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Will artificial intelligence become conscious?
December 22, 2017

(Credit: EPFL/Blue Brain Project)

By Subhash Kak, Regents Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Oklahoma State University

Forget about today’s modest incremental advances in artificial intelligence, such as the increasing abilities of cars to drive themselves. Waiting in the wings might be a groundbreaking development: a machine that is aware of itself and its surroundings, and that could take in and process massive amounts of data in real time. It could be sent on dangerous missions, into space or combat. In addition to driving people around, it might be able to cook, clean, do laundry — and even keep humans company when other people aren’t nearby.

A particularly advanced set of machines could replace humans at literally all jobs. That would save humanity from workaday drudgery, but it would also shake many societal foundations. A life of no work and only play may turn out to be a dystopia.

Conscious machines would also raise troubling legal and ethical problems. Would a conscious machine be a “person” under law and be liable if its actions hurt someone, or if something goes wrong? To think of a more frightening scenario, might these machines rebel against humans and wish to eliminate us altogether? If yes, they represent the culmination of evolution.

As a professor of electrical engineering and computer science who works in machine learning and quantum theory, I can say that researchers are divided on whether these sorts of hyperaware machines will ever exist. There’s also debate about whether machines could or should be called “conscious” in the way we think of humans, and even some animals, as conscious. Some of the questions have to do with technology; others have to do with what consciousness actually is.

Is awareness enough? Most computer scientists think that consciousness is a characteristic that will emerge as technology develops. Some believe that consciousness involves accepting new information, storing and retrieving old information and cognitive processing of it all into perceptions and actions. If that’s right, then one day machines will indeed be the ultimate consciousness. They’ll be able to gather more information than a human, store more than many libraries, access vast databases in milliseconds and compute all of it into decisions more complex, and yet more logical, than any person ever could.

On the other hand, there are physicists and philosophers who say there’s something more about human behavior that cannot be computed by a machine. Creativity, for example, and the sense of freedom people possess don’t appear to come from logic or calculations.

Yet these are not the only views of what consciousness is, or whether machines could ever achieve it.

Quantum views Another viewpoint on consciousness comes from quantum theory, which is the deepest theory of physics. According to the orthodox Copenhagen Interpretation, consciousness and the physical world are complementary aspects of the same reality. When a person observes, or experiments on, some aspect of the physical world, that person’s conscious interaction causes discernible change. Since it takes consciousness as a given and no attempt is made to derive it from physics, the Copenhagen Interpretation may be called the “big-C” view of consciousness, where it is a thing that exists by itself – although it requires brains to become real. This view was popular with the pioneers of quantum theory such as Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger.

The interaction between consciousness and matter leads to paradoxes that remain unresolved after 80 years of debate. A well-known example of this is the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat, in which a cat is placed in a situation that results in it being equally likely to survive or die – and the act of observation itself is what makes the outcome certain.

The opposing view is that consciousness emerges from biology, just as biology itself emerges from chemistry which, in turn, emerges from physics. We call this less expansive concept of consciousness “little-C.” It agrees with the neuroscientists’ view that the processes of the mind are identical to states and processes of the brain. It also agrees with a more recent interpretation of quantum theory motivated by an attempt to rid it of paradoxes, the Many Worlds Interpretation, in which observers are a part of the mathematics of physics.

Philosophers of science believe that these modern quantum physics views of consciousness have parallels in ancient philosophy. Big-C is like the theory of mind in Vedanta – in which consciousness is the fundamental basis of reality, on par with the physical universe.

Little-C, in contrast, is quite similar to Buddhism. Although the Buddha chose not to address the question of the nature of consciousness, his followers declared that mind and consciousness arise out of emptiness or nothingness.

Big-C and scientific discovery Scientists are also exploring whether consciousness is always a computational process. Some scholars have argued that the creative moment is not at the end of a deliberate computation. For instance, dreams or visions are supposed to have inspired Elias Howe‘s 1845 design of the modern sewing machine, and August Kekulé’s discovery of the structure of benzene in 1862.

A dramatic piece of evidence in favor of big-C consciousness existing all on its own is the life of self-taught Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, who died in 1920 at the age of 32. His notebook, which was lost and forgotten for about 50 years and published only in 1988, contains several thousand formulas, without proof in different areas of mathematics, that were well ahead of their time. Furthermore, the methods by which he found the formulas remain elusive. He himself claimed that they were revealed to him by a goddess while he was asleep.

The concept of big-C consciousness raises the questions of how it is related to matter, and how matter and mind mutually influence each other. Consciousness alone cannot make physical changes to the world, but perhaps it can change the probabilities in the evolution of quantum processes. The act of observation can freeze and even influence atoms’ movements, as Cornell physicists proved in 2015. This may very well be an explanation of how matter and mind interact.

Mind and self-organizing systems It is possible that the phenomenon of consciousness requires a self-organizing system, like the brain’s physical structure. If so, then current machines will come up short.

Scholars don’t know if adaptive self-organizing machines can be designed to be as sophisticated as the human brain; we lack a mathematical theory of computation for systems like that. Perhaps it’s true that only biological machines can be sufficiently creative and flexible. But then that suggests people should – or soon will – start working on engineering new biological structures that are, or could become, conscious.

Reprinted with permission from The Conversation

related: Is anyone home? A way to find out if AI has become self-aware The Problem of AI Consciousness Topics: AI/Robotics | Cognitive Science/Neuroscience

share comments 30 December 25, 2017 by ukfecpl Some interesting anf thought provoking responses but no advance on my otiginsl question. Is it not unreasonable to propose that ‘morals and ethics van only be relevant in concious emotionslly driven entities’?

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December 25, 2017 by Ashur We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.

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December 24, 2017 by Babble Consciousness seems to be a sliding scale. Human twins that are separated at birth and raised by different families have shown very similar traits, likes and dislikes. This shows that genetics actually preset many decisions but that can have huge variations for non twins though preset still the same. Language may be needed for planing and prediction and most animals don’t have it or a very limited subset. Yet, animals like elephants, dolphins, dogs, etc. show emotion and love just not to the extent of humans. Is emotion required for consciousness and how much? Some scientists posit that AI can’t become conscious on substrates used for machines but what we need is a definition of what it really is in order to determine that state. Is a human with brain damage, but still awake and able to talk, conscious when they can no longer make decisions? I would say that once a human no longer recognizes their surroundings or loved ones that consciousness has been removed (dementia). That involves memory which machines have plenty of but obviously memory alone does not create consciousness. You can’t determine what you can’t define.

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December 24, 2017 by kewac01 Consciousness is a subjective phenomena. According to present theory time is a dimension similiar to space dimentsions although different in magnitude etc. As a dimension we hypothetically can move around in time as we do in space. Our subjective experience of time, which most physicists consider an illusion, is that we live exsclusively in the present. Whatever past we know is brought forward in the present. as it appears to move from the past into the future. We can make future projections but they are guesses as to what the future may hold. Only as the future comes into the present do we know the vailidity of our guesses. If the present is moving, and it may be the past-future is moving and the present is sitting still. We cannot know. For me the best analogy of what is happening, albeit crude is that motion picture films running through a projector is the best analogy for what is happening. Energy is not in the motion of particles in the moving frames, but rather in the motor of the projector. the same energy is used whether going forward in time or backward. The 2nd law of thermodynamics holds for forward motion but not for going back in time. The same energy is involved either way as far as the projector is concerned. One theory is that the 2nd law of thermodynamics determines the movement of time. Maybe it is the movement of time as expressed through the projector s motion direction that determined time,and all energy.In other words it is the direction and movement of time that gives us motion and energy.If this analogy is correct it is not the energy which determines the direction but the direction of the motor which determines the direction of time which is an instant geometrically speaking.

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December 24, 2017 by DSM “…Creativity, for example…” And the irony there is that it is often the least creative people who make that assertion. There is nothing mysterious about creativity, it is a process, sure it seems to have a quantum aspect but we are building quantum computers now anyway. Perhaps a Q-module is the service an AI will buy time on when it needs to be creative? That is the big difference between a human and an AI, the human needs to be part of a team to get anything significant done, but an AI just has to reconfigure itself to be like any team it needs to be.

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December 24, 2017 by kewac01 In the article Schrodinger’s cat was discussed. I have always felt that science at the final level of observation is subjective. This is because The experimenter has to read the instruments or by one means or another it has to enter his/her subjective world to be evaluated. If the experimenter is uncounscious then the results are nonexistent to him/her. We can alter Schroedinger’s experiment slightly to show how an experimenter’s experience can alter the results. Let us assume that on one side of the box in which the cat lies, the wall is glass which the experimenter can see through. On the other side, the experimenter only can look at the cat every hour. A wall separates both observers so no information gets through. If the glass side observer sees the cat die he/she will know instantly what has happened. During that same period the hourly person will be in an entangled state and the cat would be both dead and alive.In this case he/she would simply not know what is going on. However( and as a nonphysicist I stand corrected if my understanding is wrong.) with regard to subatomic entangled particles exhibit both properties, which are measurable. In this case two physicists would observe things differently. In fact this is the way it is in real life. A pair of twins have the same genetics, but different experiences and are often very different. To speak of a conmic conscousness is not realistic. I suppose if somebody has a theory of consousness, they might be able to build an electrical machine with an analog designed conscouness It certainly would be different from our world of qualia but it might tell us something?

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December 24, 2017 by kewac01 It would be very hard if not impossible to know for sure whether a machine has consciousness, at least in the sense that we do. At the present time some scientists aren’t even sure that domestic animals have consiousness. A dog appears to show emotions such as anger or fear, and experience pain and pleasure. It certainly has electrical activity in its brain. Is it aware of these states or simply unconsciously reacting ? It is hard to be certain. We certainly can not be sure what qualia it experiences, indeed if it does? It is very hard to know what another human is subjectively experiencing. If there were an external color chart that was independent of the human experiences. We both may call a qualia red, but what you see on this “ideal “chart would be green and mine might be yellow.We have no way to know for sure and there probably is no way to make an independent color chart devorced from an individuals qualia. I used to believe that maybe if I could enter a machine’s or person’s mind then maybe I would see if qualia different from mine were there. However the qualia my brain exhibits may be different from that of another being and so I could not sense what they are sensing and might not even know it. This happens all the time. A person who is blind from birth cannot know sight qualia having never experienced them. Some one who is color blind ( say red- green) sees these colors differently from the rest of us and cannot imagine the colors that normal people see. Another experiment which for the discussion we will disregard the important question of ethics and consent, might allow say a chimp or even possibly a dog to discuss what their animal states were like, would be to take a living animal and using stem cells or some other biochemical techniques raise the animal’s intelligence and communication skills to that of humans. Then possibly they could tell us what they felt as animals subjectively.

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December 24, 2017 by Billzman St Thomas had an interesting view:

“The physicist wishes to penetrate the secrets of matter; but the very type of knowledge to which he is bound prohibits him from attaining the nature of matter in itself. He attains it in the observable and measurable, and thereby real, determinations which are for him the substitutes for the essence, and he scrutinizes it and fathoms it to the very degree that he mathematically symbolizes it.”

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December 24, 2017 by tim the realist I would add the word “When” in front of the headline question.

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December 24, 2017 by designguybrown As an utter non-expert, I am going to throw my 2c in: Ultimately, I believe in a mechanistic and deterministic universe (which just needs to be resolved to a finer degree of detail). Consciousness in humans, as can be usefully defined in the sense of empiricism, in that we are able to (some day) make predictions, is merely a fully social-functional personality pattern contained with a human processing-sensory system, which constantly modifies itself (albeit slower over time). Definitions: fully social-functional -> can take in and process external social data in which to store/ react/ self-modify in such a way as to form a functional part of the social fabric (a functional human being) – a function of an always-refining social algorithm. Personality pattern -> that series of sensory inputs that have been imprinted in a regular but imperfect way on our physical brains and are constantly deteriorating and reinforcing itself with time and additional sensory input (and can be (eventually) measured, located, and quantified). It is the filter in which we sense that which we want to/forced to sense and how we output reactions. Human processing-sensory system -> merely our biological senses and brain capacity for storing and processing. So, consciousness is merely a fast, self-modifying, but imperfect storage and processing system which has achieved that LEVEL of COMPLEXITY in which to interact in society in a unique but socially-satisfactory way. Creativity is merely the unique output of our differing pattern flaws, based on the amount of sensory experience and our ability to work within the parameters of the problem. It is creative only in that each person’s unique experience and processing set is interesting (in the most part) to others (likely due in some part to its novelty). So, will AI become conscious? Who cares – it is by definition a flawed system? We are (should be) interested in sensory resolution and computational processing power (and in a software way: algorithm complexity) in our artificial systems. Creativity and personality quirks can be added by pseudo-random macros. The key takeaway is that we are limited by our senses, computational power, and personality traits (pattern differences (flaws)) which causes us necessarily to not process all the solutions to a problem thereby acting in a self-preserving, self-interested, and somewhat anti-social way. AI need not have these built in flaws or sensory/computational limitations. Its eventual superior processing will necessarily reduce or essentially eliminate its own self-preservation, self-interest, ant-social reactions – meaning that any AI of that level of complexity would be ‘better’ (read: nobler) than a human being and therefore no threat and almost-all benefit (complexity being the mean measure of capability for good). But, of course only, at that level of complexity – anything less, AI is still a tool subject to the whims of its programmers/masters. AI needs to be considered colleague/ guru before we can really determine its use/ threat/ potential. At that stage, of course, it should be afforded ‘person’ rights, as long as society still can perform ‘containment’ punishment on it for any socially deviant behaviour (which though good in some context, may be counter to the interests of the other ‘persons’ at the time). This will be a time I look forward as the ‘thinking’ potential added to our society will be awesome.

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December 24, 2017 by texel “So, will AI become conscious? Who cares(?)”

Correct- It doesn’t matter because consciousness has nothing to do with an AI’s functionality.

“AI is still a tool”

Correct- It’s always going to be a tool.

“At that stage, of course, it should be afforded ‘person’ rights”

There is no point in giving a non-conscious tool rights. The entire point of conferring rights to conscious beings is to prevent and/or reduce the physical / mental suffering brought to a conscious being as a result of an act upon it. If it isn’t conscious, then AI don’t need rights because non-conscious things don’t suffer. There are computational expert systems in use right now and we certainly don’t give those things any rights. They’re tools.

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December 24, 2017 by Zeitgeist50 Good, thought povoking analysis of a complex concept “consciousness” by the author S Kak. I may add the following too as my subscription to the profound concept of Consciousness (or “life defined as Consciousness”).

In fact, programming a bio-chip is the only way presently available to factor in the mind in the study of physics as, the mind is intricately interwoven with material science. Physicists still keep thinking that mind / consciousness / awareness is an emergent phenomena and not a fundamental one, the great grand fatal flaw in the theories that physicists make.

Come to think of it, its the other way round , viz, mind is the fundamental phenomena and it’s matter that is an emergent phenomena. Matter is a “construct ” of the mind or of “awareness ” and has no existence without the awareness of it. Even if mind is a quantum phenomena and, matter is a non-quantum phenomena yet they are so intricately “quantum entangled” that they are “trans-dimensionally complementary ” phenomena that no one can describe one of them alone without reference to the other. They are not the same but dimensionally different, like for example,the two dimensional circle and a three dimensional globe ( with a common centre and equal radius).

In other words, MATTER is the projection of a higher dimensional entity viz, the MIND (which is a perpetually vibrating quantum-cosmic energy-field), on the four dimensional chaotically fluctuating fabric of space-time.At individual levels mind and matter are so well mixed like milk and water, or like , magnetism and electricity in electromagnetic waves very intricately interwoven and difficult to differentiate or to separate out. If separated, both would cease to exist ,like the two sides of the same coin. Both sides need to simultaneously exist for the coin to exist. Or, Like both the scaffolding of matter and the energy called life have to be present simultaneously for the existence of a live being. In order to operate, AI need an external reference but for consciousness to exist no such external reference bodies are needed to exist or to operate.Actually AI acts independently even without being Conscious of its actions. Basically AI and conscious are two disjoint entities .To keep them together nature need more energy that violates the “least energy” principle of Nature and is not likely to happen.

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December 24, 2017 by texel It is not possible for machines to be conscious.

Machines manipulate symbols. Nothing less and nothing more.

Let’s try this theoretical thought exercise. You memorize a whole bunch of shapes. Then, you memorize the order the shapes are supposed to go in, so that if you see a bunch of shapes in a certain order, you would “answer” by picking a bunch of shapes in another proper order. Now, did you just learn any meaning behind any language?

No. That’s what machines do.

The above was my restatement of Searle’s rejoinder to Systems Reply to his Chinese Room thought experiment.

Besides being impossible, what’s the point of even pursuing machine consciousness? Think about it- It is theoretically possible for a machine to do everything a human does while still not being conscious… It would be a Philosophical Zombie, or P-zombie. It is pointless to discuss functionality on this topic since consciousness doesn’t add to it.

On that note, the topic of “fakeness” goes both ways. Things like creativity can theoretically be “faked perfectly”. Of course, a perfect fake that dupes everyone is still a fake, but at the same time a perfect fake still does everything… Again, one can see how useless it is to discuss functionality here. Consciousness has nothing to do with how functional an AI is.

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December 24, 2017 by tedhowardnz I am confident beyond reasonable doubt that consciousness is an emergent property of our brains and culture.

I also have some beginnings of an awareness of just how complex, subtle and multidimensional is the process of evolution, and how many levels of heuristics have been embodied in our many levels of cooperative systems that allow us to be what we are.

I am concerned that any AGI instantiated without the many levels of incentive to cooperation, to detect and remove cheating strategies, to work for self and society and the wider ecosystem, would be a very dangerous entity.

We also need to understand the need for a little chaos in existence, and not to get too hung up on rules or systems; and to accept the need for acceptance of diversity and creativity across a potentially infinitely dimensional existence.

So yes – I am confident we will see indefinite life extension, and AGI, and all manner of variations of cyborg tech.

Our future has the possibility of empowered life and liberty for all, and existence beyond work, we have a better than even chance of actually securing life and liberty universally.

And it cannot happen in a system driven only by market incentives, so we need to think beyond markets. And more and more people seem to be doing that, and putting serious thought into workable transition strategies.

So I am looking forward to meeting members of the AGI community, and working with them on some of the interesting projects on my long term plan.

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December 24, 2017 by someday69 All this and more has been brought Up on the forum on Rays site here. The wonders of thought, and forms of consciousness are being brought into the light. The future is about to bring new ways of living, and even new ways of ”Not dying” I for one will be enjoying the ride, even though I’m rather old, to be living another twenty years,,,It’s still hopeful for my children, I love to pray for there enlightenment ..thank you, for all the fish….goodnight..

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December 23, 2017 by jfellus Great discussion but aren’t we missing the larger paradox? if genuinely human-grade AI is achieved by machines, what would stop them from experiencing the same dystopian fate of simply living a life of pleasure uncoupled from their original purpose of doing work?! Isn’t that interminable feedback loop the logical conclusion of such hyper-evolutionary progress? Would they too not suffer emotionally or psychologically from such a profoundly useless eternity of existence?

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December 23, 2017 by Alfred Schickentanz These are some of my thoughts on the future. We should follow the leads we have given our most advanced creations. They are commonly called “Gods”. This would be a step in that direction.

Homo Immortalis Omnipotent

Living in “Infinite Space-Time”! No more “human created secondhand God’s”!

The function assigned to GOD is now available through understanding the Universe we are part of. We will be the Engineers of our own body chemistry, in the Infinity of Space-Time we can live forever.

Biotechnology will control the “aging process” (we don’t wear out, but are DNA programmed to age), and “involuntary death” will not exist any more.

Science, Gene Engineering, Nano Technology, Epigenesis, Astrophysics etc. and Extra Terrestrial Migration will allow for “Goal Oriented Evolution”, leading to HOMO IMMORTALIS OMNIPOTENT.

The fact that you are reading this is a good sign.

Many people know that we all have to die, so anything that may undermine that believe will be avoided.

If this would be information confirming that there is life after death, which is something many of us deem possible, we would be more inclined to believe it. The reason is, that once we have formed a believe and have been influenced accordingly, we are more reluctant to reevaluate our acceptance of it.

Since I grew up in a katholik environment I was sure that by following the rules, I would go to heaven and presumable not be dead.

I am now over seventy years old and have lived and loved on five Continents. With the information and experiences I have been exposed to, I have come to the conclusion, that science will make it possible that we can keep on living here, instead of dying and going to heaven.

You may be inclined to believe in some form of life in heaven, because that is the opinion of confirmed authorities. I can assure you, that looking for information based on up to date science, leading to youthfulness and the avoidance of death, will not do any harm, but may give you more time to do so.

You probably ask, what is this about?

It is like a quantum leap. A move to a new state of being. In the material world it would be like the jump from the atom to a mineral. Or from a multicellular organism to a cerebral animal. Or from a culture that depends on an “idealized self projected image (God)”, to provide protection and escape from annihilation, to a society that uses science and technology to solve the problems of sickness and death.

The tools that propelled us from primates to “Homo sapiens sapiens”, will now be developed, so we will evolve to Homo Immortalis Omnipotent.

Of course there will be opposition from institutions that now have the monopoly on “Life after death”. They should not worry, because our need for entertainment will always exist. Even sincere moral and religious disapproval should not divert us from taking this next step in evolution.

Just like the hydrogen atom did not know that it would become the planet we now live on, even though it already contained the basic code leading to the status quo. We will realize that the abilities that we have assigned to our God’s, are now for us to acquire.

The only limit is our imagination! Freedom from death now!

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December 24, 2017 by Zeitgeist50 Alfy dear What makes you think that Nature need to keep and maintain for ever a degenerating bio-body which need to be fed regularly three times a day with the food it prefers, food created by its own whims and fancies for which uneconomical elaborate kitchen staff and stuff set up is needed for doing things mainly with their limited bio-intelligence in most inefficient and pusillanimous ways? A bio-body carries a lot of avoidable luggage like emotions, free will along with a modicum of intelligence for what ? For producing what its intelligence dictates ?

Why should Nature, which works on the principle of least energy accept this deal when it has other better deals like just have the intellectual component and discard the degenerating bio-body ,throwing away kitchen and agricultural or non-agricultural types of material that fulfills as food, as food is no more needed by the machines thus saving all the time and energy and space needed to produce and prepare food, no clothing needed for machines, no illness, saving the whole health care system , no pensions, labour laws. Above all, no emotional baggage, no creation of children or sexual unions needed , no genders. All these advantages with a massive gain of intelligence. So what makes Nature NOT think of retaining machine intelligence or AI self teaching self training, self learning like the AlphaZero robot.