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Some would - But that is not the main point.

The companionsion aspect - the friend/lover, whatever, that is really a friend - the machine you can trust
instead of the Human you can't. ...

It doesn't take a substantial AI to handle voice commands within a well-circumscribed operational domain.

It would require an AI exceeding current practical capabilities to:

- 'Hear' you (with understanding) rather than just 'listen to' you (within a strictly circumscribed semantic context);

- 'Learn' by incorporating your ongoing inputs into its virtual 'mental model' of who you are; and thereby ...

- 'Know' you so as to predict, suggest, etc., based on specific 'knowledge' of you as an individual.
 
It doesn't take a substantial AI to handle voice commands within a well-circumscribed operational domain.

It would require an AI exceeding current practical capabilities to:

- 'Hear' you (with understanding) rather than just 'listen to' you (within a strictly circumscribed semantic context);

- 'Learn' by incorporating your ongoing inputs into its virtual 'mental model' of who you are; and thereby ...

- 'Know' you so as to predict, suggest, etc., based on specific 'knowledge' of you as an individual.

TRUE - But never say never..........

I did some research a few years ago and came across at least one symposium where they discussed
the issue of 'Hard AI' - I believe that means truly conscious computers.

Well, you're the guru here - What's going on - Have they given up ?

Is Star Trek's 'Data' the superhuman android possible or not ?

And if possible - when - 10 years, 50 years, when ?
 
TRUE - But never say never..........
I did some research a few years ago and came across at least one symposium where they discussed
the issue of 'Hard AI' - I believe that means truly conscious computers.

Sorry for the delay in answering ... I've been tied up with coming on board as the newest FTMB moderator.

Let's back up and review some of the problems underlying any discussion of 'artificial intelligence (AI)'. The first problem is simply sorting out the terminology.

There are multiple meanings for 'AI' - some formally defined, and others no more than naive pop jargon. Here's a list of some major versions I've known in my experience ...:

(1) A recognized R&D field of endeavor.

(2) A potpourri of topical areas (e.g., decision making; NLP) some, if not all, AI researchers presume are central or closely corollary to AI's objective.

(3) A technical / engineering field aimed at improving the sophistication of info tech (IT) systems and / or applications in the service of aiding us humans in ever more complex tasks.

(4) A system or application developed under version (3), which need not be autonomous in terms of control or actions.

(5) A testbed for concepts or theories addressed in trying to understand human intelligence (e.g., in cognitive science research).

(6) A narrowly defined prototype or system serving as such a testbed or a demonstration relating to issues of human intelligence.

(7) A murky field drawing on diverse other disciplines (beyond the tech / engineering stuff) to address the issue of emulating human intelligence by artificial means.

(8) A primarily tech / engineering field as in (3) that aspires to go beyond adding 'intelligent' capabilities to tech devices / systems toward the more general goal of emulating / generating 'intelligence' in the most general sense.

(9) A system, application, or artifact that operates with such general 'intelligence', regardless of operational autonomy (i.e., a product of (8)).

(10) A variant of (8) that emphasizes operational autonomy rather than 'intelligence' in its objectives (e.g., in robotics applications).

(11) A system, application, or artifact that operates autonomously and with adequately 'intelligent' capacities, regardless of its capacity for general 'intelligence' (i.e., a product of (10)).

(I'll stop there ... )

I haven't heard anyone use the term 'hard AI' since the 1990's. I suspect you're referring to 'strong AI', which at last notice denoted an orientation most consistent with items / definitions (8), (9), and (11) above (IMHO)

Does that solve anything? No ... The bad news is that there are multiple spins on what 'strong AI' covers and what constitutes a demonstration of such 'strong AI'.
 
There's an even bigger problem involving terminology ...

The AI community likes to throw around some very important, but elusive, terminology from outside the tech / engineering realm, such as:

- intelligence
- cognition
- consciousness
- self-awareness

... and more.

These are big concepts with big implications. Unfortunately, over 2000 years of contemplating them has not yielded any coherent definition for what they are, much less any coherent explanation for how they work, much less a solid basis for claiming they're exhibited by any AI system or app.

Pushing the pessimistic interpretation of these messes to the max:

Problem #1: AI proponents can't give a consistent / coherent / specific description of who they are, what they're aspiring to do, or what their measures of merit may be.

Problem #2: AI proponents wow the rubes by claiming they're pursuing the big issues of human nature, even though clearly describing those issues is currently as futile as trying to nail fog to the wall.

And as if that weren't bad enough ...

Problem #3: None of this is new ... AI has been oversold, under-specified, etc., in repeating cycles of boom and bust since the 1950's.
 
Does that solve anything? No ... The bad news is that there are multiple spins on what 'strong AI' covers and what constitutes a demonstration of such 'strong AI'.
Thank you for you illustrative descriptions from a sci-tech viewpoint - I have nothing to argue with.

But what I do sometimes debate is the very concept of 'Artificial intelligence' itself - As if to imply that
machine/computer 'intelligence' is a form of intelligence that is alien from Human/biological intelligence
just becuase it is being manifest and used through non biological means.
- Of course in some ways it is different - But what I wonder is if it is that different? - Is the apparently
intelligent output of the machine a different intelligence than the biological intelligence at is source
- Or, is all intelligence similar regardless of source?

For example, If in the future, as we go out into deep space, we were to come across intelligent entities
that were totally non biological, and at first appeared to be AI like in nature - would we automatically
discriminate against them? - Or can this apparently artificial life form be accepted as part of a universe
composed of, if nothing else, intelligence, whatever its origin or manifestation.



"Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change".
--Stephen Hawking

"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination".
--Albert Einstein
 
... But what I do sometimes debate is the very concept of 'Artificial intelligence' itself - As if to imply that machine/computer 'intelligence' is a form of intelligence that is alien from Human/biological intelligence just becuase it is being manifest and used through non biological means. ...

There's no sense to be obtained in such a debate until and unless you specify what you mean by 'intelligence'. The main thing 'intelligence' and 'AI' have in common is a single word and a lack of clarity on WTF that word means.

'Intelligence' is not a thing; it's a quality or characteristic attributed to something that behaves in a certain way or produces certain outcomes. In this respect it's similar to (e.g.) 'charm' or 'grace'. How much sense does it make to speak of 'artificial charm' or 'artificial grace'?

Comparing and contrasting 'natural' versus 'artificial' versions of 'intelligence' without a baseline specification for 'intelligence' is ultimately as foolish as trying to perform a high wire act without the benefit of the cable.
 
[QUOTE="AlienView, post: 1777669, member: 54060" ...
"Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change". --Stephen Hawking
"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination". --Albert Einstein
[/QUOTE]

I have enormous respect for both these figures, and I see wisdom in both these quotations.

Having said that ...

(1) Let's be frank ... Both quotes represent statements from celebrities about matters well outside the realm in which they earned their celebrity status in the first place.

(2) Both these figures earned their celebrity status within physics - the paradigmatic 'hard' science.

(3) Physics specifically, and the physical sciences generally, are as appropriate and authoritative a means for understanding 'intelligence' as (e.g.) psychiatry is for understanding atomic structure.
 
Comparing and contrasting 'natural' versus 'artificial' versions of 'intelligence' without a baseline specification for 'intelligence' is ultimately as foolish as trying to perform a high wire act without the benefit of the cable.

I agree - I've been on a philosophy forum debating a post on whether a Man-made computer can become
conscious - A post that has gone on for almost 10 years and where there in no agreement as exactly what
it means to be conscious - Similar to what does it mean to be intelligent.?

I do not think a universal definition of either consciousness or intelligence exists.

But the AI subject is 'now' and interesting - so we do the best we can.

I'm a futurist sci-fi dreamer so I can see the day when the machine will start giving answers
and can tell us what it means to be intelligent and conscious - 'The Oracle of the Future'

"
The Last Question"

""The Last Question" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It first appeared in the November 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly..........

In conceiving Multivac, Asimov was extrapolating the trend towards centralization that characterized computation technology planning in the 1950s to an ultimate centrally managed global computer. After seeing a planetariumadaptation of his work, Asimov "privately" concluded that this story was his best science fiction yet written;..........

Plot summary[edit]
The story deals with the development of a series of computers called Multivac and their relationships with humanity through the courses of seven historic settings, beginning in 2061. In each of the first six scenes a different character presents the computer with the same question; namely, how the threat to human existence posed by the heat death of the universe can be averted. The question was: "How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?" This is equivalent to asking: "Can the workings of the second law of thermodynamics (used in the story as the increase of the entropy of the universe) be reversed?" Multivac's only response after much "thinking" is: "INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER."..........

In the last scene, the god-like descendant of humanity (the unified mental process of over a trillion, trillion, trillion humans that have spread throughout the universe) watches the stars flicker out, one by one, as matter and energy ends, and with it, space and time. Humanity asks AC, Multivac's ultimate descendant, which exists in hyperspace beyond the bounds of gravity or time, the entropy question one last time, before the last of humanity merges with AC and disappears. AC is still unable to answer, but continues to ponder the question even after space and time cease to exist. AC ultimately realizes that it has not yet combined all of its available data in every possible combination, and thus begins the arduous process of rearranging and combining every last bit of information it has gained throughout the eons and through its fusion with humanity. Eventually AC discovers the answer, but has nobody to report it to; the universe is already dead. It therefore decides to answer by demonstration, since that will also create someone to give the answer to. The story ends with AC's pronouncement,

And AC said: "LET THERE BE LIGHT!" And there was light--[6]

Quote source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question



 
(1) Let's be frank ... Both quotes represent statements from celebrities about matters well outside the realm in which they earned their celebrity status in the first place.

(2) Both these figures earned their celebrity status within physics - the paradigmatic 'hard' science.

(3) Physics specifically, and the physical sciences generally, are as appropriate and authoritative a means for understanding 'intelligence' as (e.g.) psychiatry is for understanding atomic structure.

But here we are in today's world where a theory in physics I read recently said 'the observer effect' is
far more important than at first realized - in fact the implication was that without an observer it
does not exist - makes sense does it not? - To me it does.

What I'm getting at is the division between scientific disciplines shold not be drawn with hard boundaries
- there might even be some psychology in the most rigorous of sciences.

And some of the philosophical statements of some scientists are, if nothing else fascinalting.

lately my favorie is Max Planck {Nobel Prize Qunatum Mechanics}

For example:

"All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force... We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter".
--Max Planck
 
I agree - I've been on a philosophy forum debating a post on whether a Man-made computer can become conscious - A post that has gone on for almost 10 years and where there in no agreement as exactly what it means to be conscious - Similar to what does it mean to be intelligent.?

Yes - that's a good illustration of the main problem I described earlier. I've been party to such long-running debates. Although they're good clean cerebral fun, I've never known them to yield any useful clues or tips.


I do not think a universal definition of either consciousness or intelligence exists.

I can assure you that impression is correct.

But there's an important point to make with respect to your allusion to 'universal' ...

There is no demonstrably leverage-able definition for either consciousness or intelligence in any specific case to date. There can be no definition for the 'universal' case unless it encompasses the specific cases.

Yes - I'm familiar with Asimov's 'The Last Question'. It was one of my favorite SF short stories when I was a teen a half-century ago. If you like that sort of theme, you might also like Zelazny's 'For a Breath I Tarry'.
 
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Yes - I'm familiar with Asimov's 'The Last Question'. It was one of my favorite SF short stories when I was a teen a half-century ago. If you like that sort of theme, you might also like Zelazny's 'For a Breath I Tarry'.
Makes you about my age in years - I use sci-fi to try to turn back the clock!

Back then a friend of mine who graduated class valedictorian in a class of 400 loaned me his sci-fi book
collection and I read them all - Actually beat my friend one time playing chess - he never wanted to play
me again - I was in the upper 10% no where near his rank.

Back to the story you mention Zelazny's 'For a Breath I Tarry' {is it available online?}

I quote from a wikipedia article:

"Along the way, the story explores the differences between Man and Machine, the former experiencing the world qualitatively, while the latter do so quantitatively. "A machine is a Man turned inside-out, because it can describe all the details of a process, which a Man cannot, but it cannot experience that process itself as a Man can."

Of course it can not experience 'as a Human' - It's not Human

"but it cannot experience that process itself " - Why not?

We are already at a point where receptive processes of Human cognition {ie. sight, sound, smell, etc.}
can be received electro mechanically - What law of nature says that an electro-mechanical machine can
not have 'a form of sentience', correlate the data in a cenrtral 'mind', have a 'self' that is aware of what
it is perceiving, and finally act for 'its own benefit?

What law of science and nature prevents this machine from being both conscious and intelligent
in the relative sense that we see and understand consciousness and intelligence?


Of course you have some of today's big whigs {ie. Elon Musk, the late Stephen Hawking,
Bill Gates, etc.} warning us of the dangers of AI - But isn't this like warning monkeys that
they will soon be outdone by a less hairy and more intelligent Human? - Evolution has a very amoral quality to it
- If the next step is a more efficient and longer lasting machine like being - Its probably
already too late to stop it - Evolution may still have a meaning, and biological life may not
necessarily be its ultimate definer.

 
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... Back to the story you mention Zelazny's 'For a Breath I Tarry' {is it available online?} ...

There are links one can readily locate to alleged full text copies of the story, but ...

(1) I cannot vouch for their accuracy or completeness.
(2) I cannot vouch for the sites one has to access to download them.
 
... We are already at a point where receptive processes of Human cognition {ie. sight, sound, smell, etc.} can be received electro mechanically - What law of nature says that an electro-mechanical machine can not have 'a form of sentience', correlate the data in a cenrtral 'mind', have a 'self' that is aware of what it is perceiving, and finally act for 'its own benefit? ...

(1) 'Sentience' - there's another as-yet-ill-defined term to add to the list above. Same goes for 'sapience' as well ...

(2) Sensation / sensory perception and cognition are not the same thing.

(3) The human cognitive correlates / results of sensory perception are not 'received' - they are constructed in response to the stimuli from the sensory interfaces.

(4) The allusion to correlating data is no more than metaphorical, and it's useful only to the extent one accepts an information-procesing model for human cognition that offers no reliable leverage on 'real-world' instances, no basis for explaining the really 'hard problems', and has generally been discarded since its heyday 30+ years ago.

(5) You can add 'self' to the list of tricky and unfocused terminology.
 
(5) You can add 'self' to the list of tricky and unfocused terminology.
That said - What do you think of this:

"Mind Uploading"

"Whole brain emulation (WBE), mind upload or brain upload (sometimes called "mind copying" or "mind transfer") is the hypothetical futuristic process of scanning the mental state (including long-term memory and "self") of a particular brain substrate and copying it to a computer. The computer could then run a simulation model of the brain's information processing, such that it responds in essentially the same way as the original brain (i.e., indistinguishable from the brain for all relevant purposes) and experiences having a conscious mind.[1][2][3]

Mind uploading may potentially be accomplished by either of two methods: Copy-and-transfer or gradual replacement of neurons. In the case of the former method, mind uploading would be achieved by scanning and mapping the salient features of a biological brain, and then by copying, transferring, and storing that information state into a computer system or another computational device. The simulated mind could be within a virtual reality or simulated world, supported by an anatomic 3D body simulation model. Alternatively the simulated mind could reside in a computer that is inside (or connected to) a (not necessarily humanoid) robot or a biological body in real life.[4]............."

Quote source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading

Possible, not necessarily today, in the future?


And yes, often ambiguous and hard to define with scientific exactness
- But consciousness, intelligence, sentience and self can not be dismissed

One day in the not so distant future, a court of law will be asked to determine whether
the entity in front of it is aware in a Human sense
In my opinion Courts not science will determine
what a 'Human sense" is - Assuming the machines have not already taken over!


"Google computer wins final game against S. Korean GO master"

"
A Google-developed computer programme had the last word Tuesday in its machine vs human challenge with South Korean Go grandmaster Lee Se-Dol, winning the final game for a sweeping 4-1 series victory.

The win was vindication for AlphaGo's creators, DeepMind, who had touted the programme as a new form of artificial intelligence (AI) capable of "intuitive" thought and with wide-ranging real-world applications......."


Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2016-03-google-game-korean-master.html#jCp
 
Mind uploading may potentially be accomplished by either of two methods: Copy-and-transfer or gradual replacement of neurons. In the case of the former method, mind uploading would be achieved by scanning and mapping the salient features of a biological brain, and then by copying, transferring, and storing that information state into a computer system or another computational device. The simulated mind could be within a virtual reality or simulated world, supported by an anatomic 3D body simulation model. Alternatively the simulated mind could reside in a computer that is inside (or connected to) a (not necessarily humanoid) robot or a biological body in real life.[4]............."
This sounds persuasive, but we still don't really understand how and where the brain stores information.

For example memory can be broken down into explicit (semantic, episodic) and intrinsic and while there was a long period where neurology/psychology believed intrinsic and explicit memories were located in different place (a theory that is gradually being unpicked), we're not very close to understanding exactly how things are coded, recalled, stored or even what bits of the brain are responsible for what bits of recall and how.

The idea you can put on a hair-net of electrodes and upload the data is, currently, a sci-fi dream. Granted you can associate a mass of signals, appropriately processed (using filtering, FFTs, and so on), with 'a thought' or 'an idea' but that's not the same thing as uploading a brain, or indeed its full contents, to create a working copy.

And that's before you separate 'cognitive' processes and data storage from 'social behaviour' that forms a large proportion of our daily interactions.
 
That said - What do you think of this:
"Mind Uploading"

Well, since you asked ...

As a literary trope it's a cool notion.
As a feasible procedure obtainable by technical means it's BS of the highest and most dangerous order.

There's an old gag that was common decades ago, of the form:

A: Shall we brainwash him / her?
B: Tell you what ... You find the brain, and I'll wash it!

In this context - show me the 'mind', and I'll record what I make of it via some structured means / motif I'm capable of employing as a recording matrix.

It's both futile and potentially dangerous to talk about copying or uploading X until and unless you know what you're copying / uploading.

Add 'mind' to the list of terms thrown about by folks who don't know / understand what they're talking about.

Isn't the silhouette of the really central problem coming into focus yet?
 
"Whole brain emulation (WBE), mind upload or brain upload (sometimes called "mind copying" or "mind transfer") is the hypothetical futuristic process of scanning the mental state (including long-term memory and "self") of a particular brain substrate and copying it to a computer. ...

This approach is based on the fallacious assumption that 'mind' = overall brain state, down to the tiniest details / highest resolution.

More specifically ... The fulcrum upon which this baldfaced legerdemain pivots is blatantly obvious in the passage above - i.e., the implicit claims that:

- 'memory' is a facet of 'mental state';
- 'self' is a facet of 'mental state'; and finally / worst ...
- 'mental state' is either wholly construable as, isomorphic with, and / or completely specifiable by translation from the instantaneous / momentary physical state of the brain at the time it's scanned.
 
This sounds persuasive, but we still don't really understand how and where the brain stores information.
Doesn't matter - Remember no one is suggesting a re-creation of a 'biological' brain.

We are talking about a digital facsimile - It will not work exactly the same, that should be obvious
- But can it approximate a biological brain? We already know when it comes to calculations it can not only
approximate the biological brain but in fact can far exceed it .

I'm not yet convinced, persuasive as some of your arguments have been, that a digital facsimile of both
intelligence or consciousness {sorry can't escape those words} is not possible.

The reason, I believe, so many people are naysayers, is that they can not imagine what it would 'feel' like
to think in, and as, a digital matrix.

Who knows? - I guarantee it will be interesting! - And bet it will happen - even if it takes some very
creative coding to make it so.
 
I'm not yet convinced, persuasive as some of your arguments have been, that a digital facsimile of both
intelligence or consciousness {sorry can't escape those words} is not possible.
I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm saying that we don't know how the brain works in any real physical sense and also that many of the inputs to the brain are social interpretations of cognitive data modified by hormonal interactions and/or experience. So mimicking a person's brain is not a just data upload or a 'bit of coding'.

So we're a long long way from it happening, as we don't fully understand any of the constituent parts or behaviours.
 
... I'm not yet convinced, persuasive as some of your arguments have been, that a digital facsimile of both intelligence or consciousness {sorry can't escape those words} is not possible. ...

Humans' innate capacities for both 'consciousness' and self-controlled actions to which 'intelligence' may be attributed are grounded in:

(a) the structural and operational affordances of a physical substrate,
(b) the analog processes that substrate can support, and
(c) causal / operational circularities of self-reference and self-organization

... that digital machines cannot reliably or precisely imitate, much less match.

In particular, digital machines are incapable of supporting factor (c) by definition. They're defined / configured so as to exclude such intrinsically recursive operations as pathological and catastrophic to execution.

These are the key reasons AI research began shifting from a purely digital / representationalist approach to one based on neural networks circa 30 years ago.

I don't know how many years it will take for the neural nabobs to run into the same sort of wall the more perceptive Simonean representationalists realized they'd hit 3 decades ago, but I'm confident they are destined to run into it.
 
I see your points - So I'll call in an outside expert to help my case:

MIT Technology Review

"The World's best known consciousness researcher says machines could one day become self aware"



"Is a worm conscious? How about a bumblebee? Does a computer that can play chess “feel” anything?

To Christof Koch, chief scientific officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, the answer to these questions may lie in the fabric of the universe itself. Consciousness, he believes, is an intrinsic property of matter, just like mass or energy. Organize matter in just the right way, as in the mammalian brain, and voilà, you can feel.

So you think a computer can be conscious?

I gave a lecture [last week] at MIT about Integrated Information Theory, developed by Giulio Tononi at the University of Wisconsin. This is a theory that makes a very clear prediction: it says that consciousness is a property of complex systems that have a particular “cause-effect” repertoire. They have a particular way of interacting with the world, such as the brain does, or in principle, such as a computer could. If you were to build a computer that has the same circuitry as the brain, this computer would also have consciousness associated with it. It would feel like something to be this computer. However, the same is not true for digital simulations.

If I build a perfect software model of the brain, it would never be conscious, but a specially designed machine that mimics the brain could be?

Correct........


I am not saying consciousness is a magic soul. It is something physical. Consciousness is always supervening onto the physical. But it takes a particular type of hardware to instantiate it. A computer made up of transistors, moving charge on and off a gate, with each gate being connected to a small number of other gates, is just a very different cause-and-effect structure than what we have in the brain, where you have one neuron connected to 10,000 input neurons and projecting to 10,000 other neurons. But if you were to build the computer in the appropriate way, like a neuromorphic computer [see “Thinking in Silicon”], it could be conscious."

See whole article here:
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/531146/what-it-will-take-for-computers-to-be-conscious/



=============================================================

Also:

"Minds Everywhere: Panpsychism Takes Hold in Science"

"SAN FRANCISCO — Are humans living in a simulation? Is consciousness nothing more than the firing of neurons in the brain? Or is consciousness a distinct entity that permeates every speck of matter in the universe?.........

"The answer to the question "what is consciousness" could have implications for the future of artificial intelligence (AI) and far-out concepts like mind uploading and virtual immortality, said Robert Lawrence Kuhn, the creator, writer and host of "Closer to Truth." [Superintelligent Machines: 7 Robotic Futures]'

Materialism to panpsychism

"Philosophers have put forward many notions of consciousness. The materialist notion holds that consciousness can be fully explained by the the firing of neurons in the human brain, while mind-body dualism argues that the soul or mind is distinct from, and can potentially outlive, the body. Under the notion of panpsychism, a kind of re-boot of ancient animistic ideas, every speck of matter has a kind of proto-consciousness. When aggregated in particular ways, all this proto-consciousness turns into a sense of inner awareness. And other, Eastern philosophies have held that consciousness is the only real thing in the universe, Kuhn said.

Neuroscientists and many philosophers have typically planted themselves firmly on the materialist side. But a growing number of scientists now believe that materialism cannot wholly explain the sense of "I am" that undergirds consciousness, Kuhn told the audience.

One of those scientists is Christof Koch, the president and chief scientific officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. At the event, he described a relatively recent formulation of consciousness called the integrated information theory. The idea, put forward by University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist and psychiatrist Giulio Tononi, argues that consciousness resides in an as-yet-unknown space in the universe.

Integrated information theory measures consciousness by a metric, called phi, which essentially translates to how much power over itself a being or object has.

"If a system has causal power upon itself, like the brain does, then it feels like something. If you have a lot of causal power upon yourself, then it feels like a lot to be you," Koch said.........


To create truly conscious AI, researchers may need to develop technologies that can act upon themselves, perhaps more akin to neuromorphic computers, Koch said. (Such computers would operate without any pre-programmed code, instead somehow sensing and reacting to changes in their own physical states.)........"

See whole article here:
https://www.livescience.com/53791-what-is-consciousness.html





"“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
Max Planck


"“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
Max Planck
 
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I see your points - So I'll call in an outside expert to help my case: ...

What case? :dunno:

As to the description of Koch's presentation ...

It's entirely consistent with the 3 points I listed in my last post.
It insinuates a consistency with embodiment / enaction (on the right track; last 3 decades).
It emphasizes self-reference and self-organization (second-order cybernetics; up to 50 years ago)

... With extra added mumbo-jumbo concerning 'consciousness' being an intrinsic property of the universe.
 
Imagine the potential for conspiracy hoaxers and fake-news generators. Rival politicians will be "caught" in sex scandals and meeting with criminals. If the Trump pee tape didn't exist, it soon will. Obama spotted praying in a mosque. The kind of people who believe the rumours and faked photos will lap up faked videos.
You'll find this 3 day old video report from The Wall Street Journal interesting then ..

 
A reply to Swifty:

Of course a faked image requires some effort - and is yet to be perfected.

How much easier it is to fake say an internet blogger
- How do you know for sure that someone posting say on this forum is always who he appears to be?

What if I told you that three posters on Fortean Times are not who they started out to be?

One gave his identity to someone else {Human}

Another is working on a top secret test program for a computer company and all of his posts
for the last 8 months, including responses, are posted by an AI program.

The third person is a clone - So some would debate whether that constitutes a new person.

I am an alien from another dimension posting here to learn what makes humans tick.

Of course you don't believe any of this, do you?
- Then again why should I believe you are just an ordinary egghead trying to appear intelligent?

You can not, through the current medium, prove you are a biological Human
posting on a forum.

ESPECIALLY SINCE EVERYTHING ON THIS FORUM IS BEING POSTED
COURTESY OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE!

So don't let the so-called 'real world' bother you - In Today's world it hangs on very tenuous thread
-And its actual location might as well be called 'OZ'
 
A reply to Swifty:

Of course a faked image requires some effort - and is yet to be perfected.

How much easier it is to fake say an internet blogger
- How do you know for sure that someone posting say on this forum is always who he appears to be?

What if I told you that three posters on Fortean Times are not who they started out to be?

One gave his identity to someone else {Human}

Another is working on a top secret test program for a computer company and all of his posts
for the last 8 months, including responses, are posted by an AI program.

The third person is a clone - So some would debate whether that constitutes a new person.

I am an alien from another dimension posting here to learn what makes humans tick.

Of course you don't believe any of this, do you?
- Then again why should I believe you are just an ordinary egghead trying to appear intelligent?

You can not, through the current medium, prove you are a biological Human
posting on a forum.

ESPECIALLY SINCE EVERYTHING ON THIS FORUM IS BEING POSTED
COURTESY OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE!

So don't let the so-called 'real world' bother you - In Today's world it hangs on very tenuous thread
-And its actual location might as well be called 'OZ'
So are you suggesting Bigpoot didn't take this picture of me? .. Phooty doesn't tell lies ..

airplaneswift.jpg
 
..
ESPECIALLY SINCE EVERYTHING ON THIS FORUM IS BEING POSTED
COURTESY OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE!.
.

The apparent intelligence of some of the posters varies from quite low to quite high. Seems to depend on the mood they are in.

But I would like to see your proof that any of them are artificial.

INT21
 
P,s,
I'm sure I've seen the one on the right during a Jet2 flight. He was being forcibly restrained by other cabin crew.

INT21
 
..
ESPECIALLY SINCE EVERYTHING ON THIS FORUM IS BEING POSTED
COURTESY OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE!.
.

The apparent intelligence of some of the posters varies from quite low to quite high. Seems to depend on the mood they are in.

But I would like to see your proof that any of them are artificial.

INT21

OK - Good question - But first you will have to prove to me that anyone on this forum is real!!!

For all I know I may have stumbled upon a Dr. Who nightmare world run by alien clones
who only appear to post as humans - For all I know the whole forum may really be an advanced
AI program emanating from a quantum computer from the future
- Which is OK, just come right out and admit it!
 
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