Re Nature of Consciousness

Big issue for future and how we treat and make safe what we build and use.   Good piece.

What Is the Nature of Consciousness?    In QuantaMagazine

Consciousness, our experience of being in the world, is one of the mind’s greatest mysteries, but as the neuroscientist Anil Seth explains to Steven Strogatz, research is making progress in understanding this elusive phenomenon.

By Steven Strogatz   Podcast Host  .... ' 

Neuroscience has made progress in deciphering how our brains think and perceive our surroundings, but a central feature of cognition is still deeply mysterious: namely, that many of our perceptions and thoughts are accompanied by the subjective experience of having them. Consciousness, the name we give to that experience, can’t yet be explained — but science is at least beginning to understand it. In this episode, the consciousness researcher Anil Seth and host Steven Strogatz discuss why our perceptions can be described as a “controlled hallucination,” how consciousness played into the internet sensation known as “the dress,” and how people at home can help researchers catalog the full range of ways that we experience the world .... ' 

'Consciousness' in Robots Was Once Taboo. Now It's the Last Word

As we get closer, how scary might it get?   Regulation needed,  varying by use context.  

'Consciousness' in Robots Was Once Taboo. Now It's the Last Word

The New York Times

Oliver Whang, January 6, 2023

The concept of artificial consciousness has evolved from an unmentionable word to the premiere focus of the robotics community, as experts like Columbia University's Hod Lipson aim to create conscious robots. The first challenge is defining what consciousness is. Lipson and Duke University's Boyuan Chen have created a self-aware two-jointed arm fixed to a table, which used cameras to observe itself as it moved, and learned to distinguish itself via a deep learning algorithm and a probability model. The University of California, Riverside's Eric Schwitzgeber said a lack of certainty about what consciousness is could present difficulties if an apparently conscious robot can be created. ... '

Does Consciousness Change the Rules of Quantum Mechanics?

 Hmm... 

Does consciousness change the rules of quantum mechanics?

Maybe our understanding of quantum entanglement is incomplete, or maybe there is something fundamentally unique about consciousness.

In the past few years, scientists have shown that macroscopic objects can be subjected to quantum entanglement. Pondering the limits of quantum entanglement allows us to consider how quantum mechanics can be unified with physics on a larger scale. There might be something unique about our role as conscious observers of the world around us.

Elizabeth Fernandez

Copy a link to the article entitled 

This is the fourth article in a four-part series on quantum entanglement. In the first, we discussed the basics of quantum entanglement. We then discussed how quantum entanglement can be used practically in communications and sensing. In this article, we take a look at the limits of quantum entanglement, and how entanglement on the large scale might even challenge our very basis of reality.

We can all agree that quantum entanglement is weird. We don’t worry too much about it, though, beyond some of its more practical applications. After all, the phenomenon plays out on scales that are vastly smaller than our everyday experiences. But perhaps quantum mechanics and entanglement are not limited to the ultra-small. Scientists have shown that macroscopic (albeit small) objects can be placed in entanglement. It begs the question: Is there a size limit for quantum entanglement? Carrying the idea further, could a person become entangled, along with their consciousness? 

Asking these questions not only lets us probe the limits of quantum mechanics, but it could also lead us to a unified theory of physics — one that works equally well for anything from electrons to planets. ... ' 

New Brain Models

 Alternative, competitive models are always good.

A New Brain Model Could Pave the Way for Conscious AI

A new model of the human brain.

A new study presents a new neurocomputational model of the human brain, which might shed light on how the brain develops complex cognitive skills and advance neural artificial intelligence research. An international team of scientists from the Institut Pasteur and Sorbonne University in Paris, the CHU Sainte-Justine, Mila – Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, and the University of Montreal conducted the study.

Guillaume Dumas

The model, which was featured on the cover of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), describes neural development over three hierarchical levels of information processing:

the first sensorimotor level explores how the brain’s inner activity learns patterns from perception and associates them with action;

the cognitive level examines how the brain contextually combines those patterns;

lastly, the conscious level considers how the brain dissociates from the outside world and manipulates learned patterns (via memory) no longer accessible to perception.

The model’s emphasis on the interaction between two fundamental types of learning—Hebbian learning, associated with statistical regularity (i.e., repetition), or as neuropsychologist Donald Hebb has put it, “neurons that fire together, wire together”—and reinforcement learning, associated with reward and the dopamine neurotransmitter, provides insights into the fundamental mechanisms underlying cognition.

The model solves three tasks of increasing complexity across those levels, from visual recognition to cognitive manipulation of conscious percepts. Each time, the team introduced a new core mechanism to enable it to progress.  ..'  

Channeling the Inner Voice of Robots

Like consciousness or a cognitive infrastructure that feeds into our decisions and broad behavior like a consciousness?     If it produces better measure of decisions, why not.   Consciosness, inner voice 

Channeling the Inner Voice of Robots  By Samuel Greengard, Commissioned by CACM Staff, June 29, 2021

Philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists have long studied how and why humans talk to themselves as they navigate tasks, manage decisions, and solve problems. "Inner speech is the silent conversation that most healthy human beings have with themselves," says Alain Morin, a professor in the Department of Psychology at Mount Royal University in Alberta, Canada.

Now, as robotics marches forward and devices increasingly rely on a combination of machine learning and conventional programming to navigate the physical world, researchers are exploring ways to imbue machines with an inner voice. This "self-consciousness" could provide insight and feedback into how and why these systems make decisions, while helping them improve at various tasks.

The impact on service robots, computer speech systems, virtual assistants, and autonomous vehicles could be significant. "A cognitive architecture for inner speech may be the first step toward functional aspects of robot consciousness. It may represent the beginning of a new domain for human-robot interactions," explains Antonio Chella, professor of robotics and director of the RoboticsLab at the University of Palermo in Italy.

Robot Talk

Applying the principles of human speech and cognition to machines is a steep challenge.  "Consciousness is a very complex and fuzzy term," observes Angelo Cangelosi, professor of machine learning and robotics at the University of Manchester in the U.K. "While machines may not be aware in the way humans are aware, the idea of modeling speech characteristics to enrich interactions could deliver deeper insight into machine behavior."

The idea is taking shape. In April 2021, Chella and University of Palermo research fellow Arianna Pipitone equipped a robot named Pepper from SoftBank Robotics with a cognitive architecture that models inner speech. This allowed the robot to reason and interact at a deeper level—and to generate vocal feedback about how it arrived at answers and actions. This is possible because the parameters and attributes of the inner voice are different than those for outward expression, the researchers note.  ... ' 

Measuring Consciousness

 More brain research addresses complexities of intelligence.

Researchers Find Better Way to Measure Consciousness

University of Wisconsin-Madison News, Chris Barncard, March 16, 2021

Analysis of neural signals in monkeys by University of Wisconsin–Madison (UWM) researchers combined traditional telltales of consciousness with computational metrics describing the signals' complexities and interaction in different brain regions. The authors used machine learning to determine whether the monkeys were conscious or not and the activity levels of their brain areas by processing those signals through a computer. UWM's Mohsen Afrasiabi said the results indicated the back of the brain and the deep brain areas are more predictive of states of consciousness than the front. UWM's Yuri Saalmann said, "We could use what we've learned to optimize electrical patterns through precise brain stimulation and help people who are, say, in a coma maintain a continuous level of consciousness."

Considering Robot Consciousness

OK, we are far from this, still sci fi. but worth a thought.  So we will be ready then.  

If a Robot Is Conscious, Is It OK to Turn It Off? The Moral Implications of Building True AI  By Anand Vaidya

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Measure of a Man,” Data, an android crew member of the Enterprise, is to be dismantled for research purposes unless Captain Picard can argue that Data deserves the same rights as a human being. Naturally the question arises: What is the basis upon which something has rights? What gives an entity moral standing?

The philosopher Peter Singer argues that creatures that can feel pain or suffer have a claim to moral standing. He argues that nonhuman animals have moral standing, since they can feel pain and suffer. Limiting it to people would be a form of speciesism, something akin to racism and sexism.

Without endorsing Singer’s line of reasoning, we might wonder if it can be extended further to an android robot like Data. It would require that Data can either feel pain or suffer. And how you answer that depends on how you understand consciousness and intelligence.  ... " 

AI to Understand Consciousness of a 'Theory of Mind'

 We read much on 'Theory of mind', as it related to things like intelligent undertanding and 'consciousness'. Could this leverage us into better definitions and uses of consciousness in context? 

New MIT brain research shows how AI could help us understand consciousness  By Tristan Greene  in TNW

A team of researchers from MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital recently published a study linking social awareness to individual neuronal activity. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time evidence for the ‘theory of mind‘ has been identified at this scale.

Measuring large groups of neurons is the bread-and-butter of neurology. Even a simple MRI can highlight specific regions of the brain and give scientists an indication of what they’re used for and, in many cases, what kind of thoughts are happening. But figuring out what’s going on at the single-neuron level is an entirely different feat.

According to the paper: 

Here, using recordings from single cells in the human dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, we identify neurons that reliably encode information about others’ beliefs across richly varying scenarios and that distinguish self- from other-belief-related representations … these findings reveal a detailed cellular process in the human dorsomedial prefrontal cortex for representing another’s beliefs and identify candidate neurons that could support theory of mind.

In other words: the researchers believe they’ve observed individual brain neurons forming the patterns that cause us to consider what other people might be feeling and thinking. They’re identifying empathy in action.... " 

Is AI Already Conscious?

Regards the definition of consciousness,and its necessity for intelligence.

Is AI already conscious?
 Nicole Gray in ThenextWeb

The ultimate goal of most high-level AI research is the development of a general artificial intelligence (GAI). In essence, what we want is a synthetic mind that could function the same as a human were it placed into a physical vessel of similar capability.

Most experts – not all – believe we’re decades away from anything of the sort. Unlike other incredibly complex problems such as nuclear fusion or readjusting the Hubble Constant, nobody really understands yet what GAI actually looks like.

Some researchers think Deep Learning is the path to machines that think like humans, others believe we’ll need an entirely new calculus to create the necessary “master algorithm,” and still others think GAI is probably impossible.

But the fact of the matter is that scientists don’t truly understand intelligence as it relates to the human brain, or consciousness as it relates to anything. We’re just scratching the gray-matter surface when it comes to understanding how intelligence and consciousness emerge in the human brain.

As far as AI goes, in lieu of a GAI all we have is patchwork neural networks and clever algorithms. It’s hard to make an argument that modern AI will ever have human intelligence and even harder to demonstrate a path towards actual robot consciousness. But it’s not impossible.

In fact, AI might already be conscious.

Mathematician Johannes Kleiner and physicist Sean Tull recently pre-published a research paper on the nature of consciousness that seems to indicate, mathematically speaking, that the universe and everything in it is imbued with physical consciousness.

Basically the duo’s paper sorts out some of the math behind a popular theory called the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness (ITT). It says that everything in the entire universe exhibits the traits of consciousness to some degree or another.

This is an interesting theory because it’s supported by the idea that consciousness emerges as a result of physical states. You’re conscious because of your ability to “experience” things. A tree, for example, is conscious because it can “sense” the sun’s light and bend towards it. An ant is conscious because it experiences ant stuff, and on and on it goes.  ... "

Can Computers be Conscious?

Don't  absolutely know they cannot compute consciousness unless I know the definition of consciousness being used.   With a very bare definition a computer 'knows it knows something',  say the setting of a single bit.    And can modify it at will.  By scanning and toggling it.  So in that way it is conscious.  Of course nothing approaching human consciousness, not even near it .... but it is a first step.  ...

Why a computer will never be truly conscious
Author  Subhash Kak  Regents Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Oklahoma State University

Subhash Kak does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Oklahoma State University provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.

Many advanced artificial intelligence projects say they are working toward building a conscious machine, based on the idea that brain functions merely encode and process multisensory information. The assumption goes, then, that once brain functions are properly understood, it should be possible to program them into a computer. Microsoft recently announced that it would spend US$1 billion on a project to do just that.

So far, though, attempts to build supercomputer brains have not even come close. A multi-billion-dollar European project that began in 2013 is now largely understood to have failed. That effort has shifted to look more like a similar but less ambitious project in the U.S., developing new software tools for researchers to study brain data, rather than simulating a brain.

Some researchers continue to insist that simulating neuroscience with computers is the way to go. Others, like me, view these efforts as doomed to failure because we do not believe consciousness is computable. Our basic argument is that brains integrate and compress multiple components of an experience, including sight and smell – which simply can’t be handled in the way today’s computers sense, process and store data.  ... ".... '

Self-Consciousness

From the Edge.  What does consciousness mean, when is it necessary for useful intelligence?

News from Edge
To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.

The Paradox of Self-Consciousness
A Conversation with Markus Gabriel

I have been trying, under the banner of "New Realism," to reconcile various philosophical and scientific traditions. I'm looking for a third way between various tensions. There's more to a human being than the fact that we are a bunch of cells that hang together in a certain way. Humans are not strictly identical to any material energetic system, even though I also think that humans cannot exist without being, in part, grounded in a material energetic system. So, I am rejecting both brutal materialism, according to which we are nothing but an arrangement of cells, and brutal idealism, according to which our minds are transcendent affairs that mysteriously peep into the universe. Both are false, so there has to be a third way.

Similarly, there must be a third way between postmodernism, which denies the objectivity of human knowledge claims and science altogether, and various trends in cognitive science, which also threaten objectivity without, of course, fully undermining it (for instance, research on cognitive biases better be immune to second-order biases). Similarly, I believe we urgently need to reconcile so-called continental philosophy—European traditions, broadly construed—and analytic philosophy, which means philosophy at its best when practiced in Anglophone context; there has to be something in between. That space in between is what I call New Realism. 

MARKUS GABRIEL, one of the founders of New Realism, holds the Chair for Epistemology, Modern and Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Bonn, where he is also Director of the International Center for Philosophy and the multidisciplinary Center for Science and Thought. He is the author of Why the World Does Not Exist.   .... "

Gut vs Brain

Perhaps a radical view, but things other than out brain do think for us, should we use them as models for intelligence as well?

Questioning the Cranial Paradigm
A Talk By Caroline A. Jones [6.19.19]

Part of the definition of intelligence is always this representation model. . . . I’m pushing this idea of distribution—homeostatic surfing on worldly engagements that the body is always not only a part of but enabled by and symbiotic on. Also, the idea of adaptation as not necessarily defined by the consciousness that we like to fetishize. Are there other forms of consciousness? Here’s where the gut-brain axis comes in. Are there forms that we describe as visceral gut feelings that are a form of human consciousness that we’re getting through this immune brain?

Questioning the Cranial Paradigm:

Caroline Jones: I want us to think about the gut-brain axis and the powerful analog system of our immune brain, also thought of as a mobile brain. The cranial paradigm is what I’m here to question and offer you questions about. Mainframe is a kind of discourse that haunts the field that we’re talking about, and the cranium comes with that metaphor that we all live by.

What do we mean when we say the word "intelligence"? The immune system is the fascinating, distributed, mobile, circulating system that learns and teaches at the level of the cell. It has memory, some of which lasts our entire life, some of which has to be refreshed every twenty years, every twelve years, a booster shot every six years. This is a very fascinating component of our body’s intelligence that, as far as we know, is not conscious, but even that has to be questioned and studied. .... "

Conversation with David Brin on AI

Have had some conversations with Sci Fi author David Brin on AI and privacy.  Look forward to seeing the contextual and speculative views of a science fiction writer.

Voices in AI – Episode 39: A Conversation with David Brin    Interviewed by Byron Reese  

In this episode Byron and David discuss intelligence, consciousness, Moore’s Law, and an AI crisis. ....

No he does not expect AI to become truly self aware .... 

Byron Reese: This is Voices in AI brought to you by GigaOm, and I’m Byron Reese. Today our guest is David Brin. He is best-known for shining light—both plausibly and entertainingly—on technology, society, and countless challenges confronting our rambunctious civilization.  His best-selling novels include The Postman, which was filmed in ’97, plus explorations of our near-future in Earth and Existence. Other novels of his are translated into over 25 languages. His short stories explore vividly speculative ideas.  His non-fiction book The Transparent Society won the American Library Association’s Freedom of Speech Award for exploring 21st-century concerns about security, secrecy, accountability, and privacy. And as a scientist, a tech consultant, a world-renowned author, he speaks and advises, and writes widely on topics from national defense to homeland security to astronomy to space exploration to nanotechnology, creativity, philanthropy. He kind of covers the whole gambit. I’m so excited to have him on the show. Welcome, David Brin  ..... "

Consciousness as Instinct

As a long ago reader of William James, always amazed at how modern it seemed. Now what does this mean, ultimately, for the goals of AI?  Is Conscious alive?

What William James Got Right About Consciousness   By Michael S. Gazzaniga in Nautilus

Is consciousness an instinct?

When feeling at sea about definitions and meanings in the mind/brain business, it is always rewarding to dial up William James once again.  ... "

Decision Making is Unconscious

Len Stein writes:
" ... Marketers are realizing that decision making is largely an unconscious process. While neuro-scientists continue to expand our knowledge of how the brain functions, psychology will determine how specific decisions are made based on one's values.

Dr. Joel Weinberger, and his partner, professor of psychology Drew Westen (author, The Political Brain), have pioneered the field of implicit association testing. We hope you will want to explore this emerging field and we look forward to discussing the issue. .... ". 

Signatures of Consciousness

In the Edge: Signatures of Consciousness. Very interesting progress: Stanislas Dehaene writes:

' ... For the past twelve years my research team has been using all the brain research tools at its disposal, from functional MRI to electro- and magneto-encephalography and even electrodes inserted deep in the human brain, to shed light on the brain mechanisms of consciousness. I am now happy to report that we have acquired a good working hypothesis. In experiment after experiment, we have seen the same signatures of consciousness: physiological markers that all, simultaneously, show a massive change when a person reports becoming aware of a piece of information (say a word, a digit or a sound) ... '