<story><title>AI</title><url>http://blog.samaltman.com/ai</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>debt</author><text>We know a ton about the brain but so little about the mind itself. We still don&amp;#x27;t have definitive answers to what consciousness is, why it&amp;#x27;s here, what&amp;#x27;s useful for, etc. Some people debate whether the mind exists at all.  Also, there&amp;#x27;s still very little understanding of the difference between the conscious and unconscious mind.&lt;p&gt;I think building an artificial consciousness is going too far. Artificial intelligence is simpler; it&amp;#x27;s just fake intelligence. Seems easy enough right? If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it&amp;#x27;s intelligent.  We don&amp;#x27;t need to make it &amp;quot;conscious&amp;quot; necessarily, again whatever that means, in order for it be intelligent.&lt;p&gt;I feel like we can build artificially intelligent software pretty &amp;quot;easily&amp;quot; relative to making it &amp;quot;conscious&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>kevinalexbrown</author><text>If the only goal is an &amp;#x27;artificial&amp;#x27; consciousness, it might be more prudent to consider a functional definition of what consciousness is and try to build that. We didn&amp;#x27;t make computers by modeling how individual neurons perform mathematical calculations.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you want to go the biological route, there&amp;#x27;s some awesome work to be done. If I were to study consciousness, here&amp;#x27;s the question I would ask: how do we separate our selves from our surroundings? Patients with brain-machine interfaces (like moving a mouse cursor) start by thinking about moving their arms around. Then they apparently report that they gradually just feel that the interface is another body part. So if it&amp;#x27;s set up to change the TV channel, they just imagine that they have a channel-changing organ.&lt;p&gt;So maybe you want to build a system that can identify what is a part of itself versus what is not, and it&amp;#x27;s not just a fixed list. So what does that data structure look like? How is it defined, queried, and updated? Defined by what you can &amp;#x27;influence?&amp;#x27; So gradated based on my influence? These aren&amp;#x27;t just broad philosophical questions, they&amp;#x27;re more specific and actionable.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s just one possible angle, but it&amp;#x27;s different than, say, machine learning paradigms where you want to build a machine that can do pattern classification (which the brain undoubtedly does). There are probably other routes as well.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nzp</author><text>&amp;gt; We know a ton about the brain but so little about the mind itself. We still don&amp;#x27;t have definitive answers to what consciousness is, why it&amp;#x27;s here, what&amp;#x27;s useful for, etc. Some people debate whether the mind exists at all. Also, there&amp;#x27;s still very little understanding of the difference between the conscious and unconscious mind.&lt;p&gt;One of the really, really bad consequences of the Cold War was the scientific divide between East and West.  By that I mean serious lack of scientific data exchange between the blocks.  The consequences are still felt and this area (the problem of consciousness) is the one that suffered.  The problem of &amp;quot;consciousness&amp;quot; was basically solved, at least at a conceptual level, by Soviet psychology and neuropsychology.  Here I refer, of course, to the work of Vygotsky and Luria.  What is consciousness?  Almost nothing at all by itself.  Consciousness as found in humans is a consequence of our cognitive development and the advanced symbolic capabilities of humans.  The subjective perception we have of the thing we call consciousness is &amp;quot;simply&amp;quot; (it&amp;#x27;s not really simple when you get into details) a product of humans acquiring language skills (I&amp;#x27;m simplifying).&lt;p&gt;This is not to say the subject is trivial, it takes volumes to describe what is happening, but the thing we informally call &amp;quot;consciousness&amp;quot; is really nothing at all in and of itself, and the perception we have of it is just a result of the very complicated process of cognitive development.  Thin air, like Lisp&amp;#x27;s cons.&lt;p&gt;If you want to read on it I can recommend Vygotsky&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;Language and Thought&lt;/i&gt; (actually, it&amp;#x27;s his only book) and Luria&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;Language and Consciousness&lt;/i&gt; (I&amp;#x27;m not sure it was ever translated into English, it&amp;#x27;s a collection of his lecture notes from a university course he did on the subject) or possibly &lt;i&gt;The Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Foundations&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Why this line of thinking is mostly ignored in the West I have no idea.  Why do we still cling to metaphysical (even religious I would say) phantasies about &amp;quot;consciousness&amp;quot; is an interesting topic itself.  Is it because it&amp;#x27;s romantic to think there&amp;#x27;s something special, transcendent, about our minds?  Are we really that sentimental?  I have some hypotheses, but it&amp;#x27;s a different topic.</text></comment>
<story><title>AI</title><url>http://blog.samaltman.com/ai</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>debt</author><text>We know a ton about the brain but so little about the mind itself. We still don&amp;#x27;t have definitive answers to what consciousness is, why it&amp;#x27;s here, what&amp;#x27;s useful for, etc. Some people debate whether the mind exists at all.  Also, there&amp;#x27;s still very little understanding of the difference between the conscious and unconscious mind.&lt;p&gt;I think building an artificial consciousness is going too far. Artificial intelligence is simpler; it&amp;#x27;s just fake intelligence. Seems easy enough right? If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it&amp;#x27;s intelligent.  We don&amp;#x27;t need to make it &amp;quot;conscious&amp;quot; necessarily, again whatever that means, in order for it be intelligent.&lt;p&gt;I feel like we can build artificially intelligent software pretty &amp;quot;easily&amp;quot; relative to making it &amp;quot;conscious&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>kevinalexbrown</author><text>If the only goal is an &amp;#x27;artificial&amp;#x27; consciousness, it might be more prudent to consider a functional definition of what consciousness is and try to build that. We didn&amp;#x27;t make computers by modeling how individual neurons perform mathematical calculations.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you want to go the biological route, there&amp;#x27;s some awesome work to be done. If I were to study consciousness, here&amp;#x27;s the question I would ask: how do we separate our selves from our surroundings? Patients with brain-machine interfaces (like moving a mouse cursor) start by thinking about moving their arms around. Then they apparently report that they gradually just feel that the interface is another body part. So if it&amp;#x27;s set up to change the TV channel, they just imagine that they have a channel-changing organ.&lt;p&gt;So maybe you want to build a system that can identify what is a part of itself versus what is not, and it&amp;#x27;s not just a fixed list. So what does that data structure look like? How is it defined, queried, and updated? Defined by what you can &amp;#x27;influence?&amp;#x27; So gradated based on my influence? These aren&amp;#x27;t just broad philosophical questions, they&amp;#x27;re more specific and actionable.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s just one possible angle, but it&amp;#x27;s different than, say, machine learning paradigms where you want to build a machine that can do pattern classification (which the brain undoubtedly does). There are probably other routes as well.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mtrimpe</author><text>The problem is that we haven&amp;#x27;t adopted the  definition of consciousness that&amp;#x27;s useful long term
yet: that consciousness is best interpreted as a property of reality.&lt;p&gt;If everything is conscious then some parts of it are just more dynamic (intelligent?) than others. Physical reality least, plants more [1], animals even more and humans &lt;i&gt;most&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Defined like that &lt;i&gt;human&lt;/i&gt; consciousness just becomes that part of all consciousness which we recognize as similar to our own.&lt;p&gt;In that view AI is just making a small part of reality, a computer, &lt;i&gt;more dynamically&lt;/i&gt; conscious and, very importantly, more similar to our own so as to be more useful.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/69225705&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;vimeo.com&amp;#x2F;69225705&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>