Is an AI alive?
Interview with
Indeed, AI has clearly come on leaps and bounds. And it’s raised another question: is it able to think and act like we do? Last summer, Google fired an engineer who claimed that one of the company’s AI systems had “become sentient”, and the human-like qualities of AI has sparked debate between groups as diverse as computer scientists, philosophers, cognitive scientists and even Buddhist monks. Nicky Clayton, professor of comparative cognition at the University of Cambridge, told Chris Smith about a recent summit on the topic in Nepal…
Nicky - Well, I was in Katmandu at a wonderful conference on how to study and understand non-human consciousness and by non-human they meant both animals and artificial intelligence.
Chris - And who was at the conference?
Nicky - Well, the usual suspects, neuroscientists and philosophers and psychologists as you would expect and computer scientists, but with an interesting and important twist, a lot of Buddhist monks.
Chris - Why were they there? Apart from the fact it's Nepal, which is next door to where they're from.
Nicky - I suppose it was to explore big picture questions about consciousness, for Buddhists assume that all animals not just humans are conscious and they found it very hard to imagine that a machine might have consciousness. And I agree, it's one thing to say that a machine can do all kinds of amazing things that it's programmed to do and outsmart people at the game of chess, for example, but that they could actually reflect on their thoughts, reminisce about the past, imagine the future, and strategise: when is option one better than option 37. I find that hard to imagine. So I guess I'm on the side of the Buddhist monks on this one.
Chris - Did the computer scientists disagree with you, then? Do they think their machines are alive or was everyone of like mind?
Nicky - Not everyone was of like mind, but many of the computer scientists also agree that machines can do a lot because of how they're preprogrammed. These language models are very persuasive about some of the things that the machines can learn so quickly. But most people, I think, were not convinced that machines have consciousness.
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AI consciousness
It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461
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