Artificial Consciousness Is Impossible

[AIkonoklazt]

On 10/1/2023 at 2:58 PM, Genady said:

The current state of affairs: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends — and it’s philosopher 1, neuroscientist 0 (nature.com)

Koch started with a big disadvantage IMO... He's already locked in to some kind of rigid self-imposed scheme by using a term like "achieve."

For example, how doe water "achieve" wetness? What if it isn't even a matter of extrinsic attribution (or not)? If you start with a loaded question, you've already handcuffed yourself.

[studiot]

11 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

For example, how doe water "achieve" wetness? What if it isn't even a matter of extrinsic attribution (or not)? If you start with a loaded question, you've already handcuffed yourself.

Do you not need to deal with the theory of physical wetting in your role as s circuit board designer ?

This is an subject with little mystery and well defined properties.

[dimreepr]

14 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

It supports my thesis because it presents a contradition- A design without a design.

Unless your thesis is, consciousness is only possible when God does it, then I fail to see the logic; besides I think you mean a design without a designer, otherwise it's a meaningless attempted tautology.

14 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

The anthill analogy is a really bad analogy. Let me requote it here:

Quote

An anthill is intelligent, but it can't be conscious because it's a house; is that about the size of it?

Which throws up an interesting question, which part of the human body is considered the house (mobile anthill)?

How is an anthill "intelligent"? I think you're confusing the anthill with the ants that are in it.

You're missing the point, or you're being deliberately obtuse, a single ant is neither intelligent nor, arguably, conscious, yet as a colony they can build structures with air-conditioning and a farm and waste disposal and etc. clearly a design with a designer.

Much like a single human couldn't create our modern society, with all it's convenience.

All of which seems to scupper or directly contradict your hypothesis. 

 

[studiot]

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

Unless your thesis is, consciousness is only possible when God does it, then I fail to see the logic; besides I think you mean a design without a designer, otherwise it's a meaningless attempted tautology.

You're missing the point, or you're being deliberately obtuse, a single ant is neither intelligent nor, arguably, conscious, yet as a colony they can build structures with air-conditioning and a farm and waste disposal and etc. clearly a design with a designer.

Much like a single human couldn't create our modern society, with all it's convenience.

All of which seems to scupper or directly contradict your hypothesis. 

 

 

I agree.  +1

 

I further think that a design need not be as complicated as an ant colony.

 

My pepper and paper automatic leyline generator would suffice.

[dimreepr]

28 minutes ago, studiot said:

I further think that a design need not be as complicated as an ant colony.

They're already under stress, let's not confuse him/her here... 😉

[AIkonoklazt]

9 hours ago, studiot said:

Do you not need to deal with the theory of physical wetting in your role as s circuit board designer ?

This is an subject with little mystery and well defined properties.

I was just saying that consciousness may not be something that is "achieved." I've discussed that earlier in my replies with others in the thread.

I'm not a circuit board designer, I design microprocessors

9 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Unless your thesis is, consciousness is only possible when God does it, then I fail to see the logic; besides I think you mean a design without a designer, otherwise it's a meaningless attempted tautology.

You're missing the point, or you're being deliberately obtuse, a single ant is neither intelligent nor, arguably, conscious, yet as a colony they can build structures with air-conditioning and a farm and waste disposal and etc. clearly a design with a designer.

Much like a single human couldn't create our modern society, with all it's convenience.

All of which seems to scupper or directly contradict your hypothesis. 

 

Consciousness may not be a product of anything. If it is a "product," then evolution isn't a process of design which produced said "product." Evolution isn't a process of design.

You said "anthill" (which is a mound of soil, sand, or dirt) and not an ant colony.

I'm not being obtuse at all- You might have used a wrong term and you needed to clarify what you were referring to.

I don't know what point you're making here. Are you making an equation between an ant and a machine?

7 hours ago, studiot said:

 

 

 

I further think that a design need not be as complicated as an ant colony.

 

 

...you meant an anthill...?

7 hours ago, dimreepr said:

They're already under stress, let's not confuse him/her here... 😉

Not sure what ants being under stress has to do with anything

Edited October 13, 2023 by AIkonoklazt

[studiot]

1 hour ago, AIkonoklazt said:

..you meant an anthill...?

I originally wrote anthill, but changed it because I was worried you would argue with that terminology as some ant colonies are not hills at all. Some ants create their colonies underground, under rocks or in rotting tree wood for example.

 

Either way your reply doesn't address my actual example at all, which was how to achieve a design without a designer.

 

1 hour ago, AIkonoklazt said:

I'm not a circuit board designer, I design microprocessors

Microprocessors have to be connected to some sort of circuit board.

The connection process invariably involves wetting (although not by water).

It is a detail of Science you therfore may not have come across, so I apologise for presuming.

However if that is the case then I remain surprised that you seem uninterested in that particular area of Science.

[dimreepr]

16 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

Consciousness may not be a product of anything.. If it is a "product," then evolution isn't a process of design which produced said "product." Evolution isn't a process of design.

Well, I'm conscious and I'm a product of the designs my father had for my mother... 😉😣

 

16 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

You said "anthill" (which is a mound of soil, sand, or dirt) and not an ant colony.

I'm not being obtuse at all- You might have used a wrong term and you needed to clarify what you were referring to.

This exactly why, both @studiot and I felt the need to clarify such an obvious anolog* with the word colony.

If you're not being deliberately obtuse, then you're arguing in bad faith; what do you hope to win? Because it can't be the argument... 🙄 

* IOW not to be taken litterally.🙏

17 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

Not sure what ants being under stress has to do with anything

Clearly... 😉

[AIkonoklazt]

On 10/13/2023 at 3:18 PM, studiot said:

I originally wrote anthill, but changed it because I was worried you would argue with that terminology as some ant colonies are not hills at all. Some ants create their colonies underground, under rocks or in rotting tree wood for example.

 

Either way your reply doesn't address my actual example at all, which was how to achieve a design without a designer.

 

Microprocessors have to be connected to some sort of circuit board.

The connection process invariably involves wetting (although not by water).

It is a detail of Science you therfore may not have come across, so I apologise for presuming.

However if that is the case then I remain surprised that you seem uninterested in that particular area of Science.

I'm was just pointing out the difference between an anthill, which is a mound of dirt/sand/etc, versus an ant colony which is a collection of live ants. In discussing points, I have to know exactly what people are referring to lest we all just keep talking past each other.

The activity of "wetting" is different than the quality of something being wet. I was simply trying to point out that if a quality is somehow intrinsic, then that quality isn't "achieved". I admit that water probably doesn't apply, but that was what I was getting at.

10 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Well, I'm conscious and I'm a product of the designs my father had for my mother... 😉😣

 

This exactly why, both @studiot and I felt the need to clarify such an obvious anolog* with the word colony.

If you're not being deliberately obtuse, then you're arguing in bad faith; what do you hope to win? Because it can't be the argument... 🙄 

* IOW not to be taken litterally.🙏

Clearly... 😉

You're accusing me of things, and that's not going to help anyone. "Anthill" and "ant colony" clearly refer to two different things (see definitions), and all I did was seek clarification in order to see what your point was. Too much to ask, I guess.

Your father and mother didn't design you. That's not how it works. You're conflating two different concepts:

1. Your parents' intentions to engage in sexual activity, and
2. Whether your parents' intents had anything to do with your physical composition and arrangement. They didn't design how your organs work, how long each of your limbs are, for instance, and which elements make up your body, et cetera.

This is the sort of conflation of concepts I brought up with another user earlier in the thread. People are confused on the topic of AI because they conflate concepts and even terminology.

Edited October 15, 2023 by AIkonoklazt

[dimreepr]

12 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

You're accusing me of things, and that's not going to help anyone. "Anthill" and "ant colony" clearly refer to two different things (see definitions), and all I did was seek clarification in order to see what your point was. Too much to ask, I guess.

Yes I am, I'm accusing you of not understanding the topic you started, and not understanding the argument's I've presented; or!!! you're trolling... 🤔

12 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

This is the sort of conflation of concepts I brought up with another user earlier in the thread. People are confused on the topic of AI because they conflate concepts and even terminology.

I have an understanding of how AI works (are you sure yo do???), it's the same level of intelligence/consciousness as an anthill/colony; you're conflating what it means to be a human (an evolutionary process of design) now, with what it might be like for an AI (after a similar evolutionary process)... 🙄 

[AIkonoklazt]

Good grief.

Someone else can point out just how big of a trainwreck the above reply was.

 

[dimreepr]

5 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

Good grief.

Someone else can point out just how big of a trainwreck the above reply was.

 

There's no shame in asking for help... 😉

[TheVat]

7 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

Good grief.

Someone else can point out just how big of a trainwreck the above reply was.

 

I advise reading Dim posts in moderation.  Life is short.

On 10/12/2023 at 5:44 PM, AIkonoklazt said:

Koch started with a big disadvantage IMO... He's already locked in to some kind of rigid self-imposed scheme by using a term like "achieve."

For example, how does water "achieve" wetness? What if it isn't even a matter of extrinsic attribution (or not)? If you start with a loaded question, you've already handcuffed yourself.

Agree.  There is a lot of imprecision when people talk about emergent properties or processes.  Wetness, for example, is just a perceptual shorthand for talking about more complex properties like strong polar bonding between molecules.  Things look different at different levels of scaling.  

[AIkonoklazt]

18 hours ago, TheVat said:

I advise reading Dim posts in moderation.  Life is short.

Agree.  There is a lot of imprecision when people talk about emergent properties or processes.  Wetness, for example, is just a perceptual shorthand for talking about more complex properties like strong polar bonding between molecules.  Things look different at different levels of scaling.  

Thanks, I'll just ignore those posts.

The "imprecision" comes mostly from the lack of any actual forward-looking content. Emergence isn't functional as an explanation or a theory. An article I linked to earlier starts disassembling notions of it right from the fourth paragraph as quoted below (and basically goes all the way through to the end from there):

Quote

But emergence is not a theory. Emergence can only be ascribed to a phenomenon in retrospect, once you already know what has “emerged”. The higher-level properties that emerge are qualitatively different from those at the lower-level — otherwise it wouldn’t be “emergence”. So by necessity they could not have been predicted from the lower-level ones. The properties of “intelligence” could not have been logically foreseen from the properties of neurons unless you had already observed that property emerge in a similar substrate. And even then it’s just a guess that is likely to be wrong given the complexity of the interactions involved; small differences can easily invalidate the hypothesis. In both cases emergence gives no new information: when explaining existing examples it gives you no new insights about the processes except that they happen; and when predicting unknown behaviours it gives very poor guarantees that anything you expect to happen will do so.

As if functionalism and behaviorism aren't hopelessly bad already, emergentism tries to apply them in reverse.

See where the author writes "small differences can easily invalidate the hypothesis"? It should read "there will be inevitable differences that will invalidate the hypothesis" because of Underdetermination of scientific theory (ref. my article, which, again, is related to adages such as "the map is not the territory," "all models are wrong, some are useful," etc.)
 

[dimreepr]

On 10/17/2023 at 9:29 AM, AIkonoklazt said:

The "imprecision" comes mostly from the lack of any actual forward-looking content. Emergence isn't functional as an explanation or a theory

FTFY

On 10/17/2023 at 9:29 AM, AIkonoklazt said:

As if functionalism and behaviorism aren't hopelessly bad already, emergentism tries to apply them in reverse.

Captain hindsight, would say that... 😉

On 10/17/2023 at 9:29 AM, AIkonoklazt said:

Thanks, I'll just ignore those posts.

The "imprecision" comes mostly from the lack of any actual forward-looking content. Emergence isn't functional as an explanation or a theory. An article I linked to earlier starts disassembling notions of it right from the fourth paragraph as quoted below (and basically goes all the way through to the end from there):

As if functionalism and behaviorism aren't hopelessly bad already, emergentism tries to apply them in reverse.

See where the author writes "small differences can easily invalidate the hypothesis"? It should read "there will be inevitable differences that will invalidate the hypothesis" because of Underdetermination of scientific theory (ref. my article, which, again, is related to adages such as "the map is not the territory," "all models are wrong, some are useful," etc.)
 

This only argues your thesis; for instance, when I started working with computer's, every time it crashed demonstrated an emergent property of the interaction between the software and the hardware in varying degree's of explanation; however, every time an emergence occurred helped towards a better computer; which, it can be argued, form's a part of the theory (your word) of AI.

On 10/16/2023 at 2:58 PM, TheVat said:

I advise reading Dim posts in moderation.  Life is short.

Agree.  There is a lot of imprecision when people talk about emergent properties or processes.  Wetness, for example, is just a perceptual shorthand for talking about more complex properties like strong polar bonding between molecules.  Things look different at different levels of scaling.  

So, how does it support the topic title?

Edited October 25, 2023 by dimreepr

[dimreepr]

On 10/17/2023 at 9:29 AM, AIkonoklazt said:

Thanks, I'll just ignore those posts.

The "imprecision" comes mostly from the lack of any actual forward-looking content. Emergence isn't functional as an explanation or a theory. An article I linked to earlier starts disassembling notions of it right from the fourth paragraph as quoted below (and basically goes all the way through to the end from there):

Brain Organoid studies are making strides towards artificial consciousness, it seems. 

one study found that after 9 month's of growth, significant complexity would spontaneously emerge from the collective.*

Quote

 

Abstract

Brain development is an extraordinarily complex process achieved through the spatially and temporally regulated release of key patterning factors. In vitro neurodevelopmental models seek to mimic these processes to recapitulate the steps of tissue fate acquisition and morphogenesis. Classic two-dimensional neural cultures present higher homogeneity but lower complexity compared to the brain. Brain organoids instead have more advanced cell composition, maturation and tissue architecture. They can thus be considered at the interface of in vitro and in vivo neurobiology, and further improvements in organoid techniques are continuing to narrow the gap with in vivo brain development. Here we describe these efforts to recapitulate brain development in neural organoids and focus on their applicability for disease modeling, evolutionary studies and neural network research.

 

* It may not be from the linked study.

[Sensei]

On 5/29/2022 at 12:45 PM, studiot said:

Quote

Artificial Consciousness Is Impossible

What a good start for your discussion.

You have posted a lot of material so it will probably take some time for folks to read and digest.

There are several members interested in aspects of AI here.

Aren't you proof that this is possible?

 

Edited October 27, 2023 by Sensei

[studiot]

3 hours ago, Sensei said:

Aren't you proof that this is possible?

 

😀

+1

[Sensei]

1 hour ago, studiot said:

😀 +1

 

Want the source code of a search engine like Google? I give it away to mortals like you, like candy, these days..

 

Edited October 27, 2023 by Sensei

[AIkonoklazt]

Living entities have already been covered in my original article.

 

Quote

Cybernetics and cloning

If living entities are involved then the subject is no longer that of artificial consciousness. Those would be cases of manipulation of innate consciousness and not any creation of artificial consciousness

 

[zapatos]

58 minutes ago, AIkonoklazt said:

Living entities have already been covered in my original article.

 

 

Perhaps not everyone agrees with you.

[dimreepr]

17 hours ago, zapatos said:

Perhaps not everyone agrees with you.

He's got that covered, the clever bugger ignores the possibility... 🤞 

[AIkonoklazt]

On 10/28/2023 at 2:00 PM, zapatos said:

Perhaps not everyone agrees with you.

Then I will need to know what their positions are, and what they use to support those.

On 10/27/2023 at 5:34 AM, Sensei said:

Aren't you proof that this is possible?

 

I don't understand what you're saying.

[dimreepr]

On 10/28/2023 at 9:02 PM, AIkonoklazt said:

Living entities have already been covered in my original article.

Brain organoid's are artificially alive... 

18 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

Then I will need to know what their positions are, and what they use to support those.

Me too, so what is your definition of artificial???

Because 

Quote

If living entities are involved then the subject is no longer that of artificial consciousness. Those would be cases of manipulation of innate consciousness and not any creation of artificial consciousness

AI depends on living entities, much like a loom... 

Feel free to ignore this post, if it's a bit tricky... 🤔

[zapatos]

19 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

Then I will need to know what their positions are, and what they use to support those.

You should try asking them in a pleasant way. This is a discussion forum after all.