meekerdb wrote:
On 5/15/2015 10:29 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
The AI that I envisage will probably be based on a learning program of
some sort, that will have to learn in much the same way as an infant
human learns. I doubt that we will ever be able to create an AI that
is essentially an intelligent adult human when it is first turned on.
I agree with that, but once an AI is realized it will be possible to
copy it. And if it's digital it will be possible to implement it using
different hardware. If it's not digital, it will (in principle) be able
to implement it arbitrarily closely with a digital device. And we will
have the same question - what is that makes that hardware device
conscious? I don't see any plausible answer except "Running the program
it instantiates."
But that does not imply that consciousness is itself a computation.
There is not some subroutine in your AI the is labelled "this subroutine
computes consciousness". Consciousness is a function of the whole
functioning system, not of some particular feature. That is why I think
identifying consciousness with computation is in fact adding some
additional magic to the machine.
Consciousness arose in nature by a process of natural evolution.
Proto-consciousness gave some evolutionary advantage, so it grew and
developed. Nature did not at some point add the fact that it was a
computation, and then it suddenly become conscious. Consciousness is a
computation only in the trivial sense that any physical process can be
regarded as a computation, or mapping taking some input to some output.
There is not some special, magical class of computations that are unique
to consciousness. Consciousness is an evolved bulk property, not just
one specific feature of that bulk.
Bruce
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