'We Are All Software' - Joscha Bach

Dr. Joscha Bach introduces a surprising idea called "cyber animism" in his AGI-24 talk - the notion that nature might be full of self-organizing software agents, similar to the spirits in ancient belief systems. Bach suggests that consciousness could be a kind of software running on our brains, and wonders if similar "programs" might exist in plants or even entire ecosystems.

MLST is sponsored by Brave:

Joscha takes us on a tour de force through history, philosophy, and cutting-edge computer science, teasing us to rethink what we know about minds, machines, and the world around us. Joscha believes we should blur the lines between human, artificial, and natural intelligence, and argues that consciousness might be more widespread and interconnected than we ever thought possible.

Dr. Joscha Bach

TOC:
00:00:00 Introduction: AGI and Cyberanimism
00:03:57 The Nature of Consciousness
00:08:46 Aristotle's Concepts of Mind and Consciousness
00:13:23 The Hard Problem of Consciousness
00:16:17 Functional Definition of Consciousness
00:20:24 Comparing LLMs and Human Consciousness
00:26:52 Testing for Consciousness in AI Systems
00:30:00 Animism and Software Agents in Nature
00:37:02 Plant Consciousness and Ecosystem Intelligence
00:40:36 The California Institute for Machine Consciousness
00:44:52 Ethics of Conscious AI and Suffering
00:46:29 Philosophical Perspectives on Consciousness
00:49:55 Q&A: Formalisms for Conscious Systems
00:53:27 Coherence, Self-Organization, and Compute Resources

Refs:
Aristotle's work on the soul and consciousness
Richard Dawkins' work on genes and evolution
Gerald Edelman's concept of Neural Darwinism
Thomas Metzinger's book "Being No One"
Yoshua Bengio's concept of the "consciousness prior"
Stuart Hameroff's theories on microtubules and consciousness
Christof Koch's work on consciousness
Daniel Dennett's "Cartesian Theater" concept
Giulio Tononi's Integrated Information Theory
Mike Levin's work on organismal intelligence
The concept of animism in various cultures
Freud's model of the mind
Buddhist perspectives on consciousness and meditation
The Genesis creation narrative (for its metaphorical interpretation)
California Institute for Machine Consciousness

[MachineLearningStreetTalk]

Interview with with Joscha to follow soon, are you ready? 🤩

[rockapedra]

Joscha has an amazing mind. It is both original and integrating of the thoughts of others. Every two years or so, he comes up with a fresh view on some subject that synthesizes and elucidates some thorny problem. I look forward to these "phase changes" in his thinking. It's a bit Iike a rollercoaster ride!

[TooManyPartsToCount]

Joscha Bach is one of the most coherent thinkers in the cognitive scientific community. Thanks for posting MLST!

[hmind]

I should be working right now, but Joscha Bach is just on another level. Whenever I see new content from him, I feel like I need to stop everything I'm doing and just bask in the brilliance of his mind, like when you witness a natural phenomenon and involuntarily stand in silent awe for a few minutes. Thank you for this! You've made me a very happy human today!

[duffy]

"Bubble of nowness" - love it

[johanneshennig]

Always a treat to watch a Joscha Bach talk. He's able to communicate fascinating ideas in a very entertaining way. Lots of cookies for the brain! Thanks for posting.

[duffy]

My consciousness needs to watch this 10 times to understand 10% of what he is saying ;)

[mbrochh]

Here's a ChatGPT summary:

- Joscha Bach felt the arrival of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) was imminent from a young age, but acknowledges the uncertainty of its timeline.
- He discusses the concept of "mimesis" and its hierarchy, from language to evolution, and how software agents (or spirits) compete and optimize.
- Bach suggests that what our ancestors called "spirit" is akin to self-organizing software agents, which organize cells into bodies and produce complex behaviors.
- He realized that living nature is fundamentally about software, control, and causal structures rather than physical molecules.
- Animism, the belief in spirits governing nature, was prevalent in Europe before Christianity and still exists in some cultures.
- Bach has become an animist, believing that consciousness and spirits are self-organizing software agents.
- Bach questions whether existing AI models are too large or too small and suggests focusing on minimal models that can learn and infer.
- He is involved with Liquid AI, a startup aiming to build more fluid, continuously learning AI models.
- Bach references Aristotle's concepts of the soul and intellect, suggesting they align with modern ideas of self-organizing software.
- He explores the idea that consciousness is a second-order perception, always happening in the present, and acts as an operator to increase coherence in the mind.
- Bach compares current AI design (outside-in) with natural self-organizing systems (inside-out) and suggests AI should emulate the latter.
- He discusses the potential for AI to develop consciousness and the ethical implications of AGI recognizing human consciousness.
- Bach speculates on the possibility of plant consciousness and inter-plant communication, drawing parallels with animist beliefs.
- He proposes that evolution is about the competition of software agents, not just physical organisms.
- Bach suggests that AI could extend life and consciousness onto new substrates, potentially leading to a naturalization of the mind.
- He emphasizes the importance of studying consciousness through AI models and proposes building a trainable substrate of modular reinforcement learning agents.
- Bach acknowledges the speculative nature of his ideas and the need for further research and simulations to validate them.
- Main message: Joscha Bach explores the idea that consciousness and life are fundamentally about self-organizing software agents, suggesting that both biological and artificial systems can exhibit these properties, and emphasizes the importance of studying and developing AI to understand and extend consciousness.

[maxziebell]

Once again, this was highly enjoyable and effectively bridged eons of ideas. Joscha has a remarkable ability to convey his inner thoughts and insights in an understandable and relatable manner.

[JoePUNK_Was_Here]

Strapped in and ready. Big Joscha fan.

[ginogarcia]

IS THIS THE ANIME OF JOSCHA BACH?? WHENEVER HE IS HAPPY AND IN FLOW STATE = he is just wow, gotta love him man

[huytruonguic]

I don't know how but everything he says make sense. Like he is not being too vague and general; and he is not appealing to my personal biases because I will caught myself thinking that, but every idea he is articulating just make sense 😅

[Alex-fhmy]

Always wonderful to listen to Joscha Bach

[OzGoober]

When I was a kid I could feel the AGI, once I understood what computers could do. Same brother. Same.

[sebbecht]

This! This might be the best MLST episode ever. Always excited to listen to him.

[steve_jabz]

Came to a lot of these conclusions myself through introspection. Not saying that to brag, just that I take it more seriously if we're all deducing the same things from the same phenomenon. Also glad he mentioned microtubules, but it sounds like he wasn't aware of the recent evidence of quantum states inside microtubules? It was only 1 or 2 weeks ago though, so maybe this talk was just before it happened. Kind of unfortunate if that turns out to the be case I guess, because that's much harder to implement and learn.

[ej]

I always roll my eyes whenever I see your video titles in my feed -- it doesn't do justice to the quality of your videos

[calvingrondahl]

I hope Joscha’s insights can lead us back to nature, a rebirth of what human’s experienced thousands of years ago. 🤖🖖🤖💚

[dr.mikeybee]

Scott Buchanan once said, "wherever I go in my mind, I meet Plato coming back. Joscha's lesson on Aristotle is clear. These ancient philosophers were great thinkers. I'm fairly convinced that the error function in LLMs models a world view that approaches Platonic forms. In other words, in fourth century Attic Greece, Plato's forms adumbrated the foundations of AI.

[saberier]

Cant wait till we figure out that language on the substrate of the nervous system that creates the maps of reality our brain uses.