Dataflow matrix machines (by Anhinga anhinga)

The last post in that series:

6) The Mind Game: trying to introspect computer consciousness

June 25, 2012

(a theoretical consideration; but perhaps it will be practical one day)

It is always difficult to adequate feel what someone else feels. Especially, when that someone is made in a very different way. “What is it like to be a bat?” Computational processes in a computer are even more different.

Of course, it is not completely hopeless, one can meditate on this subject, one can try to become one with someone else (including someone else being a computational process), one can get lucky and travel to a reality where such introspection of someone else is possible.

Hybrid consciousness (described earlier in the “closing the loop” post) offers another possibility. Of course, the computational part might be on par with our own “unconscious processes”, which are also very difficult to introspect (of course, we don’t even know whether division into unconscious and conscious processes is even correct).

Nevertheless, this is a very promising setup — to try to include various architectures of the computer side of a closed loop and experiment with our ability to introspect the computer side.

And, perhaps, even experiment with the ability to have an autonomous consciousness with the computer side when the loop is disconnected. It’s an interesting open-ended line of inquiry (although the safety concerns with a system like this are formidable).