Synthetic Sentience: Can Artificial Intelligence become conscious? | Joscha Bach | CCC #37c3

from official page:
Despite the rapid progress of AI capabilities, the core question of Artificial Intelligence seems to be still unanswered: What does it take to create a mind? Let us explore the boundaries of AI: sentience, self awareness, and the possibility of machine consciousness.

After many attempts to build AI models that are smarter than human beings, we find ourselves confronted with a family of surprisingly successful systems that match many of our abilities through text prediction and text/image correlation. The limits of these approaches are presently unclear, and while they work in very different ways than our minds, they pose the question whether consciousness, embodiment and motivation are necessary for achieving general intelligence. What are the differences between human (and animal) minds and the current generation of AI models? When we compare perspectives on mind and consciousness that have been developed in neuroscience, philosophy of mind, theoretical and therapeutic psychology, and numerous cultural traditions, and translate them into the metaphysics and conceptual frameworks of artificial intelligence, we may gain insights into this question.
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organizer: @mediacccde

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chapters:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:00 What is consciousness?
00:06:03 Computationalism and representation
00:11:01 Consciousness as second-order perception
00:15:16 The problem of ontology and metaphysics
00:20:46 Biological and artificial intelligence
00:30:23 Ethics and collective agency
00:39:03 Self-organizing systems and sentience
00:45:19 Evolution and intelligent design
00:51:02 Substrate-agnostic minds and uploads
00:56:09 Questions and answers
01:03:02 End of talk

[PetterWolff]

Bach is such a phenomenon. The final passage of his speech is simply fantastic. I wouldn't be surprised if this is going to be watched in the future, after everything has expanded out from the singularity.

[aliuddinkhaja]

JB is generations ahead - from a different galaxy. He is the only scientist I sm aware of who is integrating multople disciplines especially philosophy and theology and even scriptures - into current science and A1. Beautiful and amazing. ❤

[J-Blitz]

I had to turn it to 0.75x speed to follow his talk. Still cannot say that I fully comprehend it. Joscha is simply on a higher level. It seems all these ideas and concepts are super intuitive to him while I am busy turning his sentences into sth that my monkey brain can make sense of. 😅

[snurrebassen]

not sure if the subtitles were accurate but "meat space" is my new favourite term for "in real life"

[luitek]

I was so pleased to hear Joscha comment on Julian Jaynes... it's something I always wanted him to comment on and here he finally has! I laughed out loud when he said Jaynes chose the wrong title for his book and should've called it, "The Origin of the Personal Self in the Breakdown of the Polytheist Mind"... so good, and probably right to say so!

[Vicwolfidentropy]

Excellent speaker; ahead of his time, making an important landmark which deserves respect now, as he will no doubt be remembered for it in the future

[keithwins]

11:45 The conductor of the symphony is another instrument, tasked with listening to a few instruments at a time and increasing their harmony. I find a parallel between this and the IFS Self

[shekhinah]

I'm missing a distinction between consciousness and the contents of consciousness. To me it's an intuitive idea that the contents of consciousness are just virtual representations, what isn't intuitive to me is how consciousness itself arises in a mechanical universe.

[keithwins]

10:30 consciousness is second order perception, the perception that I am perceiving things

[keithwins]

37:30 I'm not an optimist with respect to AGI, but I'm not a pessimist. I am an expectationalist, it's going to happen and we are not prepared

[larawhite]

Utility monster in our society are children and pets! 😊

[keithwins]

20:00 The development of consciousness

[teemukupiainen]

Thank you, Joscha! Just 2 weeks ago I thought about what would I ask him, if I had a chance for one question. My question would have been: What does Michael Levin's Planaria/Barium experiment tell to you?🎻🤩

[wp]

I'm struggling with consciousness being virtual, and as Joscha adds, representational. What is Joshcha's position on whether consciousness is real or not? Consider the quale, red. I accept that red is representational. It is not a property of any subject of our perception. Red is only conjured up in our minds. I expect that Joscha would characterize red as virtual. Does he then mean that red is not real? My belief is that red is real. "Red" is massless. It is not pigment. My best guess is that it results from a bioelectric release of energy that evolution has figured out how to render as an impression of consciousness. In other words, red has a material existence, where material refers to matter and energy, between which Professor Einstein tells us there is an equivalence. If this is so, it gives us the final physical correlate of consciousness. It would not solve the "hard problem." But, it would narrow the search. Returning to Joscha's comments, there appears to be a reasonable argument for a material existence of consciousness. I am unable to sort out if Joscha would agree. The words virtual and representation do not resolve his position on the question to me.

[keithwins]

24:51 gods were a solution to organize society at scale (synchronized across people with rituals and temples, competing for space with our Selves in our own heads)

[keithwins]

14:30 neurons create consciousness in order to see what it would be like if there were a person that cared

[silberlinie]

.. and if we're lucky, she'll take us with her and integrate
us with her into a global planetary agent...

göttliche Gedanken

[keithwins]

23:00 a God is a self that spans multiple minds

[sunnyinvladivostok]

what would be the AI analog of hormones/hormonal signaling?

[travisporco]

brilliant stuff. The question is how do we actually, right now, this minute, find a way to start moving an essential part of ones self into the new digital substrate.