It is far from clear that electromagnetic waves like those in brain waves are necessary for consciousness in machines, but they may well play a vital role in human consciousness.
This is something that I have considered since the early '70s when I
envisioned consciousness as being something like what is now called a
theater of consciousness by B. J. Baars. (This is a theater in which one or
more spotlights of attention can rapidly focus throughout much of the
theatre, and in which coordinated chanting or clapping of distributed
audience members can gain the hall's attention). I envisioned that brain
waves might act as a means of broadcasting information regionally or
globally over large populations of neurons, much as sound waves and light
waves broadcast information over the people in a theater. This could help
provide both the sense (or illusion) of unity and self awareness we often
associate with consciousness.
Below is a link to an interesting 2003 paper entitled "THE WAVE PACKET: AN
ACTION POTENTIAL FOR THE 21st CENTURY" by Walter Freeman of Berkeley saying
much the same thing, but with infinitely more evidence, understanding, and
detail.
http://sulcus.berkeley.edu/wjf/AL.WavePacket.pdf
I have not read this article with the care that would be required for me to
fully understand it. For example, I haven't understood the role played by
its phase modulation. But it supports with my prior crude guess that brain
waves might act like the sound and light waves in my theater of
consciousness analogy from years ago. In the first full paragraph on page
20 it states:
"In brief, the gamma band provides the equivalent for the
forebrain of the back plane of a classical mainframe computer, in which
contributions from every cortical part are made available to every other
part...."
It is not clear that electromagnetic waves traveling outside conductors are
the only way to achieve such massive interconnect. It is highly possible
that in ten years computers with cross-sectional bandwidths of 100 trillion
bytes could be built using transmission through conductors and
semiconductors, and that such bandwidths might be high enough to support
human level consciousnesses.
Ed Porter
-----Original Message-----
From: Günther Greindl [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2008 11:34 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [agi] CEMI Field
Hi guys,
I though this might be interesting:
http://www.surrey.ac.uk/qe/cemi.htm
His thesis is that consciousness is not generated by the neurons firing
and computing, but rather the electromagnetic (EM) field generated by
the neurons is consciousness - being conscious is then how it feels how
to be an em field (of a certain kind) from the inside, so to speak.
What do you think? This would be important for AGI and would explain why
usual computational models, which do not seek to generate physical em
fields but remain in the abstract fail to produce conscious AIs.
Best Regards,
Günther
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