Vanessa Kosoy's Shortform

Vanessa Kosoy

This is a special post for quick takes by Vanessa Kosoy. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.

The sketch of a proposed solution to the hard problem of consciousness: An entity is conscious if and only if (i) it is an intelligent agent (i.e. a sufficiently general reinforcement learning system) and (ii) its values depend on the presence and/or state of other conscious entities. Yes, this definition is self-referential, but hopefully some fixed point theorem applies. There may be multiple fixed points, corresponding to "mutually alien types of consciousness".

Why is this the correct definition? Because it describes precisely the type of agent who would care about the hard problem of consciousness.

2cousin_it7y

I'm not sure your definition has much to do with consciousness, as it would also be satisfied by an AI that runs on an Intel processor and whose utility function says all AIs should run on Intel processors.

Its utility function would have to say that all conscious AIs should run on Intel processors. There is self-reference there.

But, I only have rather low confidence this idea is correct (what being correct means here) or important.

1Gurkenglas7y

Your definition says that people's models of other people can be conscious, doesn't it?

Vanessa Kosoy's Shortform

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Vanessa Kosoy's Shortform

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Ω 6