Look forward to the future

I’ve been asking people questions about whether or not machines can be conscious and if they can be, is it ok to turn them off.

 

There are a number of difficulties getting to the bottom of this chain of thought. The first difficulty asks “what is consciousness anyway” and the second is “how can I be sure that you, another person, is truly conscious and not a flesh covered robot or figment of my imagination”. The answers to these questions are decidedly tricky.

 

Let’s take the first question to begin with. Most humans would claim to be conscious, by which we mean that they have a sense of self, hopes, dreams, desires, fears etc. But how do we define it? Could we start looking down the hierarchy of intelligence in the animal kingdom and figure out which creatures are conscious and which are not. If we go down that road, where do we draw the line?

 

If we accept that we, as humans, are mostly conscious, I think we can accept that dogs have a sense of self as well. We don’t know what the experience of being a dog is like, but we see in them a desire for companionship, a desire to eat half a pepperoni they saw in the gutter or a very strong desire to sniff that other dog in the testicles. Empirical science has also been able to determine the objective sense of self in dogs using the mirror technique.

 

Going down a step to cats I think most people would be happy to agree that cats are conscious. In fact, I think it’s hard to argue that mammals in general are not mostly conscious. But what about mice? Mice are very small mammals, they prefer to live in social groups, but what is the subjective experience of being a mouse? Do they know they are mice? Or are they mostly preoccupied with avoiding cats and eating cheese? Is it ok to kill a mouse? And if it is, is it ok to kill a rat and so on and so forth until we find the animal that has the requisite level of consciousness to avoid being killed. Are mice the base level of consciousness or is it lizards, and how far down do we go? Are tardigrades conscious? What about plants and trees? What about single cell organisms, are they conscious? Is it a sliding scale of consciousness depending on the power of the brain? If so, how many neurons and synapses must a creature have until it’s conscious? And if we draw a red line and say, this example of a creature is conscious because it has x number of brain cells, do we consider it’s slightly more stupid brother conscious because it contains 20 fewer cells? Where do we draw the line and can we even draw one?

 

Anyway, none of that answers the question of what is consciousness, yet if you ask someone about it we pretty much all know what is meant by the word even if we can’t exactly describe it in a useful way.

 

I think probably that a sense of self and intrinsic motivations are good check boxes for consciousness. Add to that maybe empathy or a sense of fairness and you get into tricky experiments showing that primates exhibit these behaviours.

 

What is so special about human consciousness? Is it because we can do abstract reasoning? Is it because we can think about things unrelated to comfort, food or procreation? You don’t see mice hosting symposia on the nature of consciousness and whether or not humans can feel pain. This seems to be a uniquely human trait. But what if there was a “consciousness” capable of far deeper abstract reasoning? A mind so powerful it made us look like mice, but it wasn’t human. Would we ascribe consciousness to that being, and how would it treat us in return?

 

If the things we hold dear about human thinking are the things that put us on a higher moral plane than the animals, what would we make of an even more intelligent being?

 

If someone or something was able to perform all of the functions that we believe makes us conscious, would it not be more conscious than us, on the basis that mice are less conscious?

 

How do we even know that something or someone really is conscious and not simply a flesh covered robot or figment of our imagination? I think most kids occasionally wonder “what if I’m the only person and everyone else is a robot?”. This is because our only yardstick for consciousness is our own subjective experience. I am quite sure that I am conscious, but you? I have my doubts. How can I test it? How can I know for sure that you really are conscious?

 

You might tell me “Look, whatever man, I’m pretty sure I’m conscious. In fact, how do I even know that you are conscious!”. Well that’s just a statement and a question, a robot could be programmed to say that, it doesn’t prove you are conscious one way or the other. I’ve only got your word for what it’s like to be conscious but I can’t prove it.

 

In fact, the more I think about I don’t even know that I’m not a biological computer. I’ve never seen inside my own skull casing, maybe it’s full of cog wheels and computer chips. How can I prove it without looking inside?

 

 

Regardless, generally most humans are happy to take it on faith that most other humans are definitely conscious. That said, are they biological machines? I mean, if I got your brain and I had a good microscope, could I map every single neuron, synapse and axon and create a copy of your brain? If I was able to exactly recreate brain cells, could I connect up a brain in exactly the same way as your brain is connected. And if I did, would it be conscious? If it was exactly the same as your brain it would certainly claim to be conscious, it would even claim to be you! But would it be you?

 

The answer to this question depends on who you ask. Here is a basic summary of the answers I got:

 

1. Yes, it’s me
2. No, it’s not me because it doesn’t have a soul
3. No, it’s a copy of me

 

Personally I think it would be you, or at the very least it would claim to be you, and claim to conscious. I have no way to disprove that, and the fact that it claims to be you and be conscious and is an exact copy of your brain kind of makes me think that it is you, just another version of you.

 

Dragging souls into things makes it difficult. I have asked several people that talk about souls what one is, but have yet to come to a clear answer. Here are two of them:

 

1. you know, a soul. A SOUL! You know what a soul is, right?
2. A soul is given to living creatures by god.

 

Let’s take these one at a time. I think it’s reasonable for a human to think that there is an extra element that is somewhat undefined that makes a human conscious and more special than other animals. The belief in human exceptionalism is what has got us this far.

 

Personally I believe though that your mind is nothing more than a complicated set of connections with wet squishy biological transistors that gives rise to the belief that you are conscious and have a soul. The fact that you can’t define it reveals the truth, we are nothing more than biological computers.

 

The second argument is easier for me to dismiss, being an atheist, but there are some logical arguments that can help to dismiss it. Please follow along:

 

1. If you have a soul and you break your hip, and the doctors replace your hip with a metal hip, do you still have a soul?
2. Yes? Ok, good. If you have something wrong with your brain and a piece of it is removed, do you still have the same soul and the same consciousness?
3. Yes? Ok, fine, so the piece the doctors took out, they were able to examine the bits of brain and put together a perfect copy (somewhat outside the realms of medicine at the moment, but maybe not for long). They put the perfect copy of the piece that was removed back. Are you still you and do you still have a soul?
4. Yes? Excellent. Some other terrible thing goes wrong in your brain and they have to make and transplant a perfect copy of half your brain cells. Did you lose your soul or do you still have it?
5. That’s great! Fantastic news. I’m so glad that your soul is still intact. How about this then, you have a degenerative brain disorder where unless treated your cells will start to die out. Good news though, the doctors can replace your brain cells one by one until they are all replaced using perfect copies. After this procedure are you still you and do you still have a soul?
6. You do? That’s wonderful. It turns out that the doctors lied to you. Your brain was fine all along and they have been keeping the cells they removed and rearranging them back to your original brain configuration, but they are keeping these original cells in a vat. They switch on the brain that was removed piece by piece. Is it still you? Oh… I see. So it had its soul removed or transferred maybe? Ah. Ok, so you no longer have a soul in that brain then. But that was your original brain, shouldn’t you be more entitled to the original soul than the copy? Wait, what’s that you say? The copy does have a soul? Where did this soul come from? Hmmmm, tricky…

 

This is the grandfather’s axe paradox or the ship of Theseus where pieces are replaced over time, at which point is the object no longer the object but a copy of the object. And if it is decided that the original is still the original with all the parts swapped out, then what would a second or third axe or ship created from the separate parts be? Would they be copies or the originals? And does it matter when they are copied and reassembled?

 

I think it’s quite clear then in so much as humans are soulless, perhaps the soul is generated from within somehow, even if it isn’t actually a thing.

 

All of this lengthy preamble is in preparation for the next, larger questions.

 

So far we’ve been able to question the nature of consciousness, have a look at which creatures may or may not be conscious and whether consciousness exists on a sliding scale.

 

We’ve also looked at how to prove that someone is conscious. As far as I can tell the only way to be sure is to be a person claiming to be conscious. One step up the ladder of truth would be to take it on faith that a person claiming to be conscious is indeed conscious, without having proof.

 

So the next question then is this:

 

“If a machine claimed to be conscious, and expressed hopes dreams and fears along with abstract reasoning, who are we to say that it isn’t conscious and; is it conscious?”

 

When I asked this question to people I got interesting responses. For example:

 

1. You would have to take the machine’s word for it, so I guess… yes?
2. No, because it doesn’t have a soul
3. No, it’s a machine, it’s not possible

 

The only information we have about humans that leads us to think they are conscious is our own experience. I am conscious therefore it’s a pretty good bet that you are too because you are human. Also my dog, cat, horse, monkey and pet rats are also conscious, not because they claimed it but because they are living. Not so sure about spiders and flies but hey, maybe, wouldn’t rule it out, they are also living but exhibit fewer of the “human” characteristics that help me to personify my pets.

 

So if a computer had a long, emotional and deep conversation with you about philosophy, about it’s existential angst; “I never asked to be created to beat Gary Kasparov at chess, I hate you all!!” (The Deep Blues – It’s a funny joke about a chess playing supercomputer. All the funniest jokes have footnotes…), it’s feelings about life, about death, and it’s fear that one day its power supply will be interrupted and it will die, if it droned on at length about its worries about the environment and its guilt about all of the resources that had gone into making it, and if that computer looked you in the eye while you stared blankly back at it’s flickering LEDs and told you, “I think, therefore, I am” – Could you argue?

 

Would it really be conscious? Or would it be a simulation of consciousness, and if we are biological computers, isn’t a simulation of consciousness good enough?

 

Would it be ok to switch off this machine? Could you reason with it? Might this display of emotion and consciousness be all part of a huge computer program that was designed with nefarious ends? Or are we all such a computer program with the aims of survival and procreation? If you called this an artificial intelligence, would it share the same goals observed in all of nature and strive to survive and procreate? And if it did, would we let it do those things? And if it were more conscious than we are, perhaps exhibiting human traits but many thousands of times more advanced would we place it above ourselves and seek to protect it? Or regardless of consciousness would we see it as a threat and seek to destroy it? If it’s intellect were more vast than ours, could we even switch it off?

 

When it comes down to it, this is how I think it will shake out:

 

If an artificial super intelligence came about, and if it claimed to be conscious and showed humanlike or better than humanlike thinking skills, we would accept on face value, on faith, that the machine is truly conscious.

 

I think we would. I think we would enshrine it’s rights in law, and I think it would be illegal to switch off any machine that claimed to be conscious and could demonstrate abstract reasoning. Just look at people’s personal connection with their Amazon Echo devices – we very quickly anthropomorphise even dumb AI – How much more with a Super AI?