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Thought experiment: Let's say we implemented a very large DNN with different hardware. Say, rather than with transistors and capacitors, with a bunch of mirror

Thought experiment: Let's say we implemented a very large DNN with different hardware. Say, rather than with transistors and capacitors, with a bunch of mirrors and lasers (and some other creative analog equivalents for capacitors) spread out in space across the universe. And let's say this mirror-laser network could receive and output binary messages that can be encoded and decoded in the exact same format as LaMBDA or some other LLM. Would that configuration of mirrors and lasers be conscious? Would it have some subjective sense of its existence and relationship with the rest of the world?

UK-Al05 4y ago
I think sensory input is required for self awareness. Given this machine had sensors for interacting with the world, and was capable of replicating the complicated structures in our brain then yes, it could become self aware given sufficient development.
dchichkov 4y ago
It's funny, for a few years I've worked in high frequency trading. And when cutting away nanoseconds from our latency figures, our hardware was getting closer and closer to a "mirror-laser network that could receive and output short messages". We'd literally replace a traditional 40GbE switch with an optical one, that would pass the light without extra "photons-to-electrons" conversion. We'd complement CPU with a trigger-happy FPGA embedding a custom MAC, with the binary messages representing market orders already pre-cooked, just waiting for the balance to change. And at some point, while continuing streamlining that, thinking about that system using an analogy of a hall of mirrors, lenses and a few non-linear state-keeping elements was not that of a stretch from the truth. The analogy between a hall of mirrors and statefull systems, like CPUs is net perfect. Still, when you think along the lines above or when you hold a CPU in your hand, it is not a big stretch to consider that an "active" device, like a computer could be just a piece of solid crystal, a "passive system".

UK-Al05 4y ago

I think sensory input is required for self awareness. Given this machine had sensors for interacting with the world, and was capable of replicating the complicated structures in our brain then yes, it could become self aware given sufficient development.

dchichkov 4y ago

It's funny, for a few years I've worked in high frequency trading. And when cutting away nanoseconds from our latency figures, our hardware was getting closer and closer to a "mirror-laser network that could receive and output short messages". We'd literally replace a traditional 40GbE switch with an optical one, that would pass the light without extra "photons-to-electrons" conversion. We'd complement CPU with a trigger-happy FPGA embedding a custom MAC, with the binary messages representing market orders already pre-cooked, just waiting for the balance to change. And at some point, while continuing streamlining that, thinking about that system using an analogy of a hall of mirrors, lenses and a few non-linear state-keeping elements was not that of a stretch from the truth. The analogy between a hall of mirrors and statefull systems, like CPUs is net perfect. Still, when you think along the lines above or when you hold a CPU in your hand, it is not a big stretch to consider that an "active" device, like a computer could be just a piece of solid crystal, a "passive system".