Consciousness/Self Awareness

arthwollipot said:
ETA: It's worth saying that both The Mind's I and I Am A Strange Loop are easier to read than Gödel, Escher, Bach.
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I would have to agree. I read all of those. Unfortunately, they didn't get me any closer.
 
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arthwollipot said:
Uh... if it's AI, then it's code. What other methods could there possibly be?
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No, that requires the assumption that general AI is possible. That's the same as weak AI. My conjecture is that general AI is impossible and I'm working on the disproof. Toward that end I just got through reading the deep mind paper.
 
Your claim was that reading books didn't get you "closer" to general AI. I assumed that to mean that you were "working on" general AI, which means that you were developing code.

I ask again - if AI doesn't consist of computer code, what is it?
 
Interesting that although consciousness is considered an enigma, by those scientists I have read pondering it, there are no shortage of quotes surrounding the topic.

https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/consciousness.html


Even Albert Einstein has dipped his oar in:

"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."

A sobering thought given the number of man made problems in the World today.
 
arthwollipot said:
Your claim was that reading books didn't get you "closer" to general AI. I assumed that to mean that you were "working on" general AI, which means that you were developing code.
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I couldn't tell you how much total code has been written for AI in the past 60 years. Quite a lot I would say. Why do you suppose that all those lines of code written by smart people, specifically for the purpose of creating very intelligent and capable AI has failed to achieve that?

I ask again - if AI doesn't consist of computer code, what is it?
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AI does consist of computer code; it falls within computational theory. I'm talking about General AI. I can give you some examples:

GENERAL AI CHALLENGE
The working AI solutions available today constitute the so-called narrow AI landscape, meaning that they have been designed, trained, and optimized by human engineers to achieve a single, specific task. Although such algorithms sometimes outperform humans in their established skillset, they are not able to extend their capabilities to new domains. This limits their reusability, increases the amount of data required to train them, and leaves them lacking generality and unable to develop common sense.
​
In contrast, general AI will be capable of overcoming these limitations. Thanks to a human-level skillset, general AI will be able to learn and come up with creative solutions for a range of multi-domain tasks.​
AGI Society
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is an emerging field aiming at the building of “thinking machines”; that is, general-purpose systems with intelligence comparable to that of the human mind (and perhaps ultimately well beyond human general intelligence). While this was the original goal of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the mainstream of AI research has turned toward domain-dependent and problem-specific solutions; therefore it has become necessary to use a new name to indicate research that still pursues the “Grand AI Dream”. Similar labels for this kind of research include “Strong AI”, “Human-level AI”, etc.​

DeepMind’s Mustafa Suleyman says general AI is still a long way off
Suleyman believes that general learning systems are still decades away, though. Indeed, he argued that “when we say it’s 20 years out or decades way, we say that it so far out, we can’t really measure it.”​

This is pretty much in agreement with me except I'm not saying that it is several decades off; I'm saying that General AI is probably impossible under computational theory and this explains why so little progress has been made. I believe the disproof relates to information coherence in a learning system since I haven't been able to find a basis for this within computational theory.
 
If not in computational theory, then what?

If not code, then what?

On what substrate will your "general artificial intelligence" exist? Or do you expect it just to magically appear floating in the air?
 
arthwollipot said:
If not in computational theory, then what?

If not code, then what?

On what substrate will your "general artificial intelligence" exist? Or do you expect it just to magically appear floating in the air?
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Yes indeed. Given that consciousness is something we have difficulty even defining, (called an enigma by some), I find difficulty in accepting that some will specifically define what it is not and go further to claim it is impossible in this or that kind of a receptacle.

Further I contend that acknowledging it seems to spontaneously happen in living organisms, (to varying degrees admittedly), I wonder why it may not spontaneously happen in other receptacles such as computers.

Therein lies the problem.
 
Thor 2 said:
Yes indeed. Given that consciousness is something we have difficulty even defining, (called an enigma by some), I find difficulty in accepting that some will specifically define what it is not and go further to claim it is impossible in this or that kind of a receptacle.

Further I contend that acknowledging it seems to spontaneously happen in living organisms, (to varying degrees admittedly), I wonder why it may not spontaneously happen in other receptacles such as computers.

Therein lies the problem.
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Does that make then make man God?
 
Thor 2 said:
WE have to jump on those bastards and short circuit them.
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Well... we will be able to work actual miracles. There is evidence that we actually exist. So maybe the computers won't go atheist after all.

But do we really want to create a technotheocracy?
 
Thor 2 said:
On another thread the subject of artificial intelligence (AI) surfaced, and I made a comment about the dangers of such an entity, putting it's own self preservation as a goal above any others. I assumed, (perhaps incorrectly), that a highly developed AI would develop a state of self awareness. I was taken to task on the issue and it was suggested that an AI would only need to be programmed to not want self preservation.

As it was a derail of the subject matter of the thread I decided to start this new one specifically about the nature of self awareness and consciousness.

Interestingly when you google self awareness, you get kinds of hits from those who would sell you all kinds of ideas on how to improve yours and so on, but little in the way of explanation of the subject itself. Googling consciousness is more productive however and I found this:

https://www.newscientist.com/articl...sness-why-we-need-to-build-sentient-machines/







So as is said here natural consciousness is an enigma, (I read a few snippets from others who expressed the same sentiment), and maybe we need to try and make an artificial one to understand it.

As I mentioned on the other thread this may be risky.
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Sorry to interrupt. but something relevant to this topic is popped un in my other thread:

"However I am bit doubtful that, if any non-conscious being really exist in nature. Eg plants.

Plants offer pulp, nectar, pleasing touch & colors, changed colours, good smells etc. of its ripe fruits and flowers intentionally for the purpose of pollination and seed dispersal. Why can't it be considered an a conscious compassionate act on their part?

Some flowers trap insects inside for whole night, I think some consume also, why can't it be taken as cruel conscious act on their part? "
 
arthwollipot said:
Because there's no evidence that plants experience any kind of consciousness.
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Do we limit consciousness to apparent brain only or can there be any other mechanism which can express consciousness without apparent brain?
 
Thor 2 said:
I think Kumar is struggling with something quite profound here. What that something is eludes me.
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Do we limit consciousness to apparent brain only or can there be any other mechanism which can express consciousness without apparent brain?
 
barehl,

Why do you suppose that all those lines of code written by smart people, specifically for the purpose of creating very intelligent and capable AI has failed to achieve that?
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AI does consist of computer code; it falls within computational theory. I'm talking about General AI.
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I think it is because there possibly is no such thing as a general AI.
I don't think the human brain is a general AI as such. Just as the body consists of a great many different organs, each with an unique internal structure and function the brain also has many different modules with unique wiring and specialized functions, consciousness maybe arising from the interplay of these.
Each of these modules would be a specialized AI itself and we have duplicated or at least trained neural networks to do similar functions.
The problem is when a trained NN succeeds spectacularly in its chosen task, we still don't really know how it works.
We also have no idea how many modules the human brain consists of, or even what their functions might be, or how they are organized and connected.

These are, I think quite amazing achievements:
https://phys.org/news/2017-10-self-taught-superhuman-ai-smarter-makers.html
and
https://techxplore.com/news/2017-10-small-pixel-perfect-large.html
but I'm not sure the programmers know how they work. :D
 
smartcooky said:
IMO, this would not be guaranteed to work. AI must have the ability to reprogram itself in order to learn and then predict behaviour, so there is nothing to stop it reprogramming itself to remove that constraint.
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Part of its programming could be read-only. Not everything need to be open to change. Besides, why would it program self-preservation into itself?
 
Kumar said:
Do we limit consciousness to apparent brain only or can there be any other mechanism which can express consciousness without apparent brain?
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If you can conclusively demonstrate that such a consciousness exists, sure.

Good luck with that.
 
Thor 2 said:
Your meaning is obscure. How do I behave "with" a cabbage?

Mind you I have had contact with some that behave "like" a cabbage - at lest in there apparent reasoning ability.
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Good care, good watering, good manuring i.e good nursing. In return, you will get good crop. This is exchange. Whoever has any sense should have consciousness, may it just be a single sense i.e sense of touch. Yes, magnitude of intelligence can vary.
 
arthwollipot said:
If you can conclusively demonstrate that such a consciousness exists, sure.

Good luck with that.
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Whatever you do, whatever you get in return of that from any being having sense(may just be one--sense of touch) should justify consciousness. Magnitude of intelligence is a different issue can can vary.
 
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