Artificial-intelligence systems such as large language models (LLMs) can exhibit behaviour that seems strikingly intelligent. This has led many people, including some experts, to wonder whether these systems could have some form of consciousness — the capacity for subjective experience. However, we think that existing AI systems are not conscious, and that, along current trajectories of development, they are not likely to become conscious. Greater clarity about whether AI could become consciousness will be crucial as society grapples with the challenges posed by this increasingly powerful technology.
This analysis is correct but I have a minor quibble: The simulated fruit fly brain is not a complete simulation of the biological processes, or even all the neuronal connections, of the actual fly’s brain.
(I admit to using the very royal we, as in ‘humanity knows how to do this, more or less’ and ‘given we mine the asteroid belt for a big enough computer’.)
@Feathercrown
@artISAn #consciousness #AI #brain #neuroscience #computer #functionalism
Even a “complete simulation” of a fruit fly brain would be no more than an approximation. I think you mean “emulation” and I agree.
The simple reason is that we do not know scientifically all of necessary and sufficient functional mechanisms of consciousness, nor consciousness’s functional role in “intelligence” (which we also have trouble describing). If, and only if we we did, we would (given the right tools) be able to replicate it functionally (in principle) using computation.
Specifically, I refer to a Universal Turing Machine (UTM) and the Church-Turing Thesis (the foundational principle of all computer science). EVEN THEN, there are computational problems that cannot be proved to be solvable by a UTM (e.g., the Halting Problem) and we don’t know what, if any role they play in consciousness.
Bottom line for me: we are going to need a revolution in each of the sciences of psychoneurophysics, mathematical logic, and theory of computation before we can begin to talk about replicating consciousness in a machine.
I don’t see why we would necessarily need to understand consciousness to create it. There is no evidence that nature understands the consciousnesses it has created. In fact a human can create a new consciousness in about 9 months without knowing any theory.
The question in my mind is, how could we possibly tell we’ve succeeded? We can’t even say for sure that anyone other than ourselves is conscious.