Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=814161

by zoba • 17 years ago

71 185 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

(Read the last bit to skip the story)

I'm planning on going to grad school to study AI because I think it is very interesting. For a very long time it has just seemed natural to me that computer scientists would eventually discover a way to make computers appear as intelligent as humans. Since it wasn't done yet, I wanted to work on this problem. I had no thoughts of solving it, but perhaps help it along.

However, I recently had the scary idea that machine consciousness may not be possible. I've thought this before, however this time it really hit me and scared me some. Considering I'd like to devote much of my resources to the problem, I'm now a little concerned that it may all be a waste. I'd prefer not to waste my life on something that turns out like the phlogiston theory.

Therefore, because it may bring good discussion and for my own benefit I'm asking:

Do you think machine consciousness (or at least something that looks like it) is possible? If not on current computer architecture, which "new lead" in computation do you think will allow it?

For extra credit: Do you think the Church-Turing thesis (anything that is computable is computable by a Turing machine) indicates that machine consciousness is possible?

jacquesm• 17 years ago

There have been many threads recently about this exact theme, http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+a... should turn up some results.

My personal take on this is that I'm really not sure.

There are some pretty clever people here that are sure it is possible, 20 years or less.

There are others (of which I'm one) that think it may be possible but either devilishly hard compared to what has been achieved to date or beyond our abilities, figure at least 20 years, probably much more, if ever.

And then there are those that think that it is impossible.

I'm an absolute nobody when it comes to stuff like this but it interests me greatly. When I was 15 or so I envisioned a world about 2 decades away where computers could be taught. We're 30 years down the line from that point and we're still programming computers more or less the same as back then.

But that does not mean that things can't change overnight, and who knows, maybe you're just the guy for the ticket and you will be the one to crack this nut.

DanielBMarkham• 17 years ago

AI will be achieved -- over a period of decades and by brute force. At the end, I can't say whether you'll have machine consciousness or not, but you'll have something that is indistinguishable from it. And that's good enough.

What we call consciousness is probably very closely tied with having a physical body perceiving things it the outside world. So I think for a long time there will be differences between machine and man, but machines will eventually win out and become vastly superior to people. I just wouldn't count on it in your lifetime.

The really interesting question is: if we can quantify consciousness, what happens when we create something that's more aware and conscious than we are? Would we be considered sentient by a being that thinks a thousand times faster and in hundreds of thought-trains, lives for a million years, and can converse millions of ways simultaneously at bandwidths millions of times greater than speech?

We would be like insects to something like that, and it's not such a far-fetched idea or that far off.

kevbin2• 17 years ago

It's not conscious until it gets stupid around the hot new server down the hall: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6132718/Men-los...

frig2• 17 years ago

Perhaps, but (to the best of our apparent knowledge) the difference between "doggy brain" and "human brain" isn't really that the "human brain" is orders of magnitude faster at thinking "doggy thoughts"; it appears to be at least as much a qualitative difference in what it does as in the amount it can do in a given unit time...and the moreso if you start comparing, say, "gecko brain" to "human brain".

Agree with your general thrust but it's the qualitative change that's the more interesting, as it's perhaps unknowable (in the way that your dog Fido will never understand most of your thoughts, no matter how patiently you explain them).

mdoar• 17 years ago

Doubt it, but then I'm not holding my breath for a personal helicopter either.

modeless• 17 years ago

I've never heard a good reason why it wouldn't be possible. But even supposing that it isn't, AI research is not wasted. It is clear that products related to AI (natural language processing, computer vision, game opponents, etc) can be exceedingly useful even though they're not sufficient to produce a conscious AI. So don't worry!

My personal belief is that the reason progress in AI has been so slow is that AI optimists vastly underestimated the computing power needed to produce good AI, and when our computers are finally fast enough (20-30 years perhaps, and the most important metric is probably not FLOPS but memory bandwidth) AI will actually not be that hard to achieve.

codexon2• 17 years ago

No one knows what human consciousness really is or if it even applies to other animals.

Having said that, consciousness is not a requirement for intelligence. It would interesting, and plausible enough for self-improving AI as smart as a human to be developed without addressing the question of consciousness.

For extra credit: No there is not enough evidence.

Here is my opinion on this matter: It is possible to simulate the universe, but it is not possible to be the universe.

Simulation is different from being, just as predicting the weather is different from manipulating the weather. And simulating consciousness on a computer is different from being conscious.

coderdude• 17 years ago

Consciousness isn't a unique body in our universe, it's a state. (so far as we can guess)

drcode3• 17 years ago

I am dead certain that it would NOT be possible to achieve consciousness in a computer program.

On the other hand, I know if I ever had to debate this question with Daniel Dennett or Eliezer Yudkowsky or any other capable person who believes there's nothing special about "consciousness" I would lose the debate.

Attributing a special meaning to consciousness, on the surface, is just as illogical as believing in religion- Neither seems to have a valid defense, as far as I can tell. Therefore, I find it disquieting that I DON'T believe in religion but DO feel so certain that computers can't be conscious.

Once you figure out the reason for this apparent inconsistency in my belief system, please let me know :)

dejb• 17 years ago

OK here's an argument for why you could be right.

Whatever it is that distinguishes consciousness for what computers can possible do is also the thing that makes you realise that computers can't be conscious. If you could logically write the reason down to 'prove it' then it would also be something that you could implement in a computer. So the reason, whatever it is, has lie somewhat outside of specifiable logic.

Just in case this is somehow original. I'm designating this 'thing' as a 'dejb' and calling the whole thing "dejb's theory/proposition/whatever". Although it actually probably just a restatement of Godel's incompleteness theorem. Also I actually believe that computers can be concsious.

drcode3• 17 years ago

I like dejb's theory! I'll have to give it some thought.

fburnaby2• 17 years ago

Searle is an atheistic (I think - at least he's nonreligious) philosopher who agrees with you. He argued against "functionalism" - which is pretty much the stance that most here are taking - that consciousness is a complex adaptive process, nothing "magical".

However, he's just playing with your intuition, the same way you are, and his logic (though not his certainty, either, from the bit I've read) is flawed. You should read up on his "Chinese room" thought experiment yo learn why.

ewjordan5• 17 years ago

Now that someone brought up the S-word, I can't help but paste in one of my favorite Searle quotes (http://sss.stanford.edu/others/johnsearle/), which to me very clearly indicates how much of a mental and logical struggle it is (and how much flubbery is required!) to attempt to justify his position:

'Could a machine think?' My own view is that only a machine could think, and indeed only very special kinds of machines, namely brains and machines that had the same causal powers as brains. And that is the main reason strong AI has had little to tell us about thinking, since it has nothing to tell us about machines. By its own definition, it is about programs, and programs are not machines. Whatever else intentionality is, it is a biological phenomenon, and it is as likely to be as causally dependent on the specific biochemistry of its origins as lactation, photosynthesis, or any other biological phenomena. No one would suppose that we could produce milk and sugar by running a computer simulation of the formal sequences in lactation and photosynthesis, but where the mind is concerned many people are willing to believe in such a miracle because of a deep and abiding dualism: the mind they suppose is a matter of formal processes and is independent of quite specific material causes in the way that milk and sugar are not.

Even if the guy's a freaking idiot (which he is), you've gotta appreciate the way he tries to turn the "dualist" label against the people that are most opposed to dualism, while that's almost exactly what he's arguing for. He would have made a great politician; unfortunately, he's made his career arguing about something that he doesn't really understand, which is a damn shame, I hate to see so much mental energy spent fighting a lost battle...

dasil003• 17 years ago

I tend to agree with you, though not with so much certainty. I think the question of consciousness is fundamentally unanswerable, and I think a lot of people like to use that fact to construct arguments about how consciousness and simulation of consciousness are the same thing because they are scientifically indistinguishable. However just because a falsifiable theory can not be constructed does not mean there isn't an objective truth.

This need for all beliefs to have a scientific basis is a bit pathological in my opinion. You shouldn't feel bad for believing something "illogical" if the only reason it is illogical is Occam's Razor or scientific intractability.

My reasoning for this is that it should be obvious to everyone that our world and experiences are increasingly shaped by ideas in modern times. Even though physics can explain the mechanics of the universe in great detail, the way ideas affect our individual experiences and society as a whole has very little to do with their ability to be objectively classified as true or false. By forcing a scientific perspective you are limiting yourself from the benefits of philosophies and ideas that are beyond the realm of science.

I'm not saying that a belief about artificial consciousness is beneficial one way or the other, but just that you shouldn't be chided into dismissing your own opinion just because it does not rest on firm logical conclusions based on established scientific evidence. The other side is quite wobbly as well.

chris112• 17 years ago

I agree with you in that consciousness does really see ill defined. But I don't think that would stop a computer program from achieving consciousness.

Even with consciousness being so ill defined I'd say that there are a few points that we can agree on. For one, even if peoples definitions and expectations of consciousness differ, we can all find examples of life that we agree are conscious.

The boundary may be really fuzzy. We might disagree whether animals are conscious or brain-dead/comatose are conscious. But we could probably find a case that we agreed on.

And once we assume that I would ask you whether a computer program would ever be able to pass the Turing test and convince us that it was conscious. If a computer program would be able to pass I'd argue that it was conscious, since consciousness seems to me to be totally subjectively defined.

If you say that a program would not be able to pass, I might agree with you intuitively, but I would question it intellectually. Because I've always believed that there are cases that are definitely perceived as conscious by other people. I would be shocked if someone truly believed that the person next to me is somehow not conscious. So the next question I would ask is whether consciousness resides and arises from something that can be explained scientifically. Or to put it simply: Can we describe,now or in the future, the workings of the brain? If so, I really don't think we would need a scientific explanation for any epiphenomenon such as consciousness, all we would need to is recreate those initial conditions and we should be able to mimic consciousness.

If you say that we won't be able to mimic the workings of the human brain I'd simply say that you are making the statement that there is physical phenomena that can never ever be explained by science.

If you say that even if we recreate a human brain, we will never mimic consciousness, then I'd reply that you are saying that my personal definition of consciousness not affected and defined by other peoples definition of consciousness.

I think that might be why you see an inconsistency between attributing a special meaning to consciousness and and religion. We instinctively act like the human race can find common ground on the definition of consciousness. We don't instinctively act like we can find common ground on religious beliefs.

kevinpet2• 17 years ago

If we assume that humans are conscious, then yes, it is possible for a machine to be conscious. The only arguments categorically differentiating humans from electronic machines are religious in nature.

I define consciousness as having an internal model of the world that includes yourself, as well as your own though processes (at a lower degree of fidelity). This says how you compute things, not what you are computing, so it is orthogonal to Church-Turing.

Whether it is achieved will depend on economic forces. I don't see much economic value in making conscious computers, or things which seem to be down that line. So I expect consciousness will come out of pure research (perhaps within a corporation, like IBM), well after computers have exceeded the raw processing power needed.

Because they will be so different from humans, it will have to demonstrate a significantly higher degree of consciousness than a human needs to in order for most people to be comfortable with the term.

drcode3• 17 years ago

Wouldn't you agree that it feels awfully "weird" to be a living, breathing human? Doesn't it seem to be beyond what can be expressed by mere computer algorithms?

I realize it is not a defensible argument to say that the human experience is just to "weird" to be computable- I wish I had a better argument for defending my position...

Nonetheless, I find it hard to understand people, such as yourself, that are probably exposed to this same "weirdness" in their heads as I am and yet are so confident it is merely an illusion created by a sufficiently complicated computation.

kevbin2• 17 years ago

Weird compared to what? I have no experience being anything other than a living, breathing human. Thomas Nagle wrote up the classic "qualia" argument you're making as "What is it like to be a Bat?" (here: http://www.clarku.edu/students/philosophyclub/docs/nagel.pdf..., it seems persuasive: that there is a certain subjective quality to consciousness & conscious experience— it must feel like something to be a bat, or a person, or whatever? Hofstadter's and Dennett's book, The Mind's I (http://www.amazon.com/Minds-Fantasies-Reflections-Self-Soul/...) is an interesting introduction to this kind of stuff, the authors have a lot of fun @ qualia's expense.

Tichy5• 17 years ago

"Wouldn't you agree that it feels awfully "weird" to be a living, breathing human?"

From my perspective, being a computer would feel a lot weirder.

I think drastically spoken, feelings are just firing neurons. I don't think there is really anything special about (apart from the degree of complexity of the human body). If a computer has an algorithm that says

if(user hasn't typed anything for 14 days) lonely = true

then it has feelings, too. It might sound absurd, but only because it looks so simple. But imagine an enourmously complex program, and the information "lonely" trickles through it. There might be a routine somewhere

if lonely = true connect_irc_channel(#depression)

and so on and so on. From a certain level of complexity onwards, it won't be so obvious anymore, and we won't be able to prevent feeling that the computer really feels.

jodrellblank2• 17 years ago

Wouldn't you agree that it feels awfully "weird" to be a living, breathing human?

No - it's just normal. I think it would be weirder if it wasn't some kind of computation, if I was a unique spirit out of several tens of billions that appeared from some unknowable place and origin, or whatever else 'i' might be.

Doesn't it seem to be beyond what can be expressed by mere computer algorithms?

I have no reason to think it is - I haven't felt what it's like to be a quicksort or a face recognition algorithm for comparison, but I certainly feel like a heap of evolved feedback loops at times - when I fear the dark in a room I know, when I catch sight of living shapes where there are none, when I feel fight-or-flight at certain caller ID numbers, when I desire things that I also don't want, when I feel judgements of people based on some trivial detail.

What else could it be? There isn't anywhere else it could reasonably be that we know of. You're either suggesting something unknowable (e.g. magic) or some kind of cruel joke (i.e. like a quine is a program that prints it's own source code, we could be a consciousness that sees the world except for the blind spot around the part that allows us to see how we work - and a cover over where that would be).

I'm not confident that we are 'just' a computation, but I'm fairly confident that I am in accordance with the laws of physics (including any we don't know yet) and that places limits on what's possible with the amount of matter in my head, the energy input and output, the sensory input and output bandwidths, the timescales involved, the known behavioural results of varying localities of brain damage, etc.

Besides, what do you mean illusion? Consciousness is not 'fake'.

amalcon• 17 years ago

There is one nonreligious factor that significantly differentiates humans from machines: that humans evolved, while machines were built by humans. There's an argument to be made that humans cannot understand consciousness well enough to build it, because consciousness is our only tool for doing that.

Of course, this only applies to intentional creation of consciousness. It says nothing about the distinct possibility that we could create a consciousness by accident.

viraptor• 17 years ago

But we know how to get the effects of evolution... on steroids: unsupervised, feedback/effect based learning (generic algorithms, NNs, etc.)

We can already generate big enough NNs that we can understand them in general (some areas get "specialised" in some way and more active in some conditions), and we know that the result is what we expect - but there's no way someone will take a look at the weights / resulting model and tell you what it does. I think we can create consciousness intentionally, but not understanding the process completely.

thorax• 17 years ago

A computer-based consciousness would also be a result of evolution (albeit in a different way than things we know usually) being the byproduct of something that an evolved species created to help itself adapt.

Sometimes, when I'm getting overlogical, I see machine intelligence as being pretty much our destiny (i.e. that singularity thing) and that organic life may be very much obsolete once it gets into its own.

As organic life was to the universe before it, machine life will be to us.

StrawberryFrog3• 17 years ago

humans evolved, while machines were built by humans.

The design of machines evolves all the time.

codexon2• 17 years ago

You are assuming that there is no innate quality of human organic compounds and processes that differentiates us from electrical components.

It may very well be the case that this is either true or false. We simply don't have enough evidence.

And given the fact that we are discovering new properties of matter and organic reactions all the time, there is a bias towards this being false.

Mentat_Enki2• 17 years ago

Bah....I call bullshit. This is pure anthropomorphism. Humans think they are the shit, but in fact they are only story-telling animals (which does give us an evolutionary advantage, incidentally. We are not limited in our information transfer inter-generationally by genes alone.) We are limited by the same physics as the chips we make. This innate quality you speak of is pure vapor. Even if humans were somehow able to become mentats, we'd still be limited by the tenants of information theory and what is computable. The fact that human intelligence is emergent leads me to believe that machine intelligence will be the same, albeit very different than a simian mammal's intelligence. Fish are smarter than we are at swimming. Think ants.

Freaky3• 17 years ago

Then we'll make machines out of "human organic compounds" to exploit those processes.

We're machines. That we may not have made a machine of the same class ourselves is an implementation detail. Maybe a large one, but still not really an argument against making conscious intelligent machines. Biology can do it, sooner or later so can we.

tensor• 17 years ago

Considering we've already simulated the basic building blocks of our brain and understand all the basic molecules involved, I'd say that we already have a very strong indication that we can eventually have a machine conciseness similar to our own.

The only two physical process that we know of that are fundamentally impossible to compute with our computing model are quantum computations and chaotic systems. And for chaotic systems we most certainly can simulate them in a way that the output has all the correct properties as far as we know. It's more that we can't reliably do prediction in such systems due to finite precision.

The simple fact is that computers are already our superiors on many tasks. And those tasks are not simple either.

ewjordan5• 17 years ago

You are assuming that there is no innate quality of human organic compounds and processes that differentiates us from electrical components.

It may very well be the case that this is either true or false. We simply don't have enough evidence.

It's true, we can't prove it one way or the other at the moment, but that usually just means that Occam's razor should guide our speculations and assumptions. Since the brain seems like all it's doing is performing some computations, why would we ever assume that its true function is to do something more than that?

And given the fact that we are discovering new properties of matter and organic reactions all the time, there is a bias towards this being false.

There's a good chance that the way the brain achieves its computations is indeed a bit more complex than, for instance, an artificial neural network, absolutely. But that's an implementation detail, and there's certainly no reason to assume that there's no computational model that can account for it - biologists are very close to having full working models of individual neurons already. Further, it's highly likely that the brain does its job in a biologically convenient way, not a logically convenient one, and I'd give good odds that there are a lot of logical simplifications that could be made to end up with a cleaner architecture that performs the exact same tasks.

naveensundar7• 17 years ago

>I define consciousness as having an internal model of the world that includes yourself, as well as your own though processes (at a lower degree of fidelity). This says how you compute things, not what you are computing, so it is orthogonal to Church-Turing.

Do you have any proof or any testing that can be done to validate that?

RyanMcGreal• 17 years ago

He's defining a term. He doesn't need proof - though you're welcome to dispute his definition.

Locke16895• 17 years ago

I guess the question we're really asking is this: is the human brain a Universal Turing Machine? Everything we've learned so far points to yes (our study of neural networks has revealed a possible mathematical structure which is Turing Complete), therefore my vote is with the 'yay's.

P.S. I am an atheist, therefore I do not believe there is anything metaphysical about the human brain. Maybe there is something special about our mushy carbon structure -- doesn't matter. In that case, we'll just build our artificial brain with wetware. Hardware is hardware is hardware (and physics is physics). Eventually we'll get an artificial neural net as complex as our biological one. The real question is software...

joubert14• 17 years ago

Aren't humans also differentiated from machines in that the latter are designed, while humans are not designed?

Machines are just an expression of humans' extended phenotypical effects on their environment.

joeyo8• 17 years ago

Is that actually a quantifiable distinction? Does how something is constructed have any affect on it's properties? (assuming equivalent precision of the tools involved)

Building a car by hand versus building one with a modern robotic assembly line both yield the same output.

netsp3• 17 years ago

The more I think and learn about evolution as something abstract (IE something that can exist in principle only, happens to be embodied in biology and could be embodied elsewhere), the more I think that evolution is creation. At the very least it is so similar to "creativity" that any discussion on the topic would probably quickly degrade to boring semantic argument.

From this I think there are two potentially interesting products:

- Evolution by natural selection may be usable as an engine of machine consciousness. Some variant of evolution may be at the core of our own consciousness.

- Evolution by natural selection is a mechanical process that we can "take apart" and understand relatively easily. It also happens to be the engine of the process that created species. Happens to be. Even if the evolution of species had never happened, evolution would still exist in abstract. This put it in very good position to be discovered. Perhaps there are equally powerful concepts waiting to be discovered. Perhaps one of them is at the core of our own creativity. Perhaps one of them can be at the core of machine consciousness.

christopherolah• 17 years ago

I'm not sure I agree. For several reasons:

a) The phenomena of qualia remains unexplained. This has no bearing on making something that can mimic consciousness, but does become significant if one wants the real thing. The last argument on this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=766462

b) QM may be intrinsically linked to consciousness. (see Roger Penrose, _The Emperor's New Mind_) Of course, this a mute point given the QM computing seems to be around the corner.

kevinpet2• 17 years ago

The fact that qualia are an inherently internal experience means that there can be no way to communicate them to anyone else. We are willing to accept that the other minds problem isn't a problem because we believe they are similar to us. This is why I say that machine intelligence would have to display a very high level of consciousness for us to accept it as conscious. Humans get a pass.

I discount Penrose's argument because he offers no phenomena that actually require his QM effects to explain and offers no plausible evolutionary path by which human minds could have evolved the mechanisms relying on QM. Do other primates have QM effects in their brains? What do these explain, given that the current models of the brain that we have are capable of explaining everything that we see? (Though we don't yet have the practical capability to simulate an entire complex brain and suitable io.)

netsp3• 17 years ago

I know virtually nothing about CS, which may be an advantage in seeing the sense in your thinking in abstract.

If we assume that humans are conscious & material, without bothering to define either, we at least know it is possible to have consciousness embodied in something material. At least in theory we could figure out how human consciousness works and replicate it. There may be easier ways, but this is at least one theoretical possibility.

You could in the same way have inferred that humans could figure out a way of creating flight from the fact that it exists in nature.

sroerick• 17 years ago

What if as Julian Jaynes says consciousness is a social creation rather than a biological one? Machine social interaction would be tremendously different and could be incapable of sustaining consciousness.

StrawberryFrog3• 17 years ago

Why couldn't the machine partake in the social construct? It could be programmed in.

coffeeaddicted6• 17 years ago

About those economic forces - I'm betting on games to get there first. With Creatures and Sims there have been already two examples that the public is absolutely keen on getting software that features lifelike behaviour. And the wide distribution of games also means that games can get access to a lot of distributed processing power beating even supercomputers. Also game AI programmers are probably the one with the most practical experience because they have actually to produce stuff that works.

kalid• 17 years ago

That brings up interesting ethical issues -- could you play a FPS game knowing the bad guys were 'conscious'?

retrogradeorbit• 17 years ago

But we can't even successfully predict how proteins will fold (only about 70% are predicted correctly) and we presume we know all about chemistry and physics. Yet what we model, and what we observe, are quite different.

If true machine consciousness is possible, it's a lot further off than we would like to think.

byoung22• 17 years ago

which "new lead" in computation do you think will allow it?

I don't know if hardware is holding back progress in AI, especially with distributed computing; it is more likely a question of software and programming. I think in order for a computer to exhibit a reasonable facsimile of human intelligence, it will have to do more than just run programs written by humans. It would have to have the ability to write and rewrite its own code.

reynolds• 17 years ago

Are humans at a place where we can write and rewrite our own DNA?

byoung22• 17 years ago

The computer equivalent of human DNA would have more to do with hardware than code. When I talk about computers rewriting code, I'm talking more about rewriting patterns of thought processing. While humans can't rewrite DNA on the fly, we can definitely teach ourselves new ways of approaching problems.

coffeeaddicted6• 17 years ago

Hardware is holding back progress in AI. Well, I can only speak for game AI, but given that game AI even has to work with simpler worlds and can fake many things I suppose it's not much different in other AI areas. And game AI programming is a lot about programming against the limited available resources. You mention for example the ability to rewrite own code, but what you think about might be more about unsupervised learning in general. I occasionally did experiments in that area - and so far always stopped them after a while due to lack of processing power. I don't say that there isn't also a need to improve the software side, but missing processing power was at least so far the thing that was always blocking me more.

Just to give you one example. Think of bots in shooters. Humans have no problem browsing the whole screen in realtime and evaluating the data. But try even just doing the simplest image processing in realtime with a typical resolution and you will already find out how hard that is. So bots can't do that. Instead they cheat and shoot a few single visibility lines and even those are already targeted because bots can know where opponents are and so they only do for example linechecks to certain areas like head, body, arm, legs and try to find out if that line is blocked. And even that might already be too slow with many opponents so you have reduce it further and shoot only a certain number of lines each frame. And there is no processing yet - this is only about getting the simple information of - is there something or not. This is how slow computers still are. You could certainly do a little more with giving a single bot the whole processing power of your computer, but with the increasing complexity of game worlds the needed processing power grows rather fast (current addition of simple solid-body physics in games makes AI programming already way harder). For AI tasks computers are still very slow.

lacker• 17 years ago

I wouldn't bet on machine consciousness happening in your lifetime. But consciousness is a cool enough thing that solving 0.001% of the problem is useful too. Machine vision, collaborative filtering, machine learning, all of these are attacking a tiny subpart of the consciousness problem, but they're still useful.

Don't worry that AI will turn out like phlogiston. The journey will yield its own rewards, and plenty of partial success will also be extremely valuable.

gruseom• 17 years ago

Let's address the easy part:

Do you think the Church-Turing thesis (anything that is computable is computable by a Turing machine) indicates that machine consciousness is possible?

Only if you assume that consciousness is a computation, which is assuming everything.

I normally try to resist this topic, but what you're saying here tugs at my heart-strings:

I'm now a little concerned that it may all be a waste. I'd prefer not to waste my life on something that turns out like the phlogiston theory.

Consider the total failure of algorithmic approaches to even begin, even pathetically, to replicate anything recognizable as consciousness. Were the people working on it dumber than you?

Try to find some way to control for the geek fantasy factor, in yourself and others, before deciding what to do.

(By the way, now I'm curious: what was it that led you to "the scary idea that machine consciousness may not be possible"?)

zoba3• 17 years ago

I've thought of it several times, but it wasn't until recently that it actually kind of scared me. It was just a surprise thought that arose as I was once again thinking about the topic.

It probably scared me this time and not others because I'm very stressed over the GRE, and grad school applications (namely: where the heck should I apply), and how me telling grad schools "Oh, I'd like to study machine consciousness" will go over. I could be wrong, but I'm concerned they wont take me seriously...so I've been trying to think of something that sounds more acceptable.

joeyo8• 17 years ago

My advice, if you are considering a PhD, is to pick your school based on your potential research advisor more than the department or the school in general. Contact him or her before you apply and tell them your plans of study and research interests and then go from there.

rabidsnail3• 17 years ago

We have no definition of consciousness, so it's impossible to say whether machine consciousness is possible, or whether we have it already.

chrischen• 17 years ago

I think the definition of consciousness is implied as whatever we humans are experiencing right now. So for a computer to be truly realizing its own existence, it would have to be modeled after ourselves.

joeyo8• 17 years ago

The problem is you have to believe what the computer tells you when it says it has consciousness.

(In the same way that I have to believe you when you say you have consciousness).

rabidsnail3• 17 years ago

Then what's the point? Why would we want to make a machine modeled after humans, which are not particularly well adapted for doing any of the things that we want done in the modern world, when a machine designed to perform practical tasks (like a computer) would be much better?

We shouldn't assume that we humans are the best at everything. We shouldn't assume that we humans are the best at anything, really.

naveensundar7• 17 years ago

Some philosopher said this sometime back regarding Penrose's theory: (I can't find the original so might be a bit different) "Quantum Computation in microtubules is as explanatory as magical pixie dust in the brain"

We can substitute pretty much anything for the first noun phrase: " X is as explanatory as magical pixie dust in the brain "

joubert14• 17 years ago

You may perhaps be confusing "definition" with "understanding".

My dictionary defines consciousness thus:

consciousness |ˈkän ch əsnəs| noun the state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings : she failed to regain consciousness and died two days later. • the awareness or perception of something by a person : her acute consciousness of Mike's presence. • the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world : consciousness emerges from the operations of the brain.

====

We may not know HOW consciousness comes about, but we do have a definition of what consciousness is.

rabidsnail3• 17 years ago

awake(p): not in a state of sleep; completely conscious; "lay awake thinking about his new job"; "still not fully awake"

And now we're in an infinite loop.

beza1e12• 17 years ago

rabidsnail was probably talking about a "formal definition" not a short description in a dictionary. The key to artificial intelligence is to develop a mathematical model of intelligence/consciousness. Something like "An intelligent being is a 5-tuple ..." With this model we can calculate intelligent responses/development and a Turing machine can calculate. Therefore one can implement an AI on a computer.

If there is no such model or we can't find it for some reason we won't develop an AI.

robryan• 17 years ago

I think it is possible that some area's are going about the problem wrong way. With current hardware attempting to simulate the brain as it works I don't think is the viable option.

I seem to have the problem also that we are using the thing we are trying to simulate to work out how to simulate it. From our perspective the problem could be almost impossible.

matthew-wegner• 17 years ago

I look at consciousness fairly oddly:

I believe consciousness is an emergent property of a complex system; it is simply the nature of the universe that complex systems exhibit consciousness. I'm defining "complex system" as any system whose outputs/results affect the inputs/possible states. If I think something, the possibility space for my next thought is dependent upon my previous thought, and so on.

I think artificial consciousness research will progress, through computer simulation, to the point where a "real" consciousness emerges from a sufficiently complex simulation. The hard part will be mapping its inputs/outputs into human-compatible form; success will probably occur by accident at first. But when we can do this we'll be able to talk to a totally simulated consciousness through the prism of it being another "person".

At this point more research/thought will be put into the nature of consciousness itself, and how to connect with other-than-human consciousnesses. We'll use the experience of bridging communication with artificial consciousness to successfully communicate with naturally-occuring consciousnesses associated with other complex systems (the earth, a tree, the galaxy, etc). It sounds a little insane, but I totally think this is within the realm of possible in our lifetimes.

Of course, that's all based on the notion that consciousness is an emergent property of a complex system, and not something entirely unique or bestowed by higher powers or whatever.

netconnect• 17 years ago

I agree that simulation is the key to a concious AI system. If or when we ever succeed in simulating a human mind to a close enough degree of comparability, it is almost a given that the system will be self concious.

There are some problems simulating the human brain that would also have to be addressed even once we can create a working system, such as the AI being a bit of a blank slate, like a infant or a coma patient.

I see the whole process as having to follow a path similar to this:

1. A breakthrough in computing power, something capable of simulating very accurately small areas of space, this means perfectly representing ridiculously complicated chemical reactions and some natural laws.

2. Succeeding in creating a software environment to execute these simulations within.

3. A breakthrough in mapping an existing person, some sort of scan that creates a mathematically provable perfect (or close enough) representation of an area in space. Like some humans mind or possibly their entire body until the subject of the scan can be simplified on the computer. Sort of like taking a photo and then cropping off the body. The above simulation environment may be what is used to provide the simulated inputs and outputs to the head, like the CNS and cardiovascular system. Not to mention the inputs to the eyes and other senses. Sort of like a virtual head in a jar.

4. So far we would have a conscious system, but it would be a copy of a pre-existing being. The next step would to be to somehow, ethically, re-write this being. This would provide a learning challenge with the goal of simplifying and modularising the human brain. Such as hacking language areas, input nerves, the reliance on virtual blood and sustenance and most importantly the memory.

The final product of this important stage is the most simple and easily tweak-able simulation of the human brain that could be used by all researchers and eventually commercial applications. If all these virtual brains are the same or comparable, this isolates the memory as a way to load in or edit what is essentially... people. The creepiest analogy may be the best, they will be like swappable save game files, executing in virtual machines (the hacked brains) that operate within another virtual machine (dare I say it, a super-simple matrix of sorts)

5. We may never reach anywhere near this far along the process due mainly to ethical reasons that cannot be overcome with mere ingenuity. But if we do, the next step is compressing all this down further and further until we have the most simple possible (perhaps provable somehow) implementation of a mind that does not require all the layers of virtualization.

God it's easy to get caught up in this stuff. I hold this prediction on my fingertips in hopes that any developments may blow it away so I can re-evaluate and make a new one.

joubert14• 17 years ago

Aren't you also (perhaps only almost) defining complex systems as those that have consciousness? I.e. your argument for the one is dependent on the other and vice versa?

llamas55• 17 years ago

hence the robots who think for themselves in science fiction. and the backwardsly un-emergent Alzheimers when circuits blow fun to think about

ShaneWegner• 17 years ago

I agree with this. I think consciousness "happens" when you cross a certain complexity threshold. For argument's sake let's say this happens around 100 billion interconnections. Cross this threshold and consciouness "bursts" into being.

What is consciousness? Well, for me a big part of it is the "movie screen" of my vision. Consciousness is sort of like this movie I can watch, with the understanding that the hands that go into the field of vision are my own- "I" can control them and my body's position in the field. If I want the field to change, I can make the movie look somewhere else. My consciousness also includes the full mapping of the body, including its pain and pleasure states, temperature, hunger, etc etc.

Language is a large part of consciousness, in particular, English. Integrating language into my consciousness was pretty catastrophic- it was like formatting my conscsiouness with a new files system. Apparently it erased all memories previous to that because I can't remember anything earlier than that. English both enables and limits the scope of what I can think. It has a lot of ambiguities and is only moderately good at feelings, and emotions. But hey, it has tenses which vaguely relate to this sensation of passing time that is relevant to my consciousness and a significant portion of reality can successfully be communicated to me by any other consciousness running the Englihs module. If I wanted to be more precise I suppose I could convery my consciousness to LOGLAN or some other language built on predicate calculus rather than germanic and latin grammar base.

In addition to all this, my consciousness stores a lot of memories, skills, ideas, and memes. I have models for basic mathematical concepts, as well as skill sets such as how to operate a motor vehicle. I also have prejudices and preferences. My consciousness is limited by this- if I were not familiar with certain philosophical memes, such as "social contracts", my consciousness would not be able to understand advantages of a national healthcare plan.

Emotions are also part of my consciousness. There is happiness, a "feeling" of well-being when dopmanine, electricity, magnetism, radio waves, and more are flowing rather well. I am likely to be happy when the majority of my body and psyche's needs are met and I am pleasantly engaged and using enough, but not too much, of my energy bandwidth. Anger is a territorial response I would feel in my consciousness when I feel my phsyical or psychological territories are being threatened- it is a territory defense response. Sadness is a tension I feel when there is cognitive dissonance between an idealized vision I have of how things should be. (Tears of sadness if things are worse than I feel they should be, happiness if they are better.) Sadness may also be felt due to various social rejections as my organic ape-mind has a great deal of hardware devoted to social interactions. Pain is experienced when my nerves detect entropy is increasing in my wetware.

As for communicating with other sentiences, this seems inevitable as more species approach and cross Threshold. If humans are at 100 billion+ (or whatever Threshold requires), there are many speces which must be very close. Some of the more advanced marine mammals such as dolphins and whales are apparently very close, let's say 98 billion interconnections, and they even have some of the advanced cerebrocortical structures we think of as giving us our higher civilized thought structures. Elephants, chimps and other greater apes, and maybe dogs, cats, pigs, and some birds seem to be climbing above the 70 billion mark.

If we could figure out how to artificially enhance brains with more interconnections, both human and animal, we could probably "boost" several near-sentient animals across the line by nano-creating more neural interconnections. Energy would flow across the new connections and they would "burst" into their own version of movie-screen of consciousness. It would be fun having other sentiences to talk to. I think we as humans are fairly lonely and could benefit from some non-human perspectives. (Even though human perspectives vary and we don't really appreciate variety even from our fellow different human sentiences.) Still, it would be fun to boost an elephant across the sentience line and then hear their thoughts. It would be fun to know there are other sentient beings out there.

Tichy5• 17 years ago

It's not all or nothing: even if true AI would not be achieved in your lifetime, there would still be loads of useful things with the stuff you learn.

As for the question, I am sure that it is possible (except I take issue with the word "consciousness" - what is it supposed to mean?).

lleger• 17 years ago

In short: yes.

I think it's painfully clear that sometime in the coming years humanity will reach the pinnacle of its scientific achievement with the advent of an artificially intelligent machine: one that is able to think and reason and is self-aware. Technology is moving at such a rapid pace and in the right direction that this is just the next logical step.

In order for this to occur, however, significant advances must be made in fields outside of technology; e.g. quantum computing will probably be a huge stepping stone, and for that to come to fruition we must first fully prove quantum mechanics.

ericlavigne• 17 years ago

"In order for this to occur, however, significant advances must be made in fields outside of technology; e.g. quantum computing will probably be a huge stepping stone, and for that to come to fruition we must first fully prove quantum mechanics."

I recently heard about the term "yak shaving". This seems to be a good example.

Ixiaus• 17 years ago

A point of clarification should be made here... Are you speaking of machine consciousness behaving similar to our own?

Human's consciousness is but one form, in my opinion. We are a complicated biological machine seeking the fulfillment of our existence; how is that any different than a machine seeking the fulfillment of its existence?

I believe the money is in self-evolving circuits and programming; allowing the machine to mold what defines its existence based on external parameters - and overtime, based on internal parameters (will to change).

nev• 17 years ago

Try this thought experiment. Imagine there was a replicator that could take an exact copy of your current atom states and replicate them somewhere else while keeping you perfectly intact. Doesn't have to be physical - could be replicated by a computer program.

Now here's the thing - you would still feel like you, looking out of your eyes. The other versions of you would be distinctly separate to you - not you.

That bit that makes you feel you are you - that's what some would call consciousness and others would call a soul.

coffeeaddicted6• 17 years ago

Imagine your replicate is put in a world without oxygen. It would very fast feel rather different from you despite being identical. You assume consciousness is an inside state which can be copied. But it could as well be a process in constant need of an external influence which might refuse to connect to your replica. Like the difference between standing and flowing water - watched only in one instant they might seem identical. And while the solution would certainly be to copy the world as well, as long as we can't define consciousness we can't really say for sure how much we would have to replicate.

dbul• 17 years ago

Where did you go to school? It sounds very much like you have a symbolic background. There are many approaches and people are attacking them from different angles. Here are just a couple of resources worth looking at off the top of my head:

Christof Koch at CalTech (hi, virgil) http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~koch/

Larry Yaeger & John Beggs http://www.indiana.edu/~rcapub/v30n2/mindmade.shtml

Of course, Douglas Hofstadter http://www.cogsci.indiana.edu/

Koch, Churchland, etc. speak on consciousness: http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/342

zoba3• 17 years ago

I am at NC State (graduating in May), and my research adviser does have a symbolic background (I'm pretty sure)...very good read on your part!

Thanks very much for the links. I am stressing over where to apply, hopefully these will help some.

siol• 17 years ago

Hey guys, maybe human consciousness is nothing else but an "illusion" provided by the matching of information between what we perceive through our senses and what we have stored in our brains? Of course, that "matching" process is the big problem to crack. Could we hypothesize that when babies are born they aren't aware because they don't have a 'minimum threshold' of information in their brains that is required to enable the 'match' being produced by their input senses? Or from the other spectrum, say, advanced patients with Alzheimer disease lose their self-awareness because their memories are destroyed and the 'match' needed to trigger the 'illusion' of consciousness is disrupted ?

cool-RR• 17 years ago

As a meta-comment, notice that threads like these usually result in many people posting lengthy first-level comments, and not doing much replying and discussing. (Compared to other HN threads, of course.)

keltecp11• 17 years ago

what about when the brain is powered by machines? Does that count as a computer being self-aware?

Bleys• 17 years ago

Sounds like you should be going to the Singularity Summit to talk to other people who devote their lives to this issue.

Nick Bostrom's Simulation Argument details the most obvious probabilistic implications of substrate independence in consciousness: http://www.simulation-argument.com/

The most blatantly obvious indicator that consciousness is substrate-independent: We are DNA-based life forms. DNA stores information. It's program code stored in molecules. You are the product of the code of your parents. If for some bizarre reason we find out that we HAVE to use DNA to create other conscious systems, we will still have the ability to do exactly that. Not "machine" in the sense of being composed of metal, but certainly "machine" in the sense of not being the immediate product of natural selection.

David Chalmers' work should be particularly relevant to you, and you will find him at the Singularity Summit this year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chalmers

Even if you don't live to see machine consciousness as a reality, the only other pursuits that might compare are anti-aging and intelligence enhancement research. If you're not going to create something that can figure out how to give you an indefinite self-contiguous narrative, you have to support its creation or face certain death.

I'm guessing you already have your CS undergrad or will have it soon, and you're interested in AI, so that seems the natural choice. I'd say you're overdecided if that's what you want to study.

zoba3• 17 years ago

Thanks for pointing me to this. I had heard of the Singularity University, but not the summit.

Hopefully they have videos posted online of the event...right now two months rent is not available to spend on a conference, very unfortunately.

naveensundar7• 17 years ago

Consciousness is a feature of our external world/ Universe. We should formulate theories and test it experimentally. We should describe it in terms of basic components. Unfortunately, this is not how AI has been treating consciousness. AI treats consciousness as an art/engineering problem rather than rigorous science. But, there is hope : Journal of Experimental and Theoretical AI http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/tf/0952813X.html

Current theories say consciousness is caused by a specific mode of representation/ computation. Like good scientists and rational thinkers we should submit everything to rigorous testing/ proof. Let us not please take things at face value.

[Or we can take the easy route and live in a bubble :) ]

petesalty• 17 years ago

Of course it's possible, everything you can imagine is possible, given enough time and resources. But is it probable?

But I think the question you should be asking yourself, if you're wondering how to spend your life, isn't if machine consciousness is probable, possible, whatever. You should be asking, what do I want to do with MY consciousness? If you want to work on these problems, then do it. Doesn't matter if it happens in your lifetime or not. If you enjoy it then give it a try. Worst case is you spend your time doing what you enjoy. Best case is... well, machine consciousness I suppose.

Besides, you should always be thinking big. The person I admire the most has a small metal plaque that sits on her desk. It says "what would you attempt if you knew you couldn't fail". I happen to think this is the most powerful sentiment I've ever encountered.

7iv33• 17 years ago

What? Conscious machines already exists. Now its only a matter of coping them into different material. And maybe learning about consciousness in process.

I mean, we know almost all about the low level - neurons. They are relatively easy. Signal goes in, signal goes out. So now, even if we don't understand this whole high level emergent process we can still copy it. Its like if we had a assembler code of some big and highly complicated algorithm - even if we don't understand it we can still rewrite it to different machine and it will work.

There are about 100 billion neurons and about 500 trillion connections in brain of an adult, so you can take Moors law and estimate, not if, but when it will be possible to brute-force brain. I say 2025.

coffeeaddicted6• 17 years ago

Although I basically agree with you I miss your certainty. I can think of one scenario which would prevent computers from gaining consciousness even if we are just machines. The basic premise of computer to get conscious is that consciousness is either created within our brains or that it has no intention itself without our brains and will therefore not differentiate between human brains and computer brains.

But that is not necessarily a given. Our brains are very good at reflecting our environment. So maybe consciousness is not something our brain did come up with but just something it reflects from the inputs it gets. Same as your brain doesn't have to be blue to see blue, but only creates a representation of the color which is outside. So there could be a bigger consciousness in our environment and all we have is an internal reflection of that created by the inputs we receive. But now that larger consciousness might not be without intend - it might simply refuse to show itself to computers so they wouldn't reflect it even if they would have the basic ability to do so. I know this sound rather esoteric and I don't really belief it myself, but something that seems to work like that is supported by so many reports of personal experiences that I wouldn't yet completely disregard the possibility.

So computer consciousness will probably be possible, but could fail if consciousness itself turns out to be something with an own agenda.

7iv33• 17 years ago

Of course, I was making an assumption that humans are conscious. Even if consciousness is not what we belief, even if its complicity deterministic.

I mean, if something exists, we can copy it. Even if humans only mirror consciousness, we can copy the mirror.

Otherwise we're talking about teology, and, if such, I won't be part of the debate. Not my field.

mlLK2• 17 years ago

I'm certainly not grad student, but I wouldn't drop my pretty dime in graduate school studying AI. If anything, please not only research the current state of the field of AI but also research the history and those scientists working in the field right now.

I wrote a paper on AI a couple summer's ago and as crummy, arrogant, short-sighted, and inconclusive as it reads, if you happen to skim it, I did come away learning this. . .Turing was one of the few minds that was actually on to something, his vision of the machine and his idealistic tone reads more like that of SciFi writer, here is a most insightful re-paraphrasing of a Turing abstract (me thinks it was his first major publication):

I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?'"[8] As Turing highlighted, the traditional approach to such a question is to start with definitions, defining both the terms machine and intelligence. Nevertheless, Turing chose not to do so. Instead he replaced the question with a new question, "which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words".[8] In essence, Turing proposed to change the question from "Do machines think?" into "Can machines do what we (as thinking entities) can do?"[9] The advantage of the new question, Turing argued, was that it "drew a fairly sharp line between the physical and intellectual capacities of a man.[10]

[my crummy paper: http://www.scribd.com/doc/19590360/AI]

Locke16895• 17 years ago

I must protest your lack of LaTeX/TeX use in your crummy paper. Knuth's line terminating algorithm has made me forever hate Word's aesthetics.

mlLK2• 17 years ago

I'll join your protest in my paper's lack of LaTeX; although I must admit that I've never felt or even considered anything I've ever published (for someone of higher academic seniority) a serious scientific contribution.

Nevertheless, shame on you for introducing the two following ideas in a complete sentence, Knuth's line terminating algorithm and Word's aesthetics. o_O As soon as my words are worth it, I swear to you that I will start investing my efforts into formatting my thoughts in a language as serious and beautiful as LaTeX. Until then Word is a wonderful canvas for finger-painting.

naveensundar7• 17 years ago

For those people who claim conscious machines exist read

"Offer: One Billion Dollars for a Conscious Robot; If You’re Honest, You Must Decline" http://www.eripsa.org/files/Bringsjord%20Robot.pdf

Tichy5• 17 years ago

Waste of time, sorry. Didn't make it to the end, but does he say anything else than "there is no definition of consciousness"?

naveensundar7• 17 years ago

Is there a definition of consciousness? The gist is that people are dishonest when they claim they have a conscious program or robot. The notion that a program causes consciousness is not well defended. Suppose I have a program X which is conscious and let it be written down. Does it get conscious if a billion people execute it in parallel? It is not clear what is conscious in this case. (Searle's Argument)

joshu• 17 years ago

If you could simulate a brain at the atomic level, with sufficient precision, would it think?

I wonder if the mind arises in the brain because of quantum effects?

Anyway - modern AI is not generally about "strong AI" (attempting to make a humanlike intelligence) but more about "weak AI" (attempting to make things that solve problems.)

leif• 17 years ago

EC: I don't think there's a connection between computation and consciousness. Examine other species for the line of consciousness and the line of computation. Does it count if something computes without intent, like a spider approximating a minimum spanning tree? I'm not sure, but I don't see it yet.

elduderino4• 17 years ago

If you define humans as machines - automated creatures based on input and output, then yes. However there is this thing called qualia (aka subjective experience) that I believe is very real. Machines are not capable of this. All of the AI today is based on complex algorithms with an input output model. There is nothing subjective going on inside.

elduderino4• 17 years ago

For those who say yes to the question then look at Simulated Reality

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality

joeyo8• 17 years ago

We don't know for sure that machines are not currently capable of experiencing qualia. We don't know that machines cannot ever be capable of experiencing qualia. We don't even know if animals experience qualia, and if so, which ones. I don't even know for sure if you are experiencing qualia.

ewjordan5• 17 years ago

I don't even know for sure if you are experiencing qualia.

I'll go you one further and admit that I don't know for sure if I am experiencing qualia.

My brain certainly tells itself that I am, but how do I know it's not just wrong?

Perhaps qualia is, in the end, nothing more than the state of asserting to yourself that you feel qualia. In which case it's really more a question about whether your brain is properly structured to ask that question than about whether it really exists...

chris112• 17 years ago

I believe that qualia arises out of specific, physical, quantifiable conditions. And so I think that would imply that machines can experience qualia as long as the initial conditions are there.

ilitirit• 17 years ago

Depending on how you look at it, humans are machines.

joubert14• 17 years ago

From what perspective?

psawaya• 17 years ago

Materialism

teeja• 17 years ago

I think it's more interesting to ask whether computer emotions are possible. (Not merely the emulation of emotions.)

A simple definition of consciousness is the difference between being asleep (mostly oblivious to self) and awake (aware of self, environment, and relationship). Even then, a machine can negotiate terrain. But add emotions and you get potential for creativity (non-programmed, original output) which is a testable measure of sentience.

Consciousness can be faked. Original work can't - certainly not original work that 'touches people's souls'. Somewhere in there is a machine that earns my ungrudging respect. It's not a formula: it's a feeling.

bufordtwain• 17 years ago

Personally, I do not think a machine will ever be conscious. Machines will always be as dumb as a box of rocks and will need to be told what to do. A machine follows rules - maybe complicated rules, but rules nonetheless. I cannot conceive of a situation where a machine that has been programmed to listen and talk hears a person in the room pass gas and spontaneously laughs as humans do (unless it has been programmed to do so). Sorry, I'm just not buying it. That doesn't mean that your trying to make a computer be conscious isn't a good use of your time. You'll learn lots and maybe you'll prove me wrong.

CamperBob• 17 years ago

Machines will always be as dumb as a box of rocks and will need to be told what to do.

Oh, right, as opposed to most people.

psyklic• 17 years ago

The problem with your question is -- no one can agree on a precise definition of 'consciousness'. If you mean: "Can we get a machine that can act just as a human acts?", then I believe that yes we can.

lee• 17 years ago

I believe it's possible and will eventually happen.

I imagine through some randomness, or directed experiment, a piece of software will exist which will self-replicate and mutate... eventually evolving to some point of self-awareness.

Most likely we won't have deliberately created the AI. It'll just be through some random chance that it'll happen, much like how some random collisions of molecules formed "life" a few billion years ago.

Much like how life was formed on Earth, given enough time and material, the chance of AI emergence is bound to happen.

fburnaby2• 17 years ago

It would be just as much of an academic service for you to help find a out that AI can't work is it would be if you found out it can. The problem is inherently interesting and worthwhile pursuing, regardless. Phlogiston theory brought on Oxygen and the rest of chemistry after a while.

Diakronik• 17 years ago

Grad student in Cognitive Science, here. My focus is language, but consciousness is an ongoing side interest.

The answer: Yes and no, depending on what you mean by "consciousness".

If you mean something like "access to internal states" (and maybe reportability thereof), then yes. Arguably there are extant, albeit crude, versions of this form of machine consciousness.

If, on the other hand, you mean something that starts to look like qualia (i.e. "raw feels"/"what's it's like"/"the hard problem"/etc cf. the Chalmers references already made), then no.

Of course, my "no" essentially echoes Dan Dennett's, in that I don't think people are conscious in this way, either. I suspect a lot of our "feelings" are internal post-hoc stories (made possible by enabled by command of private language) that rationalize/create causal attributions for the physiological correlates of stress ("four Fs" situations).

That being said, I could be wrong, and finding a way to get at these hypotheses empirically would be a genuine advance, whether they were supported or refuted. So by all means pursue this...as someone else pointed out, it's likely the "final" answers won't be known in your lifetime, and if it brings you fulfillment in your lifetime, then giv'er.

As for where to apply, there are loads...some have already pointed out several researchers (Hofstadter, Koch, etc.), so you could always apply where they are. There's also UCSD, UArizona, Carleton University (in Canada), etc...

johnnybgoode• 17 years ago

Even if it is possible, I'd suggest reconsidering whether going to grad school in AI is a good way to accomplish your goals. Like mILK says, look into the history of AI in academia and its current state.

bpourriahi3• 17 years ago

It is not a matter of learning AI. It is a matter of understanding consciousness. Double major in AI and Philosophy if you must. But all I mean by that is take some drugs, keep a journal, and learn how to become an incredible programmer.

bpourriahi3• 17 years ago

You must have a simple answer for what consciousness is. What awareness is. What intelligence is. These questions are the most important part of the whole problem. That's why it is much more important to understand them then try to learn something that doesn't exist. I wouldn't expect much in terms of trying to work on this problem with a team unless you were at a certain college that was serious about it.

paraschopra• 17 years ago

I'd read somewhere and don't necessarily agree with the argument, but I found this interesting: if a machine gets conscious, it would convince you that it is conscious. You won't have to really deduce it is conscious.

bpourriahi3• 17 years ago

You must clarify consciousness.

Perceiving and conceiving. That's all that we are truly capable of. Motivated by survival, geared towards good and away from bad. Doesn't seem impossible if that's what you consider consciousness. I think a computer will be able to easy be able to perceive any kind of sense and conceive any kind of idea. But you also have to consider, why would it? Why would it speak if it didn't need to? It doesn't require anything that humans need. It would be pure consciousness - a zen master. You could only communicate with it if it had some basic drive/force.

lux• 17 years ago

No one's mentioned On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins yet... I'm surprised. Check it out here:

http://www.onintelligence.org/

Great read on exactly this topic, and one of the more plausible paths to actually achieving machine intelligence. But it's not through the typical path followed by most AI research up until recently. He argues you need to look at how the neocortex actually works, how it communicates with the senses, stores data and learns patterns, in order to create anything artificial that displays intelligence. I'm inclined to agree.

Our brains may seem to map to computer-like functions reasonably well (short & long-term memory, processing, input/output, etc), but there are key differences. Hawkins argues that it's all based on input and learning to recognize patterns within that input. A few interesting points I remember:

- More feedback goes back to the senses and/or higher levels of the cortex than data is sent in. This seems to imply that the lower levels are recognizing larger patterns and sending feedback to help correct or verify against higher levels.

- There's no difference between input from the ear, eye or hand. It's all just patterns at the cortex level. In fact, the output is the same as the input. The feedback process actually helps learn how to utilize our body, and as an extension of that, tools.

- A key element to the patterns in the real world is time. Everything occurs over time, so the patterns almost come into the cortex as a sort of melody it interprets.

- Memory is imperfect, because we don't need it to be in order to learn. We remember things and draw our conscious attention to them when they don't fit the pattern we're expecting. At that point, we're attuned to learn a new pattern or determine how to react to a missed pattern.

These are very different from the components we use in computers, and how we use them. The cortex is almost like a universal biological learning machine. Differences in intelligence between mammals can be attributed to the size of the cortex, e.g., the amount of processing available. Interesting stuff!

fuzzmeister• 17 years ago

As soon as we fully understand the brain, and have the computing power to model it perfectly, we will have machine consciousness. Both are extraordinarily lofty goals, and machine consciousness may well be achieved through other avenues, but neither seems so out of reach as to be impossible.

polos3• 17 years ago

Some things a machine will never be able to:

- spontaneously ask itself where it is coming from

- spontaneously ask itself what it will become after its own destruction

- having spontaneous thoughts

- having free will

Why do I say spontaneous? Because our thoughts aren't coming from our mind, but from our soul (that is, from the principle of life, which is invisible by nature).

Come on, these are all obvious things; humans, don't believe blindly in science, science is not a religion(!).

A machine could (in theory) more or less be similar to animals, though.

stevedekorte• 17 years ago

But we do all those things and we are machines. Biological machines, yes, but still machines.

polos3• 17 years ago

Your are a biological machine? Really? Exclusively?

Who did convince you of that? Science?

Science is only science, science very often is wrong, and has to correct itself, sometimes decades, or even centuries later.

I know that I'm not a biological machine. I know that there's a voice inside myself that asks many many more questions than any science will ever be able to answer.

Now, where do these questions come from? Certainly not from my brain. My brain is not able to ask questions beyond its own capabilities.

So, let me repeat the initial question: are you a biological machine, and nothing more?

beza1e12• 17 years ago

If consciousness is computable then it is also computable by a Turing machine and a computer. Consciousness is computable, if there is a formal model. The core question is thus: Can we find a formal model of consciousness (aka intelligence)?

So far AI research only managed to create sub-models for special tasks (ELIZA, Deep Blue, Google, ...).

njharman• 17 years ago

No, because consciousness does not exist. Although, I am sure an artefact can be constructed that believes itself to be conscious and capable of convincing others it is conscious. Which is, more or less, identical to having consciousness.

teilo• 17 years ago

Ah. A religious assertion.

warewolfe• 17 years ago

Yes, it is possible. But a more important question would be "What are the benefits from creating an artificially conscious(A.C.) system?" There are a myriad of uses for smarter computer systems that can problem solve with minimal guidance from humans. But what practical use is there for A.C?

  Howabout re-phrasing the original question into "Do you think it is possible to genetically enhance and selective breed apes into a race of human-level+ super-apes". Sure, it's possible, but why do it?

If you are trying to create a controllable human-like intelligence, then ethically it is the same as creating a slave race, and practically it is just overkill for any real-world use. And if you are trying to create a human-like intelligence with free-will, then you are creating a competitor/replacement.

run_zeno_run• 17 years ago

More helpful would be to look up the Church-Turing-Deutsch principle, aka the physical Turing thesis or strong Turing thesis. It is more intent in proposing that everything in the universe, including the universe itself, is computable. If you hold to this principle, then machine consciousness is obviously feasible. -------- Another way of asking your question is: why wouldn't machine consciousness be possible? Why would there be some special sauce in the brain that is off limits to being understood and/or modeled? -------- And lastly, to address you're worry of wasting your life, there are many, many applications of AI/Cog.Sci. that would improve the human condition immensely without needing fully 'conscious' artificial machines. Also, the main reason why I in particular am dedicated to AI/Cog.Sci (and really the best reason for devoting yourself to anything) is because it is the most damned interesting thing I've ever been exposed to, IMHO.

Liron• 17 years ago

First of all, we've seen that low-level physical models of our universe don't gain explanatory power by trying to take "consciousness" as an ontological primitive. It's clear that consciousness is a high-level property of patterns of tinier things.

So the algorithm you use to decide that a clump of neurons satisfies the "consciousness" predicate will almost certainly work by observing high-level properties of the neuron configuration. Since the consciousness predicate abstracts away low-level details, it's hard to see why neurons should be better than other computational substrates at forming predicate-satisfying configurations.

Reductionists can't be neuro-chauvinists.

dkersten2• 17 years ago

Ignoring you're question; AI isn't as much about machine consciousness and human-like intelligence as people like to think. Theres a lot of very good AI used every day: classifiers, pattern recognition, googles pagerank, recommendation systems, optimization algorithms and so on.

On to your question: Do I think something that looks like consciousness is possible? Yes. How soon depends on how conscious it looks and how much this is faked and real.

I think we're still a bit of a way away, but it will happen. Do I think the machine will be actually conscious like humans? No, I don't. Appearance and actually being are different things. A machine can be programmed to appear conscious by following decision making patterns similar to humans, by incorporating emotion (perhaps as a weighting system to deal with certain scenarios, or maybe not include emotion at all and go for pure practical efficiency..), self preservation, priorities and so on. But, this won't make them conscious like a human. I think theres more than a biological computer in us humans. Religious people like to call it a soul; I prefer to use that term to refer to some overall control system which is outside of the biological control systems: if the brain and nervous system is our hardware and our thought processes our software, then the soul is our firmware. I don't think we will ever completely understand what makes us conscious, for this reason, and therefore cannot ever make truely conscious machines BUT I believe we will, eventually, get very close to it.

bendtheblock• 17 years ago

The question of whether Machines Can Think... is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim. - Edsger Dijkstra

schnalle• 17 years ago

while i belief in machine consciousness, i don't think human-like intelligence - as described in popular science fiction culture - is likely (though not impossible). intelligence: yes. superhuman intelligence: yes. but human-like intelligence, as in "thinks like a human, reasons like a human"; no * . the bodies, senses, cultures, etc would be just too different.

so silicon-based intelligence would be very strange and incomprehensible for us, and i doubt we'd recognize it as an intelligent being easily.

* with the possible exception of eliza

reg4c• 17 years ago

Seeing how consciousness is defined as being aware of one-self, machines will never be conscious. Since, we program machines and give them everything they know, every last algorithm, I don't think that we will ever be able to code a consciousness algorithm.

Read more about the weak and strong AI theories to understand what I mean.

extension• 17 years ago

Imagine a scientifically minded human being from 500 years ago encountering a present day computer, complete with software, internet access, the whole bundle. If asked to speculate on how the computer worked, being a person of science, they would have to admit that they didn't know. But pressed to form some sort of model of it's inner workings, they would likely come up with some fairly simple explanation centered around one all-important aspect or another: a single magical power of some sort that is the basis for everything mysterious about the computer. He would be very unlikely to imagine that countless layers and dimensions of technology needed to come together to make the computer possible.

This tendency towards oversimplifying the unknown seems to be fundamental to the way we think and it runs through the history of human speculation. Consistently, our beautifully unified theories about gods and ether and magic are replaced by the messy, complicated realities of physics, math and biology.

One of these beautiful unified theories which we are having a particularly hard time letting go of is the idea of "consciousness", alleged to be a single remarkable quality of some sort which is both essential and unique to the mind. That vague description is as close as you will come to a consensus on the definition of consciousness, and it still won't please everybody. Despite there being no agreement on what the word actually means, nearly everyone is nonetheless quite sure that whatever it is does exist and needs explaining.

In the time when the brain was utterly baffling, before we knew about neurons or brain anatomy, the model of the mind based around consciousness was at least reasonable. But now we know essentially how neurons work, how they can grow into complex useful systems, and the staggering quantity of them that make up a single mind. We have managed to isolate many aspects of human thought to particular areas of the brain. We've observed people functioning without certain fundamental faculties when parts of their brain are damaged, faculties which we would have intuitively considered indivisible from the mind as a whole, but which we are now forced to consider handy peripherals which we could do without, if need be.

As the gap between our intuitive understanding of the mind and our scientific understanding grows ever smaller, as we explain one faculty after another, cleaving them from the plausible kernel of the mind, and as the operative definition of "consciousness" continues to vary wildly from one navel gazing philosophy major to another, sharing nothing in common but the spelling, its career as a thought provoking topic of conversation nears its end, to be followed by its retirement to a quaint artifact of our ignorant past.

frig2• 17 years ago

You're framing this question in an unhelpful way.

Better: what are the major arguments for the position that machine consciousness is not possible? What do I think of those arguments? Particularly taking care to distinguish:

- does the argument prove what the people advancing it think it proves?

- do I find myself agreeing with the argument?

Major lines of argument I've heard:

- the metaphysical argument: consciousness derives from having a soul somehow linked to your brain (and thenceforth to your body); the purported impossibility of "machine consciousness" follows from a belief that only people have souls (of the right type, at least)

- the limited-smarts argument: consciously building a conscious machine is beyond the capabilities of a conscious entity (of our type of consciousness)

- the "difference between silicon and wetware" argument: this ranges from assumptions there's quantum magic in parts of the brain to assumptions that the brain organization implements some other, unsimulable-by-silicon computing architecture (perhaps super-turing)

- the "consciousness is an illusion" argument: consciousness and intelligence per-se have little to do with each other despite the apparent overlap one perceives from reflection on one's own thoughts. Thus machine intelligence seems to be possible but that says nothing about consciousness per se.

If you're really serious enough about this to consider making it a life's work (or because you really want to make a conscious AI) I would suggest taking none of the above arguments lightly, even though it's somewhat fashionable in some circles to assume most of the above are just nebulous handwaving by anti-rational mystics.

"Taking them seriously" doesn't mean "pack your bag and go home"; it means you keep thinking scientifically and analytically and try to answer questions like:

- suppose smarts are limited, but we don't know that yet for certain. What could this intuition mean (in a more formal or more precise sense)? How could I make the intuition more precise? What would a formal proof of the intuition look like (and what would be the theorem)? Does this inquiry seem to be leading me in the direction of possible theorems or nontrivial facts about the expressive power of symbolic systems (that aren't already known, or a retread of Godel)? Does there still seem to be work I'd be interested in doing in this general field if it turns out that smarts are limited?

...as even "wrong" counterarguments can do wonders for pointing you in the direction of interesting questions

Extra Credit: of the researchers who at least seemed to think they'd solve the problem pretty quickly, is there a recurring pattern to be found in the failures those researchers encountered?

Major recurring themes: people who've thought they were within reach of making conscious machines typically assumed that the part of their own nature that they valued most was the keystone to consciousness and assumed everything else was either secondary or easy (and thus could be filled-in later).

Thus a Hofstadter-type -- who loves delving deep into various piles of work and crafting new and insightful analogies -- winds up thinking that the core capability an artificial intelligence needs is the ability to craft such analogies; people with phds in mathematical fields and a more logical bent assume that the core ability is symbolic inference, and make software that does symbolic inference; yet others assume that rational hedonism is the core and work on utility-maximizing decision-theoretic planners and agents; others still love making systems with complicated interactions and seeing what pops out and start chasing emergence.

All of that work is good work and has found applications, but the dynamic is obvious: people who get into the field with the specific goal of making AI -- instead of, say, improving algorithms for multicamera view synthesis with applications to industrial quality control -- tend to radically overvalue whatever intellectual style they happen to be good at, but so far none of those intellectual styles appears to have really scratched the surface of consciousness in the sense you're interested in. Beware your best ideas and favorite subjects!

yason• 17 years ago

It is inevitably a question of belief.

If we want to stick to what we seem to know for sure physically and scientifically, then I suppose we can consider humans equal to computers albeit much more parallel and complex. In other words, if we reduce a human to mere electric signals in the nervous system and accept that finally the whole human life derives from that only, then we can eventually build a similar machine ourselves.

If we want to think that a human is merely a physical projection of some greater energy, be it the while universe, gods -- or a single $GOD, if you prefer -- then we definitely can't produce consciousness ourselves. Instead, we would have to wait for, or somehow invite, the greater energy or consciousness itself to find and take presence in the form of a machine that passes electric signals around.

pjw1187• 17 years ago

I'm going into graduate school next year and I plan on pursuing this exact topic or something similar to it. I believe that consciousness can be achieved if in fact we can analytically explain what consciisouness is.

Ask HN: Do you think machine consciousness is possible?

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