6: In conclusionI suspect that the first context in which we see truly a conscious machine will be in the Internet/WorldWideWeb nexus, but that this will entail a development by stages or levels of hierarchy. I suggest that by the introduction into the Internet of techniques and algorithms for letting the netwok itself develop and extend its connectionism, that is, its hypertext linkages, especially search-by-similarity techniques, and by providing means for closer co-operation with its human users in search processes, using various kinds of "agents" and "web-bots" we might start to actually get a kind of bond between humans and machines that will be radically new. This process will produce a kind of group-mind or "Global Brain" (Heylighen (14)). Then the extension of this towards an actually conscious system will require the introduction, into the net, of the kinds of capacities which I have discused above. Obviously this leaves many issues unresolved. For example: the ethical question: if we do produce a conscious computing system but we don't allow this system to develop its own freedoms and individualities then are we in fact simply breeding slaves? (vide "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick (17)). Also we probably will not be able to do this kind of thing in an individual machine with the classes of technology that we use currently. It is most likely that we will need to be implementing computing machines in biological hardware before they can be made complex enough to grow and learn in much the same way that we do as human children. And of course this leads us to a final question: Are we simply trying to find another way of taking over the natural process and re-inventing ourselves as some kind of extended human or are we simply making more humans? References:1: John Searle: "How to Study Consciousness Scientifically" a paper delivered at Towards a Science of Consciousness 1996. see also "Is the Brain's Mind a Computer Program?" Scientific American, 262, 1990, pp26-31. [back to text] 2: Rene Descartes: (i) A Discourse on Method. (ii) The Treatise on Man. (iii) The Dioptrics. (iv) The Passions of the Soul. [see also extracts from Descartes in the Brain Project web site] [back to text] 3: Wiliam James: Text Book of Psychology, 1892 [back to text] 4: John Locke: A Treatise of Humane Knowledge, 1721 [back to text] 5: Paul Churchland: (i) "Consciousness: its Past and Future" a paper delivered at Towards a Science of Consciousness 1996. (ii) The Engine of Reason; The Seat of the Soul, 1995, MIT Press. [See also the web page Neural Networks and the Computational Brain which includes a precis of Churchland's talk at Towards a Science of Consciousness 1996.] [back to text] 6: Robert Kirk: "The Basic Package and Consciousness" a paper delivered at Towards a Science of Consciousness 1996. [see also Robert Kirk explains the Basic Package a transcript of an interview recorded at Towards a Science of Consciousness 1996.] [back to text] 7: David Chalmers: (i) "On the search for the Neural Correlates of Consciousness" a paper delivered at Towards a Science of Consciousness 1996. (ii) The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Oxford University Press, 1996. [see also David Chalmers on the Hard Problem a transcript of an interview recorded at Towards a Science of Consciousness 1996.] [back to text] 8: Alan Turing: "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem" in Davis, Martin. The Undecidable: Basic Papers on Undecidable Propositions, Unsovable Problems and Computable Functions, Raven Press, New York, 1965. [back to text] 9: HAL, see Simson Garfinkel's article in the January 1997 issue of Wired celebrating HAL's fictional birthday. See also Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey. [back to text] 10: Godel, Kurt. "On Undecidable Propositions of Formal Mathematical Systems" in Davis, Martin. The Undecidable: Basic Papers on Undecidable Propositions, Unsovable Problems and Computable Functions, Raven Press, New York, 1965. [back to text] 11: Richard Dawkins; (i) The Blind Watchmaker. (ii) The Selfish Gene. [back to text] 12: Daniel Dennett: (i) Consciousness Explained, Little Brown & Co., 1991. (ii) Kinds of Minds. (iii) Darwin's Dangerous Idea. [back to text] 13: Steven Thaler: "The Fragmentation of the Universe and the Devolution of Consciousness" [back to text] 14: Francis Heylighen: From World-Wide Web to Super-Brain on the Principia Cybernetica website. [back to text] 15: Alan Hobson: The Chemistry of Conscious States, 1994. Little Brown. [back to text] 16: (I) Steriade, M. and Llinas, R.R. (1988). The functional states of the thalamus and the associated neuronal interplay. Physiological Reviews 68(3), 649-742. 17: Philip K. Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? [back to text] |