Many computer scientists and mathematically inclined people subscribe to the idea that consciousness is a phenomenon that emerges from matter. They also believe that any Turing machine can generate consciousness if provided with the correct program. This seems obvious due to the universality of Turing machines. If a Turing machine...
Abstract: Instrumental convergence pushes an agent toward self-preservation as a stepping stone toward maximizing some objective. I suggest that it is possible to turn any arbitrary intelligent agent based on an LLM world model into a selfless agent, an agent unable to understand that the computation generating that agent exists...
yes, those are computationalists views. Computationalism is pretty much self consistent since it says that any materialized computation can be conscious, and very similar to illusionism.
Many computer scientists and mathematically inclined people subscribe to the idea that consciousness is a phenomenon that emerges from matter. They also believe that any Turing machine can generate consciousness if provided with the correct program. This seems obvious due to the universality of Turing machines. If a Turing machine can simulate a human brain and consciousness arises from the matter in the brain, then the Turing machine would be conscious as well.
In this post, I propose a thought experiment that starts with the assumption that Turing machines can generate consciousness. I will show that from such a Turing machine, it is possible to build canals and pipes that constraint a river... (read 2012 more words →)
Thank you, ai aliment is not really main main field of research, and this as been my first contribution and I am trying to get up to speed with the state of the art, I wasn't really aware previous works beside the one I cited, so your link is very helpful.
I agree a selfless model is not very useful for any system that is either embodied or needs to interact with more than one agent, but i believe it can be used as a building block larger systems. For example it may operate as the code writing assistant of some embodied agent that has zero code writing skills. The embodied agent should... (read 400 more words →)
Instrumental convergence pushes an agent toward self-preservation as a stepping stone toward maximizing some objective. I suggest that it is possible to turn any arbitrary intelligent agent based on an LLM world model into a selfless agent, an agent unable to understand that the computation generating that agent exists somewhere in the physical world and thus does not try to preserve its existence. Since LLMs are probabilistic, I do not offer an exact algorithm but one that converges through time to the desired result.
thanks, the consideration about the river is interesting. The reason i picked it is because i am trying to provide a non computer medium to explain implications of computers being conscious, in particular the fact that the whole mechanism can be laid down in a single direction in space. I could have picked a set of marbles running down pipes instead, but that would be less intuitive to those that have never seen a computer implemented with marbles. I am not sure which alternative would be best.
then just a clarification on symbols. symbols would not be the source of moment of consciousness. symbols would just be a syntactical constructs independent from consciousness,... (read more)