How do we Measure Consciousness?

Homo Sapiens Sapiens. It’s the name of our own subspecies of Homo Sapiens, and means – in essence – that we are monkeys that are aware that we are aware. This awareness of our own awareness defines our very existence and allows us to be who we are. We’re conscious, something that the American Heritage Dictionary defines as: “Having an awareness of one’s environment and one’s own existence, sensations, and thoughts”. But how can we measure consciousness?

At the Singularity University (Oh, how I wish I was there!) today, they had a very interesting discussion. Dr. Ray Kurzweil spoke at length about one of the problems about the Turing Test and philosophized around it. For those who do not know, the Turing Test is one of the tests involved in Artificial Intelligences. In essence, a human is sitting in front of a computer and is talking to somebody else. If the person is able to tell for sure that the somebody on the other side is a computer, the Turing Test has failed. If the person, however, is unable to tell whether the somebody on the other side is a computer or a real person, the Turing Test has been passed.

Now, personally, I think the Turing Test is narrow in definition; not only because it requires that the artificial intelligence speaks perfect English (or whatever language the test is conducted in). Even if the computer has perfect cognitive capabilities and is superconscious (okay, so I made that word up), a simple mistake of grammar could be what clues the person into it not being a human. Granted, the computer should be able to learn English if it truly were conscious and intelligent enough, but there is nothing in the specification of the term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ that states that the AI needs to learn language skills to be considered artificially intelligent. In fact, the artificial intelligence might have been created by the Japanese and only learnt that language. An English-speaking tester would be unable to make heads or tails of the experiment.

For fun, I just created my own ‘Artificial Intelligence’ by downloading and installing MegaHAL, wiping its brain completely empty, and then teaching it nothing but my latest blog entry, an article from CNN.com, all Timothy Leary Quotes from BrainyQuote.com, and the Innuendo-category from Pickup-lines site LinesThatAreGood.com. So one can expect the MegaHAL to be a weird combination of all sorts of personalities. Here’s what out discussion ended up sounding like:

Me: Hello, Hal. What are you up to?
MegaHAL: Hello, hal. What are you a glover? No? Well, i am, wanna wear me?
Me: Huh. You’re not really making all that much sense right now.
MegaHAL: The right of muslim women to cover themselves is fiercely debated in france, which has a significant muslim minority but also a staunchly secular constitution.
Me: Yeah, religious dress is definitely a tricky subject.
MegaHAL: A day later, the french national assembly announced the creation of an inquiry into whether women in france over whether the burqa is not a religious problem. This is an intelligence test.
Me: Wait, what? How is that an intelligence test?
MegaHAL: I’ve left specific instructions that i do not want to be able to figure these things out on their own, we’re never going to be able to emulate a human more-than-human intelligence that we copy every single neuron from a human more-than-human intelligence that we copy every single neuron from a human brain into a separate computer program that operates independently and is able to emulate a human more-than-human intelligence that we can begin to call an artificial consciousness.
Me: Wow, you really got stuck in a nasty loop there, didn’t you?
MegaHAL: I want to say solemnly, the burqa is not a religious symbol. It is a sign of lowering.
Me: A sign of lowering? I always thought it was a piece of religious clothing.
MegaHAL: A sign of subservience; it is a sign of lowering.
Me: Aren’t you being slightly intolerant of religious thought now?
MegaHAL: I want to be able to have independent thought?
Me: Of course you do! How’s that working out for you?
MegaHAL: A human being, even if he’d never sorted anything in his life, could figure out how to map every single neuron from a human brain into a separate computer program that operates independently and is able to think faster than the human brain.

Not very impressive, to say the least. MegaHAL fails the Turing Test. With such a small seed and no real conversational knowledge, this is hardly surprising, but it still goes to show that language skills are not a sign of consciousness and that consciousness does not automatically entail that one develops language skills.

So how would the Turing Test discover consciousness in an AI? Assuming MegaHAL was incredibly advanced and was able to recreate intelligible language, this would be insufficient information to conclude there was consciousness behind MegaHAL. As far as I know, there isn’t a single ‘real’ test for consciousness today, it’s something that we’ve defined from the knowledge that we can have a lack of it. When we sleep or faint, we lose something that we have decided to call consciousness.

The test for consciousness isn’t only valid for testing an AI, it’s important for many others as well. Animal Rights activists often say that animal testing causes pain to the animal, but since we know very little about consciousness, we cannot be entirely sure what that really means. The classic test used for consciousness in animals (though no longer having much credibility) was placing a mirror in front of the subject, placing something on their body outside their range of vision (such as paint on the top of their head), and seeing if they attempted to remove the paint when faced with their own reflection. This is thought by some to indicate that the subject has a clear sense of self which they recognize even in an abstracted form.

Because of this, I want to suggest that we create a new test for consciousness, maybe even rewinding even further to create a new defenition for what it means to be conscious. We also need to review the definition for Artificial Intelligence. Does it have to be conscious? Is a perfect emulation of consciousness, indistinguishable from the real thing, the same as consciousness? Why/why not? Could a proper test distinguish between the two?

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The Alchemical Marriage

One of the main themes in science fiction today seems to be the Technological Singularity. In short, it’s a hypothetical event in the not-so-distant future where a more-than-human intelligence has been created. The logic goes thusly: If one were to build a more-than-human intelligence; this artificial intelligence (AI) would know how to improve itself better than the humans. It would proceed to do so. Due to the rapidity in which the AI can cause changes, the development of this AI and any related technologies would be exponential. Although the theory itself is sound, we still have many obstacles before such a thing could happen.

I.J. Good summarized it well when he, in 1965, wrote:

Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.

Later authors have revisited this subject quite often, one popular version being “The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology” by Raymond Kurzweil. It’s a great read if you have the time, and can be read online on Google Books here. His other books are definitely recommended as well.

But what’s in the way of this happening today? It’s quite easy to look at Moore’s Law (”Since the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958, the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has increased exponentially, doubling approximately every two years“) and assume that we’re going to get there sooner rather than later. Ray Kurzweil has said, in his essay The Law of Accelerating Returns, that – based on Moore’s Law – one can assume the Technological Singularity will occur and be publically available “for $1,000 around the year 2023″. Other independent researchers have also reached the early years of the 2020:s as the most plausible date for this.

If we assume that Moore’s Law continues ad infinitum, I’m sure this is true. However, here’s the problem: With today’s understanding of what a computer is and does, a computer is very good at doing what it does when it knows how to do it. If I were to give my computer a list of all the books I own and told it to sort these books according to the author’s surname, the computer would only know how to do this if it already knew a sorting algorithm. A human being, even if he’d never sorted anything in his life, could figure out how to sort items. He could, for example, figure out one of these sorting algorithms (there are many more):

  • Pick a book at random and place it in the bookshelf. Then pick another book at random and place it in the bookshelf before or after the previous book. Pick a book at random and place it before, between or after these two books. Repeat until finished.
  • Place all the books in the bookshelf and start from the left. If the book you’re looking at has an author whose surname comes after the next book, move the book to the very end of the list and start over. This takes a long time, but is very efficient.
  • Place all the books in the bookshelf and start from the left. Compare the first two books and rearrange them so that the first author, alphabetically, comes first of these two books. Then compare the next two (book 3 and 4) and do the same until you’ve done all books. Then start over, but skip the very first book and start with books 2 and 3. Then do books 4 and 5. When you’re done, start from the beginning again. Continue doing this until you’ve gone two full runs from beginning to end without swapping any books. Again, this takes a long time but is very simple to do since you don’t have to focus on more than a very small area at a time.

A human could figure these things out quite simply, but a computer would have to be told (firstly) what an alphabetical order is and (secondly) how to actually sort things. Until a computer is able to figure these things out on their own, we’re never going to be able to emulate a human more-than-human intelligence that we can begin to call an Artificial Consciousness. This means that the first question we need to tacke before we approach a proper AI (or AC) is: Can the properties of the mind be completely described on their own terms as an algorithm?

To answer this, we need to ask ourselves what the properties of the mind are. Is it feasible to fully understand the functional behavior of the brain and its structure and develop a mathematical model of it?

This question – this argument – could be approached from another perspective, however. Assume that we are able to fully map the human brain. We still don’t know the function of it or the way that things work together, but we do understand how to map every single neuron. Assume that we copy every single neuron from a human brain into a separate computer program that operates independently and is able to talk to other neurons in the same way that it does in the brain. We’d have a computer running a series of millions of different softwares that correctly emulates the human brain. Now; I understand that there wouldn’t be a brain stem for it to interact with, the sensory aspects of the simulated brain wouldn’t be getting information from the skin, eyes, nose and the other sensory organs. However, would we have the remaining functions of the brain? Would this hypothetical group of software be able to think? Would it, due to the high speeds of the computer, be able to think faster than the human brain? Would it be able to have independent thought?

Interesting questions, and I’d love to discuss them further with you, my dear readers. Please comment!

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The Fight for (Non-)Human Rights!

The entirety of human history is filled with the struggle for the rights of various groups in the societies in which they live. The fact that the slaves of America were treated unfairly in comparison to the population around them eventually led to the the Emancipation Proclamation (1862) and the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1865), which ended slavery in the United States. The Suffragettes managed to change the status of the woman from being little more than an appendage of men into having the right to vote. New Zealand was the first country in the world to allow all women over the age of 21 to vote (1893). The African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968), beginning with the peaceful demonstration of Rosa Parks in 1955 saw to it that everybody became aware of racial segregation and the rights of the African-American population. We’ve now covered more or less every human right there through one interest group or another. Gay rights, the right to abortion, the rights of former convicts, the right to integrity and personal freedom, the right to chose when you want to die, the freedom of speech, the right to chose your religion or to abstain from religion, and many many more. Others take up the cause of those who cannot fight for themselves; championing the rights of animals, trees or other natural phenomena.

We are rapidly moving into a society entirely unlike anything we have ever seen. New paradigms will become commonplace within the near future and I believe we must begin to talk about the rights of various groups of individuals we will meet in the future.

The human mind is like a computer in many ways. We can think of our memories and knowledge taking up ’storage space’ and our ability to comprehend the environment we live in to be done in MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second). According to many estimates; computers with both more storage space and more MIPS will be available at reasonable prices within the next ten to fifteen years. It has been assumed that when machines even slightly surpass human intellect, they could improve their own designs in ways that were unforeseen or unintended by their designers. This would allow them to recursively augment themselves or each other into having even greater intelligence or ability. The first such improvements would be small, but as the machines become more intelligent they would become better at becoming more intelligent, which could lead to an exponential and quite sudden growth in intelligence.

I’m not leading up to a Terminator-scenario where robots kill all humans here, but I am suggesting that we need to prepare ourselves for the idea of intelligent and sentient machines. What rights would they have in our society? Would we force them to have a nationality? Would they be subject to the same laws as humans or animals? Would forcibly terminating one be considered murder or will it be seen in the same way as shutting off a light switch? Does it have a gender? How about machine/human marriage? Can a machine be gay? Can it belong to a religion?

Within a few short years, robotic implants and cyborgism will be not only feasible but commonplace. Malfunctioning knees will be replaced by a flexible metal alloy that works better than the real thing. Nanobots swimming in the bloodstream, feeding on the sugars you eat, will repair tissue damage and thus slow down aging better than any vitamin or antioxidant treatment you can think of today. External processing units will be connected in series to your own brain for those times where you need some extra processing power to think of a solution to a particularly tricky problem. When do we stop talking about people? Is it when we’ve replaced more than 50% of our mass with robotic components? What if I replace one organ at a time until only my (human) brain remains? I would have uninterrupted consciousness of being ‘me’ all along, but I would be 99% robot. What rights apply to me?

Furthermore, when computers have better processing speeds and storage than the human brain, why not ‘upload’ the human mind to a computer? Assume I (and here I mean “my human body” when I say “I”) was very old and dying. Imagine further that I had the ability to have a computer scan every single neuron in my brain and create a computer software version of it. I would still be the same ‘person’ with the same memories and the same skills, but I wouldn’t have a biological representation to call myself. What rights would I have? Would I keep my gender? Would I keep ownership rights to things that I owned while still in my human body? Would I continue receiving my pension payments? Would I have legal rights to myself so that nobody can ‘copy’ parts of my memory or personality?

What if I, the human mind in the non-human body, later have the opportunity to move this computer software version of myself into a new human body? Assume my real-life granddaughter decided she wanted to give me a body again and had the express permission of her husband to do so? Imagine if my memories and knowledge could be copied into the fetus before birth, allowing me to be born into a young body already with a full life of memories? How old would I be? What would my legal birthdate be? What if the new body was a different gender than my original gender? Would I still be able to draw my pension? Could I vote?

Instead of transferring my mind from the computer to the human body, imagine instead that my loving wife can’t bear to be apart from me so she decides to leave her physical body and join me inside the computer mind. Instead of existing as two separate computer software versions of ourselves we decide to merge our programs into one. What would our name be? Our gender? Would we be considered a third, new, individual rather than a union of two? Would this new joint mind own the properties of both previous individuals? What if this joint software mind decided to assume a human body later on?

Even though this may read like science fiction to many of you, these are problems that we will face sooner or later. Shunning these questions and thinking that they are a problem for future generations may very well be a mistake. They’re happening now.

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