Artificial intelligence officially gets scary

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
But every such technological light would seem to be accompanied by a shadow of sorts. That said, I think if you zoom out enough, it’s clearly a net positive development
 

vimothy

yurp
I think this is most poignantly where I differ from the board. This excites me endlessly, whereas I suspect it may be among the most dreadful possible news some of you could imagine.

We are getting closer and closer to demystifying consciousness. May happen sooner than I thought, as I was unaware of the research covered by this article.
nothing in that quote implies a demystification of consciousness, just a mapping of mental states to database rows
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
nothing in that quote implies a demystification of consciousness, just a mapping of mental states to database rows
Yeah I don’t think this research will bring us all the way there, or even closely, but I do think it indicates a clear and substantive step forward.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Consciousness would seem to be the endgame of this line of inquiry, starting with more basic things such as mental states, as you say.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
AI as it currently exists doesn't really have anything to do with human consciousness
I agree, I think the most advanced AI techniques I am aware of come nowhere close to artificial consciousness. But I do think artificial consciousness is clearly the thing we are building towards, just don’t know how long it will take, how many steps of punctuated equilibrium we are away from it.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
But I’d be hesitant to dismiss the prospects, largely because of how, as the article states, advancements in AI can fuel advancements in neuroscience, and vice versa.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
the success of AI as currently understood is predicated on the failure of human consciousness
As in, the failure of human consciousness to process high-dimensional datasets? I agree, and I don’t think artificial consciousness will necessarily be made to fit the mold of natural consciousness. It may be qualitatively different altogether.
 

vimothy

yurp
I agree, I think the most advanced AI techniques I am aware of come nowhere close to artificial consciousness. But I do think artificial consciousness is clearly the thing we are building towards, just don’t know how long it will take, how many steps of punctuated equilibrium we are away from it.
what we're building towards is the mechanisation of human consciousness
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
I literally think we will program something that can experience the world not entirely unlike how we experience it.
 

vimothy

yurp
a lot depends on what you consider conscious. IMO a logistic regression function is not conscious, for e.g., and it makes no sense to talk of one as if it is
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Don’t know/understand what logistic regression is, or any advanced statistics yet, but I’d agree that my understanding the cutting edge machine learning algorithms come nowhere close to conscious.

There was a good definition that a neuroscientist gave of consciousness, which I will have to paraphrase until I can locate it. Something like this:

A thing is said to be conscious is there is something that it is like to be that thing, a certain likeness of being that thing.
 
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