Can a man-made computer become conscious?

[Sy Borg]

Possibly what Humans fear, and mayve should fear, is that they are anachronisms - Evolving intelligence no longer needs
biology to exist - It can be replaced by a more efficient means to manipulate data and the environment.

True this is scary - Man is a dinosaur?

So maybe we should teach machines how to 'feel' as soon as possible - Maybe they will keep Man around for nostalgia.

What humans should fear more than AI is being poor and thus becoming an anachronism to those in power. The interests of humanity are splitting - the wealthy decision makers and the rest. One group will progress faster than the other, widening the gap. The former will be empowered by their AI, but the AI itself is less of a threat than societal divisions resulting in a zero sum game.

Still, in time every species becomes extinct and will, hopefully, be replaced. The dinosaurs lasted over 200 million years. Let's see how long humans last. Whatever, let's not think for even a moment that humans in, say, 10,000 years would be much like us at all, and by then may not even be recognisably human.

[Woodart]

Still, in time every species becomes extinct and will, hopefully, be replaced. The dinosaurs lasted over 200 million years. Let's see how long humans last. Whatever, let's not think for even a moment that humans in, say, 10,000 years would be much like us at all, and by then may not even be recognisably human.

I think it is wishful thinking to say we will be replaced by something better - if you are saying that? Yeah, in 10000 years we will be different - better - the jury is still out?

[Sy Borg]

Still, in time every species becomes extinct and will, hopefully, be replaced. The dinosaurs lasted over 200 million years. Let's see how long humans last. Whatever, let's not think for even a moment that humans in, say, 10,000 years would be much like us at all, and by then may not even be recognisably human.

I think it is wishful thinking to say we will be replaced by something better - if you are saying that? Yeah, in 10000 years we will be different - better - the jury is still out?

Do you share Gould's view that the consistent growth and progression (aka evolution) over billions of years is a fluke? What I see in evolution is something akin to gestation but on a larger scale. I don't find this notion nearly as far-fetched as most seem to do. Systems theory has reality as a series of nested fractals, with equivalent dynamics occurring over and over again. As above, so below.

[Belindi]

Greta wrote:

Still, in time every species becomes extinct and will, hopefully, be replaced.

I detect the idea that nature is value in its own right, and not only as support system for humans. I want to join that club! Some atheists are better at God than traditional believers.

[Woodart]

Do you share Gould's view that the consistent growth and progression (aka evolution) over billions of years is a fluke? What I see in evolution is something akin to gestation but on a larger scale. I don't find this notion nearly as far-fetched as most seem to do. Systems theory has reality as a series of nested fractals, with equivalent dynamics occurring over and over again. As above, so below.

I hope we will be better, but I am not sure we will be better. Technology is a double edge sword. In some ways it takes us away from who we are - blinds us. We are moving forward - I am not always sure where we are moving to.

[UniversalAlien]

Do you share Gould's view that the consistent growth and progression (aka evolution) over billions of years is a fluke? What I see in evolution is something akin to gestation but on a larger scale. I don't find this notion nearly as far-fetched as most seem to do. Systems theory has reality as a series of nested fractals, with equivalent dynamics occurring over and over again. As above, so below.

I hope we will be better, but I am not sure we will be better. Technology is a double edge sword. In some ways it takes us away from who we are - blinds us. We are moving forward - I am not always sure where we are moving to.

Better than what? - Define better.

" Technology is a double edge sword. In some ways it takes us away from who we are" - But who are we?
It would appear that we are already part of the technology.

" I am not always sure where we are moving to" - Then again who is?

Regardless of belief {theist or atheist or agnostic} - I would postulate Man must set the directions of the future

[Woodart]

Better than what? - Define better.

" Technology is a double edge sword. In some ways it takes us away from who we are" - But who are we?
It would appear that we are already part of the technology.

" I am not always sure where we are moving to" - Then again who is?

Regardless of belief {theist or atheist or agnostic} - I would postulate Man must set the directions of the future

Yes - defining better is the question. I just hoping we can look more into our collective heart than the tapestry of our house.

[Gertie]

Greta

Aren't you just conflating consciousness here with responsiveness? To me the interesting and difficult questions about consciousness are to do with its qualiative experiential nature. Isn't that the question we're really stumped on when we ask can computers become conscious? Can they subjectively experience what it's like to be a computer? That's the question fundamental hypotheses like panpsychism try to address.

I'll address all at once. Another member had an objection here and I asked him where we would draw that line between an entity that experiences something and one that experiences nothing. He drew the line that flatworms, the simplest organisms with brains. For him, brains and a sense of experience were synonymous. A solid counter, I thought.

Still - and you knew there'd be a still - is that to say that brainless organisms with nerve nets experience the same - nothing - as ones without nerve nets? Does being an amoeba feel identical to being a salt crystal - with both feeling "nothing" equally? Are the "nothings" of amoebas and salt crystals really nothing, or perhaps just very small things? Maybe the difference lies in memory? For instance the non-experiences of being in deep sleep or a coma is are really experiences, just that they are subtle and we don't remember them. Everything about us is still present, only dormant.

I think of it as "consciousness chauvinism" where our waking consciousness is so huge compared with most other entities that we dismiss things of a certain level of relative simplicity as "consciousness nulls". I would argue that they are not nulls, just variably small, invisibly small to our relatively huge awareness like atoms are invisible to our sight.

Well I'd say the answer is 'I don't know, and neither does anybody else'.

Simply put, subjective experience is inherently private, so if we don't know what the necessary and sufficient conditions for subjective experience are, we can't know what has it and what doesn't. We can guess based on similarity to critters like ourselves which do have subjective experience, and on behaviour, but it's a guess nonetheless.

It does make sense to infer that the more similar a critter is to critters known to have components which seem to correlate with subjective experience (human nervous system) the more likely it is they too will have subjective experience, that's a reasonable guess. So a flatworm... I'd guess there's a fair chance there's 'something it is like' to be a flatworm. I'm more confident there is 'something it is like' to be a chimp, because there's greater similarity, so the necessary and sufficient conditions are more likely to be met.

A crystal? There's such a leap in dissimilarity, so I'd guess not. But, if for example panpsychism is true, and consciousness isn't a novel emergent phenomenon of certain types of complex systems, but rather a fundamental part of all stuff, then I'd be wrong and there is 'something it is like' to be a crystal.

Which brings us back to the key problem, without a settled Theory of Consciousness (rather than competing speculative hypotheses like panpsychism and emergence) which includes the necessary and sufficient conditions for subjective experience, we can't know.

Getting back to RobotGreta, she would have similar processes, but a different substrate. If we knew that the processes were enough to meet the necessary and sufficient conditions for subjective experience, we could know she had it in some form. If panpsychism is true, she would have some form of subjective experience, as would a toaster or crystal or atom. But it could well be that the differences (in substrate) are key, and she lacks the necessary and sufficient conditions for subjective experience. We don't know.

[Sy Borg]

Which brings us back to the key problem, without a settled Theory of Consciousness (rather than competing speculative hypotheses like panpsychism and emergence) which includes the necessary and sufficient conditions for subjective experience, we can't know.

Getting back to RobotGreta, she would have similar processes, but a different substrate. If we knew that the processes were enough to meet the necessary and sufficient conditions for subjective experience, we could know she had it in some form. If panpsychism is true, she would have some form of subjective experience, as would a toaster or crystal or atom. But it could well be that the differences (in substrate) are key, and she lacks the necessary and sufficient conditions for subjective experience. We don't know.

I agree with this generally but wonder about the gradations between boundaries. My previous examples were not ideal. At the point of Earth's abiogenesis, consider the difference between the first life form as per today's definition and its "peer" chemicals. Then there's the difference between microbes with a nucleus and those without. There have been some studies where, logically enough, chemical structures are being found in microbes that are seemingly performing the same function as a nervous system. We are talking about a level of "consciousness" that is dwarfed by our deep sleep.

For simplicty (and fun) I'll make the pansychic assumption. While there may be panpsychic gradations of "being" everywhere, there are no doubt significant leaps - from chemical to microbe, from microbe to eukaryote, from invertebrates to vertebrates (that's an interesting one - why are animals that are soft on the inside more intelligent than those with hard outsides? Like robots?). Then there's philosophers' favourite leap of sentience - to us eusocial post-apes.

So in a pansychic reality some kind of "leap" would still be necessary for the glorified appliances we currently call AI to experience even to the level of a bug. As you noted, all we can draw on here are our own experiences. Consider our sentience at the time of our earliest memories. Then consider before. Do "lights switch on"? Is a sense of being a sudden emergence like star ignition? That leads us back to your first answer to me above :)

[Gertie]

I agree with this generally but wonder about the gradations between boundaries. My previous examples were not ideal. At the point of Earth's abiogenesis, consider the difference between the first life form as per today's definition and its "peer" chemicals. Then there's the difference between microbes with a nucleus and those without. There have been some studies where, logically enough, chemical structures are being found in microbes that are seemingly performing the same function as a nervous system. We are talking about a level of "consciousness" that is dwarfed by our deep sleep.

Yeah the gradations between boundaries are interesting in themselves. One thing does stick out, that complexity (rather than eg size) seems key to at least more complex subjective states, and might be a necessary condition. So a solid marble StatueGreta (which there are many I'm sure) looks less likely to be conscious than a movin and a-groovin RobotGreta.

Then there's philosophers' favourite leap of sentience - to us eusocial post-apes.

You might enjoy Churchland's take on this, here's a brief summary in a talk she gave -

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-- Updated July 18th, 2017, 4:51 pm to add the following --

[Woodart]

Gertie wrote:
You might enjoy Churchland's take on this, here's a brief summary in a talk she gave -

Wow – what a powerful woman and thinker!
Is she saying that oxytocin is produced as a function of wanting to eat more food in order to keep warm and survive? Why is oxytocin involved in the initiation of maternal behavior and morality? Is the answer that oxytocin precipitates a pleasure response and we want to increase pleasure? Is pleasure the driver for oxytocin production via eating food – having sex – bonding pleasure?

[Fan of Science]

Oxytocin is also involved in people hating one another. It amplifies in-group feelings while at the same time amplifying out-group feelings as well.

Biology may explain how our moral reasoning got started, but it no more explains moral reasoning than it does mathematics. Who would ever claim mathematics was biologically determined? Morality is no different. We may biologically have a built-in number sense regarding some very basic math, but the vast majority of math goes way beyond our biology, and so does our thinking about morality. I don't see how morality can be grounded in biology merely because it gets its initial start with biology. There is much in our biology that people today consider to be immoral.

[Sy Borg]

I agree with this generally but wonder about the gradations between boundaries. My previous examples were not ideal. At the point of Earth's abiogenesis, consider the difference between the first life form as per today's definition and its "peer" chemicals. Then there's the difference between microbes with a nucleus and those without. There have been some studies where, logically enough, chemical structures are being found in microbes that are seemingly performing the same function as a nervous system. We are talking about a level of "consciousness" that is dwarfed by our deep sleep.

Yeah the gradations between boundaries are interesting in themselves. One thing does stick out, that complexity (rather than eg size) seems key to at least more complex subjective states, and might be a necessary condition. So a solid marble StatueGreta (which there are many I'm sure) looks less likely to be conscious than a movin and a-groovin RobotGreta.

Exactly. Of course, compared with our mighty [sic] human consciousness the, well, reactivity of StatueMe and RoboMe is doodly squat.

Then there's philosophers' favourite leap of sentience - to us eusocial post-apes.

You might enjoy Churchland's take on this, here's a brief summary in a talk she gave

Ta, but I don't feel she explained it, though. When she spoke about the so-called mammalian innovation of parental care I immediately thought of mother crocs carrying their young gently in their mouths, or bird parents working feverishly to feed their young, never mind the struggles of penguin parents.

You are surely right about complexity, at least to some extent. Integration is another key aspect of life/consciousness. So a jungle may be much more complex than a single ape, yet is (apparently?) less sentient, with its information less densely packed and less integrated.

-- Updated 19 Jul 2017, 00:59 to add the following --

Greta wrote:

Still, in time every species becomes extinct and will, hopefully, be replaced.

I detect the idea that nature is value in its own right, and not only as support system for humans. I want to join that club! Some atheists are better at God than traditional believers.

Emotionally, yes, I think nature has value in its own right. Realistically, however, I see most of nature as ending up acting as likely resources for whatever humankind and its products manage to cook up.

As things stand, due to the heating sun, even without an anthropogenic greenhouse effect, in a matter of millions of years the Earth's surface will be uninhabitable. This is a short time in the Earth's history. Unless humans/cyborgs/AI manage to do something clever in the future, the story of life on Earth ends there.

-- Updated 19 Jul 2017, 01:07 to add the following --

(Nested quote removed.)


I hope we will be better, but I am not sure we will be better. Technology is a double edge sword. In some ways it takes us away from who we are - blinds us. We are moving forward - I am not always sure where we are moving to.

Better than what? - Define better.

Ways in which we could be improved upon:

- more equitable, fair and compassionate
- more empathetic towards other life forms
- more intelligent, able to use reason to dismiss unsubstantiated polemic and propaganda
- less subject to inappropriate anxiety / fight-or-flight
- more physically durable
- more sustainability, and so on.

There must be hundreds of ways we humans could be improved upon - or more!

[Belindi]

Greta wrote:

(Belindi wrote:)I detect the idea that nature is value in its own right, and not only as support system for humans. I want to join that club! Some atheists are better at God than traditional believers.

(Greta)Emotionally, yes, I think nature has value in its own right. Realistically, however, I see most of nature as ending up acting as likely resources for whatever humankind and its products manage to cook up.

As things stand, due to the heating sun, even without an anthropogenic greenhouse effect, in a matter of millions of years the Earth's surface will be uninhabitable. This is a short time in the Earth's history. Unless humans/cyborgs/AI manage to do something clever in the future, the story of life on Earth ends there.

Yes, and if humans come to respect nature as a value in itself then the demise of the living Earth will feel a little more comfortable and perhaps delayed a very little.

-- Updated July 19th, 2017, 4:10 am to add the following --

Greta wrote:

(Belindi wrote:)I detect the idea that nature is value in its own right, and not only as support system for humans. I want to join that club! Some atheists are better at God than traditional believers.

(Greta)Emotionally, yes, I think nature has value in its own right. Realistically, however, I see most of nature as ending up acting as likely resources for whatever humankind and its products manage to cook up.

As things stand, due to the heating sun, even without an anthropogenic greenhouse effect, in a matter of millions of years the Earth's surface will be uninhabitable. This is a short time in the Earth's history. Unless humans/cyborgs/AI manage to do something clever in the future, the story of life on Earth ends there.

Yes, and if humans come to respect nature as a value in itself then the demise of the living Earth will feel a little more comfortable and perhaps delayed a very little.

[Woodart]

Greta wrote:
Ways in which we could be improved upon:

- more equitable, fair and compassionate
- more empathetic towards other life forms
- more intelligent, able to use reason to dismiss unsubstantiated polemic and propaganda
- less subject to inappropriate anxiety / fight-or-flight
- more physically durable
- more sustainability, and so on.

There must be hundreds of ways we humans could be improved upon - or more!

I am hoping we can accomplish a few small improvements in the near term. I hope there is a long term - because - we need time to figure it out. We are not as smart as a lot of people think we are. I would say over confidence is a big part of our problem.