I'd like to add a "definition" of consciousness. Consciousness is the inner narative composed of sounds/images/feelings which present itself as 'I'. What is (the origin/meaning) of 'I', I don't know, but 'I' is the consciousness.
Quentin On Saturday 02 June 2007 22:13:30 Hal Finney wrote: > Various projects exist today aiming at building a true Artificial > Intelligence. Sometimes these researchers use the term AGI, Artificial > General Intelligence, to distinguish their projects from mainstream AI > which tends to focus on specific tasks. A conference on such projects > will be held next year, agi-08.org. > > Suppose one of these projects achieves one of the milestone goals of > such efforts; their AI becomes able to educate itself by reading books > and reference material, rather than having to have facts put in by > the developers. Perhaps it requires some help with this, and various > questions and ambiguities need to be answered by humans, but still this is > a huge advancement as the AI can now in principle learn almost any field. > > Keep in mind that this AI is far from passing the Turing test; it is able > to absorb and digest material and then answer questions or perhaps even > engage in a dialog about it. But its complexity is, we will suppose, > substantially less than the human brain. > > Now at some point the AI reads about the philosophy of mind, and the > question is put to it: are you conscious? > > How might an AI program go about answering a question like this? > What kind of reasoning would be applicable? In principle, how would > you expect a well-designed AI to decide if it is conscious? And then, > how or why is the reasoning different if a human rather than an AI is > answering them? > > Clearly the AI has to start with the definition. It needs to know what > consciousness is, what the word means, in order to decide if it applies. > Unfortunately such definitions usually amount to either a list of > synonyms for consciousness, or use the common human biological heritage > as a reference. From the Wikipedia: "Consciousness is a quality of the > mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, > self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the > relationship between oneself and one's environment." Here we have four > synonyms and one relational description which would arguably apply to > any computer system that has environmental sensors, unless "perceive" > is also merely another synonym for conscious perception. > > It looks to me like AIs, even ones much more sophisticated than I am > describing here, are going to have a hard time deciding whether they > are conscious in the human sense. Since humans seem essentially unable > to describe consciousness in any reasonable operational terms, there > doesn't seem any acceptable way for an AI to decide whether the word > applies to itself. > > And given this failure, it calls into question the ease with which > humans assert that they are conscious. How do we really know that > we are conscious? For example, how do we know that what we call > consciousness is what everyone else calls consciousness? I am worried > that many people believe they are conscious simply because as children, > they were told they were conscious. They were told that consciousness > is the difference between being awake and being asleep, and assume on > that basis that when they are awake they are conscious. Then all those > other synonyms are treated the same way. > > Yet most humans would not admit to any doubt that they are conscious. > For such a slippery and seemingly undefinable concept, it seems odd > that people are so sure of it. Why, then, can't an AI achieve a similar > degree of certainty? Do you think a properly programmed AI would ever > say, yes, I am conscious, because I have subjectivity, self-awareness, > sentience, sapience, etc., and I know this because it is just inherent in > my artificial brain? Presumably we could program the AI to say this, > and to believe it (in whatever sense that word applies), but is it > something an AI could logically conclude? > > Hal > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
