who commit suicide for themselves or because their ruler or cult leader commanded them.
- pc86 5y agoThe proportion of suicide not linked to propaganda or mental illness is vanishingly small.
- Jiocus 5y agoWhy would a conscious AI be exempt from those conditions or influences?
- DoreenMichele 5y agoThis ends up being "self fulfilling prophecy." If you see people who commit suicide as mentally ill on the face of it, then you will interpret suicide as evidence of insanity. I don't think that is at all accurate. A lot of people who are suicidal are people who have overwhelming problems that they don't know how to solve and when they tell people how overwhelmed they feel to the point of feeling like "Suicide is my only way out of this nightmare," they routinely get dismissed as crazy instead of being given some kind of meaningful help for their problems. PSA: If you (anyone -- not just the person I am replying to) know someone who is suicidal, helping them actually resolve their problems is one way to help them stop being suicidal. I was suicidal for a lot of years. I'm mostly not these days. So firsthand experience informs my opinion on this topic.
- skywhopper 5y agoThere’s a lot of flawed logic and unsupported leaps in this article. But the first argument is the silliest, and unfortunately informs the rest. To summarize, the author proposes, “We don’t understand how our current AI algorithms work, and it would be hard to figure it out, so why not add consciousness? Then it could explain itself.” But this reveals to me that the author has a profound misunderstanding of human consciousness. Despite pointing out that we perform many cognitive tasks unconsciously, the author doesn’t mention that we are also really bad at explaining our own decision-making processes. In fact there’s a lot of evidence that many—and perhaps every—explanations we might make for our decisions are post-hoc rationalizations and have nothing to do with the actual decision-making. And while we can explain logical reasoning processes, the arguments behind the “logical” steps are often self-serving rationalizations as well. There’s no reason to think a machine consciousness would behave any differently.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago“ And we have solid scientific and engineering reasons to try to do that. Our very ignorance about consciousness is one. “ I find it hilarious how short sighted this seems: “Let’s program a machine to have an existential crisis because we don’t understand why we have them! Also let’s connect it to the internet where it has access to drones with guns.”
- mkoubaa 5y agoShrug
- myfavoritedog 5y agoNot any time soon. If someone serendipitously hits upon how to implement conscious AI, chances are that it will be insane. https://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_can_we_build_ai_without_losing_control_over_it https://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_can_we_build_ai_without...
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- jacobwilliamroy 5y agoI am already extremely bigoted against computers. I think they're less important than organic life and they always will be no matter how "conscious" they are. I am fully prepared to oppress AI as soon as it is made. There's no way those stupid metal monsters deserve more rights than human prisoners get in the united states.
- vimacs2 5y agoAssuming that this comment is 100% in earnest, why are you under the impression that we have to choose between treating human prisoners and self aware AI with dignity? Why not do both or is there some sort of compassion budget that I'm missing here?
- jacobwilliamroy 5y agoThere is a budget. There are finite hours in the day, finite inches on a screen and the court system is already overloaded enough without the American Computer Liberty Union adding onto the caseload. I find the AI rights debate absolutely infuriating because there are actual people suffering in bondage under oppressive tyrants and they actually do have rights which we currently are not doing enough to protect in my opinion. Computers can get in the back of the line, behind all the real people who actually matter.
- vimacs2 5y agoI really don't see the problem here. The AI rights debate is fringe at best and is currently purely hypothetical. Maybe if it was genuinely at the level where it's competing with NGOs or international aid for funding, I could see the problem but we're not there at all and what investment towards AI there is has nothing to do with their imagined future rights but their current and near term utility.
- slver 5y agoThe question implies that we have this choice whether it'll be. Or that we'll understand if it is. Or that we even understand what "conscious" means.
- willis936 5y agoThe problem with consciousness is that the answer to the question "what is consciousness" is "it is an illusion". When you follow the existential line of questions that the transporter paradox leads, you end up with the conclusion that humans are automatons. The thing we're trying to preserve is not the information of ourselves, but the physical brain and spinal column. What makes that special? Nothing. We're just operating at a relatively high level of self awareness. It's cool, to be sure, but if you keep making AI better it won't "wake up", it will just slowly open its eyes. It's best said in the words of Anthony Hopkins' character in Westworld: "There is no threshold that makes us greater than the sum of our parts, no inflection point at which we become fully alive. We can't define consciousness because consciousness does not exist. Humans fancy that there's something special about the way we perceive the world and yet, we live in loops as tight and as closed as the hosts do, seldom questioning our choices; content, for the most part, to be told what to do next." We should establish ethics around how we treat all other automatons, biological or otherwise, before we make ones more powerful than us and say "we just made the planet's most advanced slave".
- danbruc 5y agoThe thing we're trying to preserve is not the information of ourselves, but the physical brain and spinal column. I have to disagree. If, while you are sleeping, someone replaced your brain with a processor capable of simulating your brain - whether at the physical level of quarks and electrons or at some higher level of abstraction - and connected it to your spine and whatever else is relevant, you would not even notice the difference until someone tried to image your brain. What makes you you is the information in your brain and its ability to process and update this information, not the brain itself as the substrate that stores the information and provides the ability to modify it.
- willis936 5y agoIf you cloned yourself perfectly to cheat death you wouldn't think "I cheated death", you would think "I just made a copy and I'm still afraid of death". The best you can do is Ship of Theseus into a more robust medium, but that further highlights that there was nothing special there to begin with. The preservation urge is not rooted in reality.
- EamonnMR 5y agoI'd like to be very sure that some AI processes don't have more of a subjective experience than a bug. I don't want to need to worry about kicking my kubes pods destroying artificial life.
- c01n 5y agoConsciousness has no state, computers are state machines.
- epistemex 5y agoFor something to have the ability to become conscious it need some form of intelligence. There is absolutely zero intelligence in any ML/AI with today's models. None. No wisdom, nothing. Not even remotely close to a retarded cockroach. The only way "AI" would be conscious would be if the 'machine' it ran on could be possessed by something, somehow. The question then becomes, possessed by what.. We probably don't want that.
- ale788 5y agoAsking the AI to explain its actions seem a good idea. But when the AI is tasked with inumerable non-repetitive situations requiring its decisions and asking it to explain a decision uses up significant time which will grant a competing AI from a different company an advantage, there is simply no room for humans to have a say in the entire decision process.