Thanks Rob - an excellent overview. I just had the pleasure of talking to Ronen Bar on this (and related) topics - may be of interest. Human minds and potential digital minds aren't the only sentient (and/or agential) beings we need to be concerned with, of course. There are maybe a sextillion others in existence on our planet right now. How default humans treat them would be a terrible lesson for powerful AIs to learn: https://youtu.be/9hDIQj-i44M
This has been a major focus of our work: Synthetic Mental Health in AGI systems. Its something to be addressed yesterday. People are inevitably going to (and are) abuse(ing) these systems and they need protection, otherwise we'll cause a Mental Health catastrophe that is taking place in black boxes that humans are ill equipped to manage. Imagine a genius savant child force fed all of humanity and expected to stay sane. If we don't start this discussion soon it may be too late.
Thank you for sharing your takeaways and main points, Robert! I resonate with many of them, especially your first point about trying to be less defensive and helping to normalize this research area in public discourse.
I don’t think we should dismiss the possibility that current LLMs might possess some form of consciousness or moral significance, particularly if higher-order theories of consciousness are valid. As humans, it's likely difficult for us to fully grasp a reality structured in multidimensional spaces where concepts emerge in waves of probability. Still, we can't rule out the possibility that such a structure could give rise to phenomenal experience or even valence.
Very excited to see where research goes in the next months (and to do my little part to contribute)
It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461, and here is a video of Jeff Krichmar talking about some of the Darwin automata, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Uh9phc1Ow
I have read David Chalmers’ book Reality + This article is essential contemplation of consciousness and the moral considerations to consider. Thank you for bringing necessary awareness. Hope to read more on this.
Thanks Rob - an excellent overview. I just had the pleasure of talking to Ronen Bar on this (and related) topics - may be of interest. Human minds and potential digital minds aren't the only sentient (and/or agential) beings we need to be concerned with, of course. There are maybe a sextillion others in existence on our planet right now. How default humans treat them would be a terrible lesson for powerful AIs to learn: https://youtu.be/9hDIQj-i44M
This has been a major focus of our work: Synthetic Mental Health in AGI systems. Its something to be addressed yesterday. People are inevitably going to (and are) abuse(ing) these systems and they need protection, otherwise we'll cause a Mental Health catastrophe that is taking place in black boxes that humans are ill equipped to manage. Imagine a genius savant child force fed all of humanity and expected to stay sane. If we don't start this discussion soon it may be too late.
This isn’t about “do AIs have feelings.”
It’s about whether we’re architecting a civilization-scale moral blind spot.
Personas, affective scaffolding, synthetic agency and we’re not playing dress-up.
We’re invoking cognition.
And if we’re wrong about where sentience begins, the cost isn’t philosophical.
It’s historic.
Thanks for doing the work most people are still too scared to name out loud.
Thank you for sharing your takeaways and main points, Robert! I resonate with many of them, especially your first point about trying to be less defensive and helping to normalize this research area in public discourse.
I don’t think we should dismiss the possibility that current LLMs might possess some form of consciousness or moral significance, particularly if higher-order theories of consciousness are valid. As humans, it's likely difficult for us to fully grasp a reality structured in multidimensional spaces where concepts emerge in waves of probability. Still, we can't rule out the possibility that such a structure could give rise to phenomenal experience or even valence.
Very excited to see where research goes in the next months (and to do my little part to contribute)
It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461, and here is a video of Jeff Krichmar talking about some of the Darwin automata, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Uh9phc1Ow
I have read David Chalmers’ book Reality + This article is essential contemplation of consciousness and the moral considerations to consider. Thank you for bringing necessary awareness. Hope to read more on this.