Feeling Conscious
Scientists have created the prototype of a robot that's capable of developing emotions as it interacts with humans. This is the latest in an ongoing world wide attempt to achieve Artificial Intelligence. Research and development of this kind is terribly expensive and time consuming, but what if attempts to manufacture massively complex and powerful machines that mimic the attributes of consciousness and the brain aren’t the right way to go at all? What if consciousness is not produced in the brain, but rather what if the brain acts as an antenna connecting to a conscious field that we casually refer to as reality? This is a purely speculative concept, but it is one that may be worth a bit of attention.
Research conducted by the likes of Princeton, SRI, DIA, KGB and many other civilian and clandestine groups has revealed that consciousness has essentially local and nonlocal properties. These findings are at least forty years old by now and have been demonstrated through dozens of different sorts of tests. If mind is nonlocal, then when it comes to building an AI, maybe we should cease trying to build robots and computers that pump out consciousness, but rather, make robots and computers that have the necessary systems to “tap into” the field of mind that constitutes reality (reality being fundamentally consciousness*).
Let’s use the Internet as an example: the Internet will represent consciousness. We need a computer to tap into the Internet and that computer requires certain features to give us a smooth surf, but the computer is NOT the Internet.
We have a variety of computer types that can access and are a platform for the Internet. Similarly we have types of biological systems that access consciousness (or constrain a feed of consciousness into an experimental, experiential perceptual platform): amoebas, algae, flowers, whales, dogs, human beings, birds, fish etc; perhaps these are like iPhones, Palmpilots, Blackberries, Intels, Ps3’s and Macs—they are all platforms by which a feedback loop into consciousness or the Internet is established.
The system for establishing an AI connecting to consciousness may require
1. data input (experience)
2. data memory (continuity)
3. data processing (sense making/ pattern-matching)
4. self modifying feedback loop (learning/experimentation)
Perhaps our efforts in the field of AI should look more like the manufacturing of an antenna, rather than a brain.
*Thomas Campbell’s "My Big TOE: A Trilogy Unifying Philosophy Physics and Metaphysics"
Image by Erin MC Hammer on Flickr courtesy of Creative Commons Licensing
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machine consciousness speculation
author doesn't really comment much on the article, but uses it as a jumping off point to speculate on the nature of consciousness. I would also enjoy engaging in a bit of speculation here, so, indulge me if you wish...
There is no logically consistent definition of what consciousness actually is, and no one can really definie it, definitively, which is what is so interesting about AI research because it doesn't necessarily make claims as to what consciousness is or what intelligence is (and it seems these two concepts are often conflated)... but it tries to tackle things that we attribute to ourselves as intelligence or consciousness, problem solving, adapting and learning from the environment, etc. What is interesting to me is this: the more we can accomplish with machines, the more that our definition of what it is that makes us and our brand of "consciousness" special becomes a moving target. our co-evolution with these technologies will continue to redefine what it means to be human, and what it is that makes us unique.
I happen to have a similar idea of consciousness in my own personal metaphysical cosmology. Perhaps then these are common views shared by many others in these new age times. Here's the basic tenets:
so the antenna metaphor may be apt, if we are simply "tuning in" to the field of all that exists at once via the unique structure of our organism, and the process of that organism reflecting on itself in that process would then be one of the things we often attribute to the catch-all term of "consciousness."
That being said, and forgive me if i'm confusing the author's reasoning for my own here or vice versa, - IF consciousness is something that an organism is tuning in via its brain/body interactions in the environment, than wouldn't emulating that system be a compelling method for trying to achieve a similar feat? If the brain/body is the antenna, then building machine brains with machine bodies seems like a compelling route toward making a system that can "tune-in" to that which we attribute to the phenomena of being an entity possessed of this consciousness.
Modeling and simulating networks of neurons, building robot bodies to interact with an outside environment, studying how displays of emotion are learned and communicated, these would all be worthy tasks in developing such machines, and indeed are some approaches that the many faceted field of AI research is invested in.
some people would like to think that we'll never make a machine that could think like a human, others believe we stand on the cusp of creating super intelligent machines. whatever the future holds, it seems extremely likely that we not only will interact with clever robots that will demonstrate a lot of ingenuity and emotional sophistication (that'd be a nice selling point that would make us more comfortable with them), but we'll also have a complex relationship with machines that will challenge our definitions of intelligence and consciousness itself.
perhaps the machines will challenge US to prove that WE are conscious, and that it's not just some mechanical feat that can be mastered by a sufficiently complicated system.
reality has become science fictional for sure. cheers!