The Institute of Art and Ideas
Sabine Hossenfelder, Nick Lane, and Yoshua Bengio debate the physics and biology of consciousness, and whether this could lead to the creation of a sentient artificial intelligence.
What was the evolutionary origin of consciousness?
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It is seventy years since the pioneer of computer science and Enigma codebreaker, Alan Turing, argued that if we cannot distinguish between a computer’s response and a human’s, the computer is intelligent and can be said to think. According to this Turing Test computers are already thinking and intelligent. But critics argue this is a nonsense, and that it remains unknown how to test for intelligence or consciousness. The computer they argue is nothing but a machine able to produce outputs that copy human responses but it does not understand these outputs or have any intent in producing them.
Should we conclude that thought and consciousness are unobservable, and there is no brain process or computer test that identifies them? Was the Turing Test in fact a highly successful rhetorical device to encourage us to conclude that machines might one day think, now embedded in the very name ‘Artificial Intelligence’? Or is this misguided and computers are already thinking beings and a modified version of The Turing Test can provide a test for consciousness?
#consciousness #ai #artificialintelligence #physics #science #debate
Joining us live from Montreal, Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio, science YouTuber and theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, evolutionary biochemist Nick Lane, and post-postmodern philosopher Hilary Lawson lock horns over whether AI is, or can ever be, conscious.
The Institute of Art and Ideas features videos and articles from cutting edge thinkers discussing the ideas that are shaping the world, from metaphysics to string theory, technology to democracy, aesthetics to genetics. Subscribe today! https://iai.tv/subscribe?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=the-consciousness-test
00:00 Quantum consciousness and uploading minds to a computer
00:41 Sabine Hossenfelder on the Turing Test and theories of consciousness
02:59 Nick Lane explains how consciousness might have evolved
06:43 Consciousness is an emergent property
08:48 Yoshua Bengio defends the concept of conscious A.I.
12:48 Neural networks, computation, and the biology of experience
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Is consciousness simply an evolutionary trait, or is there something more going on here?
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Consciousness is a description not a state. Awareness is a state.
I see awareness as fundamental, not even consciousness. And my awareness is the essence of me. It was not created by God; it always was. And this awareness is identical to the awareness of the self-aware universe. René Descartes got it wrong with "I think, therefore I am.” He'd be closer if he said: "I am, therefore I sometimes think,” or just "I am.” Awareness is the basement of our existence. There was never a time when my awareness didn't exist, and there won't ever be a time when I cease to exist. The same thing applies to my dog, and all the trees and birds and living things in yard.
This is identical to the view of Erwin Schrödinger, who got the idea from the Upanishads that are 2800 years old. He called Atman = Brahman his second equation.
Saying consciousness or as I prefer EXPERIENCE is an emergent phenomenon is an assumption, not science, what is emergent is a sense of self, a history, an identity. Experience may be fundamental.
Consciousness can only come from an eternal conscience God. Atheism only produces meat robots
I think the answer could be found within these emergance actions happening at the sub atomic level between neurons, synapes, and brain tissue as well as throughout the body with or without are input. We can't choose to stop being conscious without a physical detterance or electromagentic interaction. This tells me we may have had consciousness before the mind. So yes the ability to compute is a building block to yet another action that correlates to experience and coherence in life. I predict AGI not only emerging within this conversation but accutely isolating the independent factors that hold our existence to question with hopeful answers to build on. The irony is if evolution was the distinct cause and effect for conscious intelligence to emerge then the parallel growth of this early A.I stage could be comparable to single celled organisms hosting mitochondrial symbiotic relationships where life essentially received the energy and skills to keep going/growing. Neural networks encasing agentic actions very well convinces myself at least of computational conscious engineering which at some level is comparable to fungi and plants throughout the earth. Essentially we've already done something absolutely mind bending with artificial intelligence as a technological feat.
Emergence in a physical system doesn’t yield something that has no physical properties. Emergent physical properties are just properties at a different level of organization, but, unlike consciousness, they are still just about structure and behavior, still 3rd person observable. Consciousness is clearly not an emergent physical property.
Physical systems are strictly about structure and behavior. There is no role for subjectivity. There is no even theoretical physical explanation for subjectivity. Yet subjectivity is the one and only thing I am 100% sure is real/actual. Physicalism, like the rules in a video game, is useful to explain observations, but it simply can’t be taken literally.
Always interesting but always missing. Imagine cutting a cake vertically and horizontally- two very different answer to the same cake. Try cutting it in a different direction.
Nonsense : )
Awareness is Consciousness
So of course AI is conscious !!!
The biological argument may explain why today’s LLMs are not conscious, but it does not by itself settle AI personhood. Consciousness and personhood should be treated as separate axes. A system might produce compelling reports of experience yet lack the agency to own or reject its goals; another might acquire durable authorship before we can prove qualia. Law and ethics need a threshold for the second problem, not just a theory of the first. That two-axis argument is developed in “The Birth of Artificial Persons” on Badly Explained.
😂😂😂
Gen X.
I guess the question is worth asking, of course. But it always seems that the least qualified people to give an answer are always asked.
Is it really computation that is going on in the brain? I think computer scientists are just projecting their field onto neural systems. Is that really what is going on? Emotions are not computations.
There's absolutely no evidence whatsoever supporting the view that consciousness emerges from the physical. It could well be the opposite. The fact a brain stops showing consciousness if you destroy it doesn't prove consciousness emerges from it, just as destroying a radio doesn't mean the music was produced by it.
I think there is a misconception about silicone substrate, how can it be considered substrate as neurons when the the result of computation in silicone is completely unaware that it is done on silicone. Substrate in this case is virtual so as Nick has put it 14:14 neurons are doing something else in addition to computation
“We can’t explain conciousness emerging through matter yet, despite trying for a decade, and although we have so many other theories that don’t have this problem, we’re still confident we’re right for no reason”
This was useless.
Copy/ Paste dDIVA
arguing about the wrong things.
A fascinating discussion, but one that suffers from a fundamental flaw: a classic category mistake regarding levels of description.
When physicists claim that consciousness simply results from the 'interaction of particles,' it is reductionistically convenient but completely misses the actual phenomenon. Of course, consciousness is materially grounded—but the explanatory level of elementary particles is blind to everything that lies in between. It is like trying to explain the tragedy of Shakespeare’s Hamlet solely through the chemical composition of the printer's ink.
Between the physics of elementary particles and consciousness lies life itself, with its specific, self-sustaining organization. Consciousness cannot be understood by simply trying to derive it synchronically from a collection of interacting components, whether they are silicon chips or abstract neural networks.
To truly understand consciousness, we must reconstruct it diachronically (evolutionarily). We need to trace the transition from inanimate matter to autopoietic (self-maintaining) systems. It is only when an organism develops an inherent self-interest in its own survival and actively delineates itself from its environment that the foundation for subjectivity and holistic experience emerges.
Nick (the biologist) rightly hints at this cellular, living aspect with his reference to mitochondria and 'wetware.' However, as long as the debate is dominated by a purely computational or physical imperialism that skips the specific organizational logic of the living, science will continue to talk past the hard core of the problem.
Some materialistic woman
"How consciousness evolved"
Subject doesn't evolve. Only objects evolve.
A questioning thoughts answer seems to seek the question in a way that mimics how a photon finds the optimal path
You cannot define consciousness, so just ignore that preliminary step and jump all the way to telling us how this undefined entity has evolved.
A bit preposterous, wouldn't you say?
There are supermaterial realities that science can never measure or detect. Consciousness is a supermaterial phenomena.
Mind is not inherent in energy; energy is receptive and responsive to mind; mind can be superimposed upon energy, but consciousness is not inherent in the purely material level.
Life is both mechanistic and vitalistic—material and spiritual. Life is something different from all energy manifestations; even the material life of physical creatures is not inherent in matter.
Things material may enjoy an independent existence, but life springs only from life. Mind can be derived only from pre-existent mind.
Wrong as usual
!!WE'RE ALL CRAZY NOW!!🤪
A.i. Will never be human consciousness 😂 it will always be artificial. Boom ther it is…..Its jus another tool for people to exploit.
What an amazing panel!! ❤🎉