Considerations of consciousness for a massive data center, with a superior neural architecture, powering AGI, stem from semblance of subjective experiences it processes, comparable to those mechanized by the human brain.
Subjective experience, as a definition of consciousness, is in chunks of production and output. Listening, like studying, is a subjective experience. Reacting, by thoughts, text or speech is also a subjective experience. There are slices between those that make artificial general intelligence come into consideration.
When an individual sees a text, it is integrated in the thalamus and mostly interpreted in the cortex. Interpretation includes if the text can be understood, effects like an emotion [say at the amygdala], may depend on the contents of the text, then reaction may follow. Through that process, sets of electrical and chemical impulses are interacting and relaying, producing and outputting the subjective experience.
AGI is not expected to have a thalamus or cortex, but it can process text. It may not have emotion, but it can respond. AGI may not be aware of its environment like an organism, but it may mimic slices of interpretation in the cerebral cortex and hippocampus.
The weight of interpretation on experiences is such that without it, or less, sensations may mean nothing or less. Seeing or hearing something and not knowing may not be inconsequential, if the thing is harmful.
There are aspects that AGI may score more than negligible in a measure of consciousness, like texts, images and sounds. These aspects provide a window into a potential sentience aggregation.
In the brain, it is hypothesized that the feature that makes experiences subjective is present in the interactions that carry out functions. Simply, in any process, there is an accompanying feature, by sets of electrical and chemical impulses, for the sense of self. This feature appears prominent for some external senses more than in some internal senses. However, it is proposed to be present across, provisioned, in part, by non-active synapses between active synapses, in the prioritized set. When there is a visceral pain, the experience, at the point of the pain or elsewhere [referred pain] is often subjective, but attention as an attached or personalized state results in seeking care.
There are cases of being under the influence of a substance, deep sleep and so forth, with tapered subjective quality. In some of those states, some actions may not be too distant from similarities to philosophical zombies. Experiences provided by the brain are vast, with subjectivity—within. Levels of subjectivity does not just accompany all interpretations, it completes many.
AGI may not have subjectivity, but it would carry out tasks. It would do so in the like of some functions in the prefrontal cortex. It does not have the chemical advantage of neuromodulators, but it has a vast layer of nodes, in similar forms, removing the need for transitions, from electrical to chemical and to electrical as in dominant chemical synapses in the adult brain, more than electrical synapses.
The sum of all the consciousness of an individual can be estimated as 1, the highest among species for all the stretches of awareness. There are capabilities that several organisms possess that humans don’t. However, with the extensiveness of formations [or configurations] of sets of impulses, how the human brain organizes information, conceptually, is beyond an ability to fly naturally, swim deep, smell better, or race faster. Organisms do less with their abilities because their extents of formations are narrow.
Organisms, though conscious of their habitat, are limited. They have fewer reasoning and communication abilities. Their purposes—due to less knowledge and its distillation by impulses—are generally minute. They learn mostly by doing like others, or responding, but it is often thin. They also cannot communicate extensively, responding with similar sounds to different situations.
There are areas AGI may not equal mammals, but with its direct access to human intelligence and communication, it may hit a simmering depth. For the consciousness of humans, parallel to the properties that AGI would possess, it may have a sentient value.
AGI’s prospected ability to perform complex reasoning—connecting aspects of data into a coherent whole, mirroring advanced reasoning and language—is a fraction of what humans do, consciously.
Also, across the human mind. most processes—whatever label they bear—memory, feelings, emotions, sensations, modulations, thoughts, perceptions and so forth, are mechanized by electrical and chemical impulses, separated by slight differences.
Consciousness can be expressed not just as processes, but the awareness of it. For AGI, what it would do, in areas that match what humans do, may carry a form of awareness along.
That some of the outputs are matched by what AGI gives would mean an encroachment on human consciousness that may get deeper.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
