On 1/13/2014 7:17 AM, Gabriel Bodeen wrote:
On Friday, January 10, 2014 8:17:13 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
On 1/10/2014 10:49 AM, Gabriel Bodeen wrote:
On Tuesday, December 31, 2013 4:25:04 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote:
As you've explained it above your theory makes a rock just as conscious
as a
brain. I'm
sure you must have a more subtle theory than that, so I'll ask you the
same
thing I asked
Bruno, if I make a robot what do I have to do make it conscious or not
conscious?
Brent
Did you receive any interesting answers?
Hm, should I take that as a negative answer, or merely as a skipped question?
I didn't get any answer from Mr. Owen. Bruno's answer is that the robot has to be Lobian,
i.e. can do proofs by transfinite induction.
I have adequate background in neuroscience but I'm mostly ignorant of AI
math,
robotics work, and philosophy of mind, so excuse my rampant speculation.
This is
what I'd try in design of a robotic brain to switch on and off
consciousness and
test for its presence: First, I'd give the robot brain modules to
interpret its
sensory inputs in an associative manner analogous to human sensory
associative
regions. All these sensory inputs would feed into the decision-making
module
(DMM). One of the first steps taken by the DMM is determining how
important each
sensory signal is for its current objectives. It decides to pay attention
to a
subset of those signals.
So is it conscious of those signals? How does it decide?
1: As described in the next two sentences of the original paragraph, no.
2: The choice of function used to select the subset is unimportant to the experiment,
but if we were aiming for biomimicry then each sensory module would report a degree of
stimulation, and attention function would block all signals but the most stimulated 1 to 7.
Second, I'd put a switch on another input to make it part of the attention
subset
or not:
What other input would you put a switch on? What inputs are there besides sensory?
I think you've assumed "conscious" = "self aware". Is one conscious when one is
"lost in thought"?
1: The switch would go on the signals described in the second half of the sentence that
you hastily cut in half. :D
2: Inputs besides sensory associations are important to a functioning robot but not, I
predict, to a robot designed only to test for consciousness.
3: I chose to address the specific matter of qualia rather than all of what people mean
by "conscious", as described in the "I predict this because..." sentence of the original
paragraph. :D
4: I suspect that the human experience of being lost in thought differs between specific
cases. Most times for me that I'd call "lost in thought" I can still operate (drive,
walk, eat) on "auto-pilot" which undoubtedly requires my senses to be engaged, but
afterwards the only things I can recall experiencing are the thoughts I was lost in.
Introspective evidence and memory being as bad as they are, that shouldn't be taken as a
necessarily correct description. But if it is a correct description, then by my
definitions in the original paragraph, I'd say that I was conscious. But if what you
mean by "conscious" includes awareness of surroundings, then no, I was not conscious
under that definition.
Yes, it seems there are different levels and kinds of consciousness: perception of the
external world, perception of one's body, modeling one's place in the external world,
being aware of one's thoughts (although I think this is over rated), feelings of empathy,...
the attention's choice of signals would also an input to the DMM, and I
could turn
on or off whether that attentional choice was itself let pass through to
the next
processing stages. I would predict that, with the switch turned off, the
robot
would be not conscious (i.e. it would have no experience of qualia), but
that with
the switch turned on, the robot would be conscious (i.e. it would
experience qualia
corresponding to the signals it is paying attention to). I predict this
because it
seems to me that the experience of qualia can be described as being
simultaneously
aware of a sensory datum and (recursively) aware of being aware of it. If
the
robot AI was sufficiently advanced that we could program it to talk about
its
experiences, the test of my prediction would be that, with the switch off,
the
robot would talk about what it sees and hears, and that with the switch on,
the
robot would also talk about fact that it knew it was seeing and hearing
things.
So is a Mars Rover conscious because it processes video from it's camera to
send to
JPL, AND it senses that its camera is powered and working and that its
transmitter
is working AND it reports those internal status variables to JPL too.
If there are two separate inputs to the transmitter, "the video feed" and "the camera is
functional", then this does not satisfy the relationship I described and consequently I
would predict no consciousness (of the video feed by the Mars Rover). However, that
should be possible to change. The Mars Rover is, I think, semi-autonomous, meaning it
is programmed to make certain decisions on its own. I'll suppose a scenario in which
JPL instructs the Rover to advance toward a nifty-looking rock, but leaves the details
of that operation to the Rover's programming. Then the Rover examines the video feed,
identifies the pertinent rock in the video feed, and advances toward it. As it does so,
it uses the video feed and the part of the video image identified as rock to continually
recalculate and adjust which part of the video feed it is identifying as the rock. That
scenario matches the one I described previously so I would predict that the Rover would
then be conscious (of the rock).
I think that's the way it works, and it is also aware of a lot of parameters describing
itself, e.g. its position on the surface, temperature of modules, power supply voltages
and currents,...which one could equate to a feeling of health.
The Rover would still not be self-conscious (i.e. conscious of its self) in that
scenario. If we wanted to build that kind of consciousness, then I predict we'd need a
different set-up. A robot programmed to move so as to prevent anything from touching
its robot body would need to be given a definition of what counts as its body. Then I
think it would count as self-conscious. However, if you want something still deeper,
like psychological self-consciousness (i.e. consciousness of its own psychological
state), then you might have to build a robot and program it using quining or something
like that -- I'm not sure, as this ventures far enough into AI math that I know my
intuitions are a very bad guide.
That's where Bruno would invoke the ability to prove that not all true statements are
provable.
Brent
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