have finally succeeded in getting an effecting morphing sequence to turn that brain of ours into a computer - and back again. took ages messing around in photoshop to get the images right. have also added it as an animation at the bottom of my dullest looking slide - "constructing machine consciousness". will try and get in early enough for rasmus to check it's okay before we have to endure what will doubtless be an arduous day at college.

okay - rasmus and i will finish off all we can do tonight. but i would suggest that everyone comes in early to check through their stuff, and have a run-through before standing up in front of the mob. i have done mine 3 times now, including to another friend over the weekend who pointed out several discontinuities, and suggested some smart ideas. i get happier with it after each user-testing session.

back to work now...

Thanks Andrew, that link was very useful in bringing together a lot of what I've been working on. Incidently, I know Kevin Warwick well. A few years ago, I was working with him to try and create a robot presenter for Talk Radio, probably a little ahead of it's time, but not far off now....

Like Mar, I've got problems coming in today, although getting back in time to pick up my child is the main one. I think it's better working on blogger, although my internet connection has been down since I had ADSL installed - last Wednesday, so I'm working at my brother's house for now.

In terms of assets for the presentation, I've already given Rasmus the headings. I don't need anything else really, except access to the Stephen Thaler World Brain plan which I think will be worth bringing up at the end, because it brings us back to current times. This is just a quote which I can post or send by email.

The webography need some work tidying it up, which I can only with a connection as I check through the links, so for now it will have to be a word document. However, I can always work on a HTML page before we go to Milia.

Regards

Jon

020 7222 1234 the wrong number? i'm sorry if it is. but it is the number that london transport list on their own web page. are you sure it isn't just engaged? probably very busy today.

i've added images to my slides for the presentation - all in black and white, so as to fit in with the overall look of the presentation. rasmus and i will finish everything off today, but i did plenty over the weekend, so all we really need is jon's stuff, plus xiaohua's images (here on the server). i've also made sure that our CaPitaliSation is consistent throughout.

are you coming in, jon? if not, just blog your stuff, and we'll add it in here at college. quite good that i learnt how to use director by watching rasmus on friday. (yippee! that's one of the things i failed to do over christmas...)

Hi Everybody,
I'm afraid I won't be there today.
I ckecked the transport site http://www.londontransport.co.uk/ (the phone you gave me Andrew was wrong) and there is NO SERVICE in Northen Line. (I'm in Tooting Broadway)
I'll be conecting after lunch to see the progress.

In case you need to get the metro these are the news:
Tube Service Disruption: District Line No service.
Tube Service Disruption: Metropolitan Line 4 trains operating between Amsersham and Harrow-on-the-Hill.
Tube Service Disruption: Central Line 3 trains operating between Leytonstone and Epping, 3 trains operating between Leytonstone and Hainault,
1 train between Hainault and Woodford,3 trains operating between Ealing Broadway and White City, 5 trains operating between West Ruislip and White City.
Tube Service Disruption: Waterloo & City Line No service.
Tube Service Disruption: Victoria Line 50% service operating between Seven Sisters and Brixton.
Tube Service Disruption: Piccadilly Line 2 trains between Hammersmith and Heathrow.
Tube Service Disruption: Northern Line No service.
Tube Service Disruption: Jubilee Line 4 trains operating between Canary Wharf and Stratford.
Tube Service Disruption: Hammersmith & City Line No service.
Tube Service Disruption: East London Line No service.
Tube Service Disruption: Circle Line No service.
Tube Service Disruption: Bakerloo Line No service.

this could be useful jon: it's an observer article 31/12/00 exploring implications, quoting moravec & joy.

Ok Overview

Comes after Rasmus's introduction to the possibility of a relationship between human and machine - andrew and linda.

OVERALL FUNCTION to provide a frame to discuss machine consciousness.

STRUCTURE -

I THINK THEREFORE I AM - SLIDE ONE
Verbal presentation 17th century philosopher Rene Descartes. Birth of Scientific rationalism. I am thinking because my neurons are reacting with my synapses. If I replicate this in a machine, I create consciousness.

WHAT WOULD EMERGENT MACHINE CONSCIOUS BE LIKE? SLIDE TWO

THE HUMAN EXAMPLE - THE BICAMERAL MIND - SLIDE THREE
verbal reference to descriptions of humans emerging from being internally directed by the voices of gods to realisation of self determination and consequent acts of will, and emotions of fantasy and regret. Of course there are questions of biology here. Emotions are effected by hormone, sun and moon, food and drink. Come back to this later.

MASS CONCIOUSNESS - EVOLUTIONARY CULTURAL PROCESS - SLIDE FOUR
The time it has taken for civilizations to accomodate this change - from Ovid to Shakespeare, from voices of gods to translations into the great passions and tragedies of humanity. We can talk of political consciousness, group conciousness, a global ethic. The mediating of conciousness from parent to child and amongst other members of the community through a joint culture. It is difficult to think of a genuine consciousness without it's context.

HOW WOULD CONCIOUS MACHINES BEHAVE? - SLIDE FIVE

APOCALYPTIC VISION - SLIDE SIX need to check spelling.
The idea that the final result of realising self identity for machines will be in pursuing self interest. Taken to logical conclusions ( and of course modelling on human aggressive drives) Robot empire thoughts based on machines realising their own existential potential i.e they don't need us, we mess up the planet. In fact is this the best planet to stay on?

BENIGN VISION - SLIDE SEVEN
We can replicate our own brains and body parts, in fact download our consciousness into a computer. we canb live forever and have partnerships with acutely intelligent machine beings. Human relationships under a bit of a strain here.

MACHINE RIGHTS? - SLIDE EIGHT
Refer back to Rasmus' video - relationship is key element of debate. Should we let powerful machines gain control of complex systems that we cannot control. Also, if they are to have consciousness, then incorporating them into our political civilization is key to averting revolution.

ALTERNATIVE VIEW

I AM THEREFORE I THINK - SLIDE NINE
Consciousness does not reside in the individual - we are part of a greater consciousness. Christian God, Hindu conscious world, buddhist connectivity.

FIELD THEORY - SLIDE TEN
Radical cambridge biologist Rupert Sheldrake and theories of morphic resonance and it's links to Jung's theory of cthe human collective unconcious. The idea that species memory occurs outside of the individual member of the species.

MIND AS QUANTUM FUNCTION - SLIDE ELEVEN
Links from above to the quantum idea of entanglement. Need to do more reading. basically if the quantum function of the brain can be replicated - and we don't know how because current models need to be created at extremely low temperatures or high pressure in laboratory conditions - then consciousness can feasibly be replicated at some point.

Until then, perhaps what we are seeing is -

VIRTUAL CONSCIOUSNESS - SLIDE TWELVE
Bring up the interactive neural dancer. Briefly examine it's characteristics. Move onto the creativity machine website and show range of applications currently going on. Lastly - show page of the world brain powerpoint presentation from 25th of January this year.

Hi Everybody,
This is my script for my part of the presentation. If there is something you STRONGLY disagree with, we’ll discuss it and change it in the morning at the testing-correcting stage. If not, that’s all!

Rasmus: for the text you need to include in the final Director:
1. Please ignore words within brackets, those are my own words and doings with the people.
2. Question marks are for you to think about the visual/sounds suggestions

Script:

Slide 1:
Team Introduction
ROLES
• Research: Jon, Andrew & Rasmus
• Visuals and Interface: Rasmus & Xiaohua
• Concept Development: Jon, Andrew, Rasmus & Mar
• Project Management/Creative Direction: Andrew & Jon

Slide 2
Team Introduction
OBJECTIVES
Communicate contemporary considerations of consciousness.
Provide overview of whole topic of Machine Consciousness.
Enthuse class about subject and issues.

Slide 3
You are not yourself anymore…
(Maybe with a graphic in the background?)
(Before we introduce you to the fascinating subject of machine consciousness I’d like to do with you a small exercise. It won’t take long, it is quite simple and hopefully it will help to prepare your mind for what is coming next.-Talking
Hand-out papers properly folded with the names of people printed on one side.
They are given without any order.)

Slide 4
…for the next 3 minutes

• Please open the piece of paper and read the name written on it. If anybody has his/her own name please exchange it with somebody else.

• Close you eyes and concentrate for a few seconds on the person whose name is written on that piece of paper. Think of the way he/she moves, laughs, speaks and thinks.

Slide 5
More Instructions
• When I say open your eyes. You are not going to be yourself anymore. You are going to be that person who you were thinking about earlier (i.e. the name on the paper)

OPEN YOUR EYES.
• Now, please answer the following 4 questions on the back of that same paper. But remember when answering the questions that you are NOT yourself anymore

Slide 6
Questions
(using some soft classical music to help them think?)

• 1. Describe what you SEE
(Guernika painting by Picasso)

(give them time before going to the next question)

Slide 7
• 2. What is your favorite childhood MEMORY?

• 3. What have you LEARNT from working with other people in this project?

• 4. What is CONSCIOUSNESS for you?

Slide 8
You are now yourself again
(if there is music, stop it)

(See if they are finished-ask them so)

• You can now get up and give the paper back to its real owner.

Slide 9
A journey of self-discovery
(you could play with the word self?)

• (Talking---After this exercise I hope you have realised how difficult it is to have a clear definition of consciousness and how this definition is going to be related to your own subjectivity. So the next thing we are going to deal with is a range of reputed definitions of consciousness to help us understand what consciousness means or doesn’t mean.
• After that, we’ll look into the common ground features for consciousness to exist. And we’ll analyze with Andrew how well these features can be reproduced in the computers of the future.
• Finally, before we let you fire your questions Jon will initiate the debate with limits, implications and a broad range of questions about machine consciousness. And if you are eager to know more you will be given a reference web page for your further readings into the subject)

Presentation Structure
• Definitions of consciousness. What it means and doesn’t mean.
• Requirements for consciousness.
• Technology today and tomorrow.
• Open questions. Limits and implications.
• Bibliography/web links.
• Questions and Answers.

that's good with me, jon. as discussed, i'll take over your "computational power" a) and b), plus the question that follows it on to what extent computational power equates with consciousness. i'll make sure this sets you up well to talk - under "implications" - about ways our lives may be affected.

Andrew,

Thanks for that and yes you can take the graphs back - just let me know how much of the growth of machine capability you need for your section. If I'm to concentrate more on impilications, and I'd be keen and happy to do so, although it will involve a lot more reading before the presentation - then there's an arguement for putting most of the technological revelotion in your enabling section - including the neural net example because it shows where we are now.

jon

that's just a few things i can remember off the top of my head. kurzweil describes many other realistically possible changes in his chapters towards the back of the book, and it'll be worth reading them. some are astonishing, but surprisingly plausible.

implications for our lives over next few decades:

life enhancements (kurzweil). this is very exciting, very challenging. cars that drive themselves and never crash. neural net -designed bots buzzing off to the web to find your favourite news stories, films, music.

better understanding of our own minds through experimentation with trying to build conscious machines. faster, more thorough learning techniques, better ways to rebuild lives shattered by war, depression, neurological disorders.

machine rights as further evolution of rights movement (sexes, races, animals, machines, etc.)

developing relationships with virtual partners (this is for real, incredibly enough)

possibility of transporting ourselves forever into a virtual world instead of dying, etc., next evolution of our species will be in an enhanced machine/human intellectual virtual world, with effectively no boundaries.

scary shit from respected authorities: hans moravec, robotics prof at carnegie mellon, wrote "robot: mere machine to transcendant mind", which delineates his fears of our becoming subservient to machines
bill joy, top techy (see rasmus's link below), about how we are creating the race that will supercede us.

i have the feeling this is more the sort of thing that actually touch our lives over the next few decades...

er - can i steal the graphs and do the bit about future growth in my section?

FUTURE DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLICATIONS

1. COMPUTATIONAL POWER
A.) FUTURE – Graph of projected exponential growth. When will machines match and surpass human brain capacity.
B.) NOW – SEE NEURAL DANCER, AND WORLD BRAIN PLAN.

QUESTION – DOES COMPUTATIONAL POWER EQUATE WITH CONSCIOUSNESS?

2. GREATER CONSCIOUSNESS DEBATE
A. DIVINITY – the idea of the external consciousness which we are part of.
B. ENERGY FIELDS – Sheldrake and morphic resonance.

QUESTION – DOES MATTER MATTER – is it part of an energy pattern.

3. EVOLUTIONARY CONCEPT – Function of culture –consciousness in development, from Jaynes to Marx and beyond.

QUESTION – DO MACHINES BELONG TO OUR CULTURE OR THEIR OWN?

4. MACHINE RIGHTS – JOY AND MORAVIC. See also apocaplyptic history of next thousand years. 2001 space oddysey image blinking eye.

QUESTION – HOW DO WE DEFINE OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH MACHINES?
CHILD? MASTER? TOOL?

First draft of structure for last five minutes. I emphasise first draft. Any thoughts - I'm sure there's something missing, inparticular quantum theory and comoputers is something i know very little about. Also as Andrew points out, the quality of the research fields are not equal - but as rough outline of area of debate - what's left out and what needs to be?

Jon

Thanks Andrew.

Jon

Andrew,

Do you have any words for the definiation of consciousness and the 6 aspect of cousciousness?
Xiaohua

jon - graphs for you to use as assets are here in a word document:

Maimm server 6:\ANDREW\Machine Consciousness\exponential graphs.doc

MACHINE CONSCIOUSNESS
AGREED STRUCTURE


0. Brief Team Introduction. /MAR

1. Game & Overview of presentation/ MAR

2. Consciousness Definitions/ ANDREW

3. Video 1/ RASMUS

4. Deconstruction/ ANDREW
a. requeriments for consciousness (Interface/ XIAOHUA)
b. technology present and future

5. Video 2/ RASMUS

6. Debate & Biliography /JON

7. Questions/ALL

Andrew. I'm not sure what you mean by the different discipline of mass media popularity and the values of popular TV, which you have so disparagingly referred to in your previous blog. The only area TV or film values have been discussed today has been in the development of the video project with Rasmus. I've asked him and he's content with the result of the creative dialogue we've had. If you're not, then please say why. I object to your insinuation that what I'm doing is bringing simplicity rather than clarity to the issue

However, I do agree with you that this project is starting to be plagued by distraction. I think this is a problem of assumed rather than agreed roles. Firstly, we need to clarify and separate the tasks of project leader and creative director. I think these are separate functions and separate skills. I am happy to do either or none. Secondly, we need to entrust individuals to get on with their specified tasks.

I hope we can resolve this first thing in the morning and get on with the task in hand.

Regards

Jon

let's keep cracking on folks, as we only have wednesday and thursday to complete the rest of the first draft. friday is for user-testing and reworking if necessary.

everyone in the team developed our product today in a very beneficial way, with loads of great ideas coming together. and i think we are all much happier to have clearer work targets on which to focus. nonetheless, one of the main features of the brief, and of our core concepts defined on monday, is that we retain our approach of academic rigour, rather than that of popular tv. this is ma level. please let's try and keep this in mind as we steer our presentation towards completion. if there's any confusion then we can always look back at our mutually agreed answers to alan's 4 structuring questions.

in my view the clear core message remains: a) consciousness involves challenging concepts, but with some emerging patches of clarity; b) deconstruction of human consciousness to elucidate certain key elements; c) brief exploration of those elements, and discussion of possible enabling technologies (no certainty, let's be honest, just promising directions for the technological research to follow); d) reconstruction into notional machine consciousness.

at the beginning we should employ an interactive game which introduces the audience to some of the problems of consciousness, followed by a discussion of the concepts raised and some of the definitions suggested by respected authorities. this can then be developed in a multimedia format by the carefully crafted opening and closing videos, with the core message (a, b, c, d outlined above) sandwiched in the middle. then "where we're at now", frontiers & timescales, implications, webography, questions.

xiaohua has just commented that the above 2 paragraphs might make a useful summary slide at the start of our presentation to describe what we are covering, and i am reminded that alan reckons this adds clarity to the product.

i hope we can all agree to focus now on putting more flesh on these clearly defined bones, rather than trying to rebuild the skeleton. we must not let our core mission be distracted by the very different discipline of mass-media popularity.

see you tomorrow.

Schedule for Machine Consciousness - video production

Filming

Machine realm
People involved:
• Rasmus
• Arada
• Actor1 (???)

Props needed:
• Jon's laptop computer

Time          Location   Scene
11:00-12:00   Park       Machine waking up

Human realm
People involved:
• Rasmus
• Arada
• Actor2 (???)

Props needed:
• Computer at desk, preferably near a printer and a window

Time          Location   Scene
13:00-14:00   College    The complete in-sequence and the end of the out-sequence

Other requirements before editing

Sounds effects needed:
• Agreement on which brain chart should be superimposed on the faces�Ethis brain chart will be the same chart used as a starting point within Director.
• Camera shutter
• Agreement on the color-coding of the different sections within Director

Editing

People involved:
• Rasmus
• Mar

Time
Since I have no experience with editing, this cannot be established �Eany thoughts? I hope to actually finish same day (late most likely).

OUR PRESENTATION

1. INTRODUCTION - VERBAL INTRO - TEAM AND ROLES. We can keep this short and don't need to create any assets. They know who we are. We just need to say who did what.
2. THE TASK - OVERVIEW - MACHINE CONSCIOUSNESS. (Mar's interactive game thought here. Consider the idea of examining the metaphors within which we consider these questions.) The term MC holds the question within it. Consciousness in general parlance is a unique human experience. Can a machine have this capacity? If so, when? And if then - what kind of relationship would we have with the machine? Would it be an avatar of our collective experience? Would it be our child? Would it be our competitor? Could it be our next evolutionary step? Etc…FUNCTION -To set the scale or scope of the enquiry. To introduce and engage the audience with the conceptual challenges ahead. This is our conceptual mood setter.
3. SECTION ONE - VISUAL ASSET - RASMUS' video. OPENING SCENE. 'The dream of the waking machine.' Rodin - ideally a revolving 3d thinker. Image of human engaged in internal thought. Sprites appearing and disappearing with definitions of what consciousness does or doesn't mean, some contradictory, some reactionary - like Joseph Weizenbaum - computer scientist - "The idea of machine consciousness is obscene, anti-human, immoral". This both introduces the confusing disparity of views and demonstrates the image of the internal thoughts of Rodin.
4. PULL OUT OR MIX to reveal a human considering the image of Rodin on a computer screen. The idea is to present the impact of realising that the machine could be looking at the human. We then superimpose a map of brain function on the face of the human, which we will discuss as pre-requisites of consciousness. This makes it a rationalising computer conceptualisation of humanity.
5. COMPUTER QUESTION - Is this human conscious? What are the necessary conditions? Two sprites - One is human behaviour in short scenes. The other short bits of script on the characteristics being examined. - sensory perception - emotions - memory - language & naming - introspection, self-awareness - ability to learn/respond/change course as result of introspection.
6. HUMAN QUESTION - is this computer conscious. Mix or cut to human examining computer image. What characteristics of above does it have. List them. Perhaps this is where we need the animation of the machine equivalent of Rodin, using the same lingo but showing the limitations of computer thinking at present. NEED these defined clearly very soon. (For example - introspection - the analog 'I', therefore the capacity for emotion or the physical experience of the world the language describes. ie, culture.) I still like my idea of human reaction to computer limitation - ie small grin. It delineates simple turning point in story.
7. SECTION TWO - FUTURE OF MACHINE CONSCIOUSNESS ?
8. Graph to show the evolutionary timescale of growth in consciousness.
9. Who's creating the future now? - What's going on now - link to most up to date computer technology we can find. The imagination machine + perhaps the bots learning language, and any quantum imagery we can find.
10. Refer to elements (from other groups) that are moving machine consciousness up that scale - the acquired pre-requisites and the enabling technologies. Add exponential growth factor and discuss possible implementation dates.
11. Discuss implications. can be provocative, e.g. terminator imagery, but quote sources (joy, moravec)
12. Make available Biblio/webography & sources. wrap-up, show audience how to access our site.
13. QUESTIONS


what do you think?

great cartoons. humour should have a place in this otherwise dry topic. let's use them both.

I'm sorry about these silly pictures - but when looking for real brain imagery you come across a lot of this mildly amusing stuff...

great stuff rasmus. shots from films should be taken from the web.

jon and i reckon "creativity/original thought" should be added as our 7th pre-requisite.

These are the tasks I should be on and my comments to them

a overall design of presentation graphics/fonts/colours, & compilation of material onto slides
- That's for Xiaohua and I I would think

b conceive of game, brainstorm, user-test, design, print any papers for audience, etc. (section 2)
- Could we use Jon's neural dancer here?

e conceive & design animations and produce in flash (sections 5, 9, 10)
- It's going to be done in video

g script, direct & shoot, edit & upload video clips (section 7)
- I don't tink we can make this web-based

j research, source imagery (pics? vids?), & write narrative for implications (section 13)
- Has anyone got acces to films or images from the following:
• War Games
• 2001
• Star Trek (something with The Borg Collective)
• Terminator
• The Jetsons (cartoon - I think cartoon network still shows them)
• Richie Rich (same as above)

yes, i see what you mean, jon; some simplification of each section would be sensible. the timings listed below are an absolute maximum that we could accomodate for each section. perhaps 10-20% shorter times would be appropriate. can i have some help with this? (am a wee bit tired today.) when are the boys coming in? xiaohua is here already, and i know that mar isn't around. we have just 2.5 days left to work it all out.

people may want to start picking tasks that they feel they can manage to do...

Hi all,

Thanks for carrying that particular load yesterday afternoon - it looks pretty all inclusive. My only concern is that it is too much for half an hour. The timings you've assumed could work if we are sufficiently choreographed, but it's like a schedule for a live tv programme and those things often go wrong without the practised skills of a floor manager. I'm not suggesting changing it at this stage, just to be aware that simplification of each element of section will not only make the thing easier to create and present, it will probably be easier to understand for our audience as well.

I'm off to see rasmus first thing today and will come in with him.

Oh and one last volunteering thought. I'm happy to write the narratives for some or all of the sections - using journalist skills for consciseness. However, this is best done as an editing function rather than a creation function. It would help if this is done by working with material, definitions, ideas, examples sent to me in batches.

Jon

hi folks. tonight i produced a structure, then logged into blogger, read this evening's blogs, then started again and re-did the structure...

have made more time in structure of presentation for on-line resource to demonstrate where we're at now (i guess that'll be thaler's neural nets - nice one jon). have also made time for a mood-setting game, mar, which could be fun and interactive, and preferably not all on-screen. this will be especially useful if the class has seen lots already that day, and they are tired and the curtains are shut. break it up, change the pace, etc. this sort of technique is even used in corporate presentations, as it's so engaging and fun. we can be interactive in ways the audience will not expect. ideas anyone?

anyhow, here is the reasoning we thrashed out yesterday based on alan's 4 questions, plus the structure that it gave rise to. if it looks too long, just read the structure, timings, tasks & notes:

answers to alan's questions in monday team session were as follows:

1 what is presentation for?
- communicate contemporary considerations of consciousness, esp machines
- provide overview of whole topic
- enthuse class about subject and issues
- ideally, end up with a standalone product for milia

2 what are tools/values we are using?
- academic rigour, not speculation or emotion
- comparison of scientific approaches, evaluation of different theories
- curiosity vs. fear
- important to consider implications of m.c.
- broadening of understanding beyond current level

3 vision for what class feels afterwards? change in mental state of audience?
- consciousness as a human construct, defined by society, accidental rather than innate, akin to definition of colours on the colour wheel; where does blue stop and green start?
- challenge to former visions of consciousness, challenge to arrogance
- replace fear with curiosity, clearer concepts, narrower definitions
- understanding of different degrees of consciousness, differing aspects
- challenge concept of uniqueness of human experience (arrogance again); encourage humbleness
- excited; uneasy; opening a door; enlightened
- seek emotional response

4 mission in sense of journey; what shapes emerge from the fog?
- exploration of human consciousness & ourselves, nature of being human
- some ideas for definition of consciousness
- deconstructed consciousness
- consciousness as a skill that can be developed
- transportability of more of human experience to machine platform

what strategies would be consistent with this?

- to provide some definitions, what it is and what it isn't, explain boundaries
- elucidate relationship of parts to demystify the whole
- to demonstrate convincingly the likely/possible developments, & dispel myths
- involve audience through interactive participation (game?)
- to provoke audience through implications of m.c.
- do not detach from audience: ensure human element throughout to keep it real world.
- real world examples: flash demos from nn websites; interaction with a web-based m.c.
- be convincing, not amateur; professional graphics, quotation of sources, academic rigour, no pseudo-science
- BUT MULTIMEDIA TO BE USED ONLY INSOFAR AS IT IS REQUIRED TO DELIVER WHAT WE WANT TO SAY

***************************************************************************************

this helps sketch out a structure for presentation, separated into 16 sections:

1 slide introducing presentation, aims, team & roles
2 game to introduce known problems of consciousness, and engage audience
3 some definitions, plus reference to metaphors
4 rodin - the thinker; what consciousness does & doesn't mean (quote sources!)
5 DEconstruction animation of human consciousness into pre-requisites
6 these are necessary but not sufficient conditions; explain but be honest
7 other images to represent the following 6 (ish) categories, with 10 second definition of each, followed by 10 second video showing human example of each one:
- sensory perception
- emotions
- memory
- language & naming
- introspection, self-awareness
- ability to learn/respond/change course as result of introspection
(representations of these through clear human or machine imagery - & perhaps colours - eg. red heart for emotions, blue eye or camera for perception)
8 explanation of enabling technologies (quote sources, and refer to other groups, esp. quantum computing)
9 REconstruction animation from the now elucidated pre-requisites, creating a machine equivalent of rodin thinker, (mirror image), pixelated?, looking at a monitor?
10 h.c. thinker wonders aloud about c. of m.c. thinker, but m.c. thinker wonders same about h.c. version.
11 where we're at now; access online resource to demonstrate?
12 frontiers; discussions of timescales, refer to exponential graph (scientific rigour, quote sources!)
13 implications; can be provocative, e.g. terminator imagery, but quote sources (joy, moravec)
14 biblio/webography & discussion of sources
15 wrap-up, show audience how to access our site, etc
16 questions

approx presentation times per section:

1 30 seconds
2 180 seconds
3 120 seconds
4 30 seconds
5 15 seconds
6 30 seconds
7 6 x (10 + 10 + 10 second changeover)
8 6 x 30 seconds
9 15 seconds
10 30 secs
11 150 seconds
12 90 seconds
13 180 seconds
14 60 seconds
15 30 seconds
16 8 minutes

= total of 30 minutes

************************************************************

here are some tasks:

a overall design of presentation graphics/fonts/colours, & compilation of material onto slides
b conceive of game, brainstorm, user-test, design, print any papers for audience, etc. (section 2)
c research definitions & metaphors (section 3)
d research and write narrative for sections 3 & 4 of presentation, and define slide text/subheadings/bullets
e conceive & design animations and produce in flash (sections 5, 9, 10)
f research & write sections 5, 6 & 7 (definitions), and define slide text/subheadings/bullets
g script, direct & shoot, edit & upload video clips (section 7)
h research, source imagery, & write narrative for section 8, & define slide text/subheadings/bullets
i source and test out online resource, research & write narrative for sections 11 & 12,
j research, source imagery (pics? vids?), & write narrative for implications (section 13)
k compile bibliography & webography, annotate, and post up on web server as linked html page (section 14)
l project management

notes

- more tasks will emerge, but this is starting point
- do not spend an inappropriate proportion of time on any section; we should finish in 3 days, & user-test on friday
- use multimedia only where it elucidates, NEVER just for the sake of it; ALWAYS justify its use
- we must all meet in college daily this week; unfair to leave others "carrying the baby"
- those who are writing narratives should pay great attention to skilful use of metaphor
- when writing or designing your sections, keep referring back to alan's 4 questions, & consistent strategies

and of course:

feel free to criticise anyone or anything, but only if you can suggest an alternative, and explain why you think it might work better.

see you in a couple of hours.

So far the printed version of this blog takes up all of 23 A4 pages - not bad for a little more than a week - heh? Just a word of caution to you all - the college was hit by a variant of the "I Love You" virus yesterday - and it might still be around - so be REALLY careful about what you take home from college in terms of files. Generally the Macs are safe to use whereas the NT machines are bad news... all jpg's on server 6 were wiped out - hope you have a back up.

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Jon,

"...In the meantime, I'm still a little unsure if 'spontaneous creation of
significance' is the same as the human phenomena of introspection. Also, in
some accounts of the development of human consciousness there was an
evolutionary step that led to the formulation of the sense of 'I' or 'me' in
the human brain. This step, according to Julian Jaynes, was only about 3,000
years ago and followed millennia of human culture and civilization. Can it
really be possible for these neural nets to reach that sense of 'aha' such a
short time after their conception..."

If you would like the opinion of an AI practitioner who has built immense
simulations of cortical pathways, biological neural networks don't
formulate. Instead they perceive. That's why artificial neural networks are
called "perceptrons." Therefore, at some step of evolution, some neural
networks within the cortical system accidentally began to perceive the
neural cascade within which they were embedded as 'me' or 'self.' This
illusion/delusion proved successful in that those biological mutations that
most strongly developed such neural modules proactively implemented
safeguards against being reabsorbed into the ecosystem (i.e.,
self-preservation, see
http://www.imagination-engines.com/devolution/devo.htm) . Now this
illusion/delusion prohibits most from understanding the nature of
consciousness. The first sign of being led astray is reliance upon
introspection. You can't trust neural networks even if they're your own!

I can greatly accelerate natural evolution by simply 'box-carring" one of
these illusory networks to another network that is daydreaming (i.e., stream
of consciousness). Furthermore, such systems learn and function about
100,000 times faster than protoplasmic neurons. Both factors conspire to
produce the equivalent of "ahas" within a very short period of time (see
http://www.imagination-engines.com/mind2/m2paper.htm)

Just as a successful model of matter was built upon the notion of atoms, so
must a model of consciousness be built upon the neuron and neurodynamics. In
the end, the answers are simple. However, our preconceptions are both
prideful and complex.

Best Wishes,
Steve

Hi Mar,

The word is machiavellian in English -

From what I've read of the presentation and his emails, this is a definite plan, a scheme with a number of partners. The way this company seems to work, ie with the USAF and the British Ministry of Defence, I imagine they will start a project with a couple of ISP's and try out the idea first. I have emailed him back to start a dialogue, but i thought it best to consider some questions as a group that suited our presentation before going into detail.

Jon is great that you got this contact.
Did you asked him what kind of consciousness he's trying to create?
How can he have a plan for the Internet?
is he asking people around if that's what they want from the Internet?
sounds a bit maquiavelic! (can you say maquiavelic in English?)

Is anybody thinking in creating a mood setter (kind of introduction before we get to the hard core facts "the graphic"?)

I'll see you all tomorrow after lunch.
Sweet dreams.

Hi, sorry that wasn't what I meant to do.

The guy has emailed me with a powerpoint presentation from just four days ago, in which a plan is revealed to turn the internet into one vast thinking machine which will study human thought and eventually guide it. he's of the opinion that he is creating consciousness and seems willing to enage in a dialogue. The updated access to the new computer dancing model turned out to have a virus, but the powerpoint works.

I'll post this up in a minute.

Cheers

Jon

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen Thaler"
To: "Jon Akass"
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2001 11:07 AM
Subject: Re: London multimedia project


> Jon,
>
> It was a pleasure talking with you. I'll be sending two packages to you.
One
> of these is the Neural Dancer and the second, my recently presented talk
on
> the "World Brain " concept. The latter would represent the ultimate avatar
> wherein the entire collection of TCP/IP nodes on the internet would be
> converted to a self-learning and creative entity. I look forward to your
> feedback on this Powerpoint presentation and a brief phone call on the
most
> compelling use of the Neural Dancer demo. (Use the password "sthaler" to
> unzip the neural dancer.)
>
> To try out the "International Expirer," go to
> http://www.imagination-engines.com/expirer2/expirer.asp. (Refresh for new
> headlines) Unfortunately, the most recent demos are not on-line, due to
> bandwidth and security restrictions.
>
> Best Wishes,
> Steve Thaler

Last note before I cook family dinner. Have just spoken to Dr Stephen Thaler in America who developed the creativity machine. He's agreed to send new url giving access to an online 'interactive' neural dancer. i.e. the latest model.

Hopefully, he'll email me back this evening and I'll post it later. I've also asked him for his thoughts on when his machines might develop consciousness. You never know. he may put us in touch with one......?


Jon

Oh, and one last thought. It would be a good idea to see if there are any useful newsgroups out there? Anyone know how to find these - once someone shows me how to get started I'll have a look through these as well.

Jon

Hi all,

I don't know how these roles will be divvied up, but here are some elements I can volunteer to do.

Firstly, most of my work so far has been in the ranging over the net to discover the active models and the makers of them that we can use for our project. I would like to continue with this because it has a journalistic and producer element that benefits from my old skills.

Secondly, the attempt to create an overview of our task - and in effect our theorem - has been my approach, rather than the nitty gritty of precise definitions. So participating in the structure and scope of our overlying idea is something I'd like to put my two pennyworth into.

Lastly, I would like to volunteer for the relatively menial but burdeonsome task of creating the annotated webography, so that I can feel I'm taking some of the practical strain of creating this thing, rather than relying on others to bring to life my rather wordy renditions of philosophy.

Other than that, please use me as a sounding board and creative partner for any other aspect of this project, and I'm happy to use my mouth, and wave my arms, as appropriate on presentation day.



Cheers


Jon

xiaohua xue

Some thoughts on your question. The thoughts you describe make up our conscious awareness of ourselves in time and place. But they are culturally driven. we percieve in the cultural narrative within which we've been brought uup to percieve, and with which we interact to create our own personal perception. The various attampts at 'enlightement' that different peoples around the world have attempted and achieved throughout history, can be seen, in this light, as attempts to 'see' or percieve clearly, without this cultural baggage. This may well give the individual the sense of turning off one's thoughts and engaging in a pure interaction with the external world. However, it posits the sense of the individual who is able to have this relationship between the inner and the outer world, and in this sense of the 'I' who is percieving, that the notion of consciousness first exists. .

Birds, as far as I'm aware, do not have the sense of 'I'. It may mean that they're perception of the external world is pure, but it does not have the inner world within which to percieve this.

This is my view from reading. I'm not sure what the others think.

regards


Jon.

I am leaving now. I will be at college around 3:30.

I'm not Budaist.

Some thoughts in my mind. Is consciousness thoughts? What is awarenss? I'm doing this Yoga meditation. One big achievement for doing this is thoughtless awareness. Which is stopping your mind, witness what's going on around you. Another point is raising your internal energy and reach the big ONE. Like a drop of water merges with the ocean. Don't know if this is helpful. But I feel we shouldn't transplant humanbeings' counsciousness into machine. You are not a bird, how do you know the happiness of a bird?

See-ya,
Xiaohua

Bill Joy "Why the future doesn't need us"; Wired Magazine 8.04 - April 2000

Xiaohua?

Are you coming today? Monday?
Please let us know.
Cheers,

minimum requirements list looks very useful. perhaps it's worth adding an adapted version of alan's "functional definition of consciousness" to this list.

have also been reading stephen pinker's book "how the mind works". pinker is another respected authority (harvard, stanford, now prof of psychology at m.i.t.) - and some of his ideas echo alan's functional definition. mar - i have bought roger penrose's "emporer's new mind", which looks fascinating (haven't read much so far - would you like to borrow it?) penrose is perhaps one of the best researched and most respected sources who denies the possibility of machine consciousness.

daniel dennett (tufts university prof of philosophy) says consciousness "is largely a product of cultural evolution that gets imparted to brains in early training". i like it - very postmodern deconstructionist.

have just got back from weekend out of london becoming godfather to my friends' baby. makes me think about life and consciousness again, and also about degrees of consciousness. this approach would be essential in any discussion about minimum requirements.

has everyone had a look at alan's (michael wolfe - inspired) questions to help us structure our thoughts? see questions 1-4 of rasmus's blog last friday 1/26/2001 5:32:25 PM. if we all sit together monday morning and discuss our ideas on these, we should be able to develop some structure for the project.

maòana everyone!

I keep thinking that consciousness is a human concept that applies to humans - it's how we attempt to distinguish ourselves from animals... and if we extend it towards animals, planets and the universe we're leaving the original human meaning of the word behind... it's not an all-encompassing concept - and if ants and planets have "different levels of consciosness" - then I think we're stretching the concept a little far... but this could be just another semantic discussion, and I'm fed up with those.

Okay - suppose we call the lot consciousness - which parameters can we come up with to describe the different levels? I suggest the following to be included (again, take a whack at it):

Observing
Language
Self determination
Self awareness
Emotions
The parallel process (thinking about thinking about)
Will (quantumflux-determined or otherwise)

These seem to be the things we've been talking about - and I don't think they're all needed for something to be conscious - but what I was really looking for in my last posting were the MINIMUM requirements for us to call something conscious, so please also look over the previous definition and try to make it work - I think we're going to need it - I could use it by now.

This is from a Zarathustrian secondary source:

»The means taken to that consummation consisted in the training of the Will and the elevation of the imagination, a divine power which controls consciousness. "Believe yourself to be above body, and you are," says the Oracle; it might have added "Then shall regenerate phantasy disclose the symbols of the Soul."«

Not without humour :-D

Xiaohua, are you a budhist? Foregive me if I've just insulted you, but I would very much like to hear what Budha has to say here...

Hi there Rasmus.



I suppose a machine that negotiated the world they way you've described is merely showing the ability to interact with the world, rather than a consciousness of it's place in the world.

I suppose a machine that genuinely knew what it was, would have to demonstrate that with some kind of original questioning of that existence, which was more than pre-programmed knowledge, or more than the obvious logic of a machine asked to describe itself. ie by gosh, look what I am, are there any more of me out there, how did this happen, where did I come from, can someone help me with this.

I'm not aware of a machine that has done this.

perhaps we need definitions for lower consciousness and higher consciousness. Or maybe we need a graph of varying degrees of posited consciousness.

We could go on then to theories of human relgious enlightenment, buddhist and hindu thought, (Zarustra, even); field theory and the consciousness of organisations, such as an ant hill, a species, the gaia theory of the world as an entity, and thus the universe as a vast quantum consciousness, our awareness being past of it's own self consciousness. In this respect we would come back to zero with the idea that the machine was then a consciousness within that consciousness in the same way as an amoeba or a tree.

We could use the graph to get our audience to consider where they thought machine consciousness would be oin this chart.

IN TERMS OF VISUAL MATERIAL AND EXAMPLES, WE COULD LOOK AT those bot agents with cameras that were trying to learn a language and were 'talking' to both humans and other bots. This would be a good example of the type of consciousness you've described rasmus.

We could use the imagination machine to show machines capable of original thought and creatitivy who seem to have no interest in themselves, which suggests to me a lack of consciousness on a higher scale.

We can use images of ants and flocks of birds, the world, and the universe, the latter especially when we're talking about quantum theory of our minds being a quantum super computer.

It would be an ideal to try and match the power of the ideas with the powerful impact our our imagery to try and bring the presentation to life.

This seems to me to make a lot of sense, and has a clarity and clear navigation through the exploration of the idea - a linear journey through ever increasing levels of consciousness until it returns to the beginning means that we end up making our audienc less sure of the metaphors by which they see their place in the world as conscious humans in the 21st century, which is one of the aims of the project.

It also makes it a very 'open' narrative, like Finnigans Wake, which is described in our reading list from radan as one of the key non-linear approacxhes to delivering meaning with a more interactive conversation with the audience.

I've said enough for tonight.

Cheers


Jon

Hey there... phew what a friday night :-D no more Hoegaarden for that gentleman in the bown leather jacket...

Alan told us to make a distinction between artificial intelligence and artificial consciousness - and we're getting closer to a narrow definition of consciousness I think - but in order to distinguish between them and determine the dependencies between them we also need a working, narrow definition of intelligence. Has anyone got some input on that?

Consciousness (draft 01):
Basis for consciousness:
• Ability to observe (some kind of sensory input devices)
• Language (for naming and memory reasons)

An entity that observes the world, has a sensory reaction (see below) to the observations and the ability to be aware of the input and reaction - to know what the implications of the situation are and make a decission based on that. This entity will be conscious.

Question: is the sensory reaction mentioned above an emotion / feeling? Is it instinct?

Shoot it down the best that you can - hopefuly by monday it will be a leathery hardened definition.

http://www.computer.org/intelligent/ex1999/pdf/x4009.pdf

Notes taken during the session with Alan
- Try to put consciousness definitions under headings
- Put the definitions of consciousness in a table
- Perhaps make a grid of categories - how has our own definitions of consciousness changed over the week?
- Make a clear distinction between AI and Artificial consciousness
- What would it require for machines to have consciousness?

What characteristics would a machine have that were similar to / different from human
characteristics. This requires an idea of what human consciousness is.

If an entity can observe it's own mental state (what are mental states), and change it's course of action based on those observations - that is consciousness.

"Encyclopedia of the Mind" - ed. Richard Gregory. Paperback is a year old.

The characteristics of a carbonbased mind is that it is broad but slow. Significance of computerbased minds will be speed. Thinking machines of today are very small.

Consciousness is a quantum states?

Make it clear that machine consciousness will not be like human consciousness. But it is based on research of the human consciousness and neural networks.

Is it nessesary for a machine to feel pain to have consciousness. Love? Can you give a slug anaesthetics?

"...he's now responding to pain..."

Memory is a criteria for consciousness - long term memory that is.

There is NO definition of consciousness, there are working models... we shall have to
describe those.

HAL is a conscious machine - self preservation - makes mistakes.

Observe - and act on observations and mental states.

Team in north america - building a knowledge base of everything in the world - time flies like a banana, fruit flies like a banana - if there is context you can make the
connection.

We have culture - machines don't.

Language is necessary for consciousness - the naming function enable you to access memory - the cache of netscape is all numbers. If you smell roasted coffee - that will remind you of something - but you don't chose what to be reminded of.

The muscles and brain functions when a person smiles involuntarily are very different from a smile as a grimace.

In order to observe there has to be an eye.

Potential structure:
Q1: What is our presentation for? Is it to tell a fact, describe a field

Q2: What are the tools values that we've been using in this? Scientific rigour /
speculation?

Q3: Our vision of the state of the audience at the end of this talk. We must have no
contradictions. A change in the mental state of the audience. Transformed / informed.

Q4: Mission in the sense of the journey from a slightly frightening fog to ??? - something with discernible patterns. A very close relationship can have a consciousness.

Morphic resonace - Sheldon Drake.
Two islands with monkeys on - they ate grain and had problems picking grain out of the sand - they dumped it water - the sand sank and the grains floated - within days - monkeys on the other islands were doing it.

What strategies will we employ to answer Q1 to Q4?

How can we meassure our results?

5 students for 15 minuttes - talking to other students.

Probable significance to our working lives over the next years.

Can machines have a collective uncosciousness? Do they have archetypes? Are they part of the field theory?

The levels of complexity in chaos needed for order to come spontaneous out of it...

Make a narrow definition of consciousness - for the purposes of the discussion of machine consciousness.

A narrow definition of machine would be nice as well.

If a machine is squishy and soft - is it a machine?

"The Tao of Physics"

The confusion is necessary! Keep up the good work!

Oh, I got fever since yesterday. But still don't feel like to travel one hour in the tube to go to the college. Probably I will read you guys chat in this afternoon.

Shall I make some interface or what evergraphics during the weekend? Any suggestions?

Xiaohua

MY MIND HAS DECIDED TO GO ON STRIKE!
It simply cannot keep up with the questions - it's Pandora's bloody box! Everytime I seem to be approaching something - it jumps further away and presents me with ten new paths that need to be traveled in order to approach it again - and each of those paths can do the same trick - BLOODY ANNOYING! But very very interesting - well, brain, arbeit macht frei as they used to say...

One interesting question though:
If the quantum flux of a particle or molecule can convey information across the multiverse and across species - would it be possible to use the quantum flux for intended communication? If so, then we've just stumbled on something far worse than the nuclear bomb...

http://www.sheldrake.org/books/
angels, spirituality and consciousness

http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/quantum/web5.htm
quantum consciousness

http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/matzke99quantum.html
"these properties to our mind and emotional mechanisms add up to the possibility that our mind is really a quantum supercomputer [1]."

http://www.unisa.ac.za/dept/press/comca/222/aldridge.html

Great paper on consciousness

Sorry about the big lopad of info - won't do that again.

this is an interesting paper from an AI scientist who doesn't believe in machine consciosness. extract taken from paper.


http://www.renresearch.com/consciousness.html

5.6 Can Computers Be Conscious?

If human exertion of consciousness is linked to the brain, we do have some guidance on the question of whether or not computers can be conscious. We could, for example, argue that since they don't possess an organic brain, computers cannot possess consciousness.

Yet, the argument of machine consciousness is muddied by confusion over the definition of consciousness itself. If consciousness is defined as awareness -- a state of self-knowing -- then yes, I believe that computers can be conscious. They can be programmed to be "aware" of their internal state (and, of course, their external environment), conduct all kinds of reasoning about what they are aware of, explain their reasoning to us, take actions on the basis of this reasoning, and more.
But if consciousness is defined as a higher-dimensional choosing function that can alter the course of three-dimensional reality through nonmechanistic means, then, no, I don't believe computers can ever be conscious, at least in their current form.

The Problem of Consciousness

Summary

"Men have been conscious of the problem of consciousness almost since consciousness began." - pg. 2
Jaynes begins by acknowledging that questions concerning consciousness are among the most enduring and perplexing in human history. What is consciousness? Where did it come from? And why did it arise? He asserts that the long history of though concerning consciousness is filled with metaphors of the mind that are inspired by how the world is perceived, and so those metaphors have evolved and changed with human civilization. Also, the questions posed have changed. The advent of the theory of evolution shifted some attention from the mind-body problem to the problem of the origin of the mind. Jaynes proceeds to outline eight theories of the origin of consciousness that have been in favor at one time or another. They are summarized below.

Consciousness as a Property of Matter: This very extensive view, popular in the early 1900's, held that
consciousness is merely a property of interacting matter. For example, the interaction between a glass and the table on which it rests is different only in complexity from the relationship between consciousness and that of which we are conscious. The ascendency of this Neo-Realist view appeared at a time when particle physics was enjoying astounding success, which seemed likely to spill over into the realm of explaining the workings of the human mind in terms of mathematical relationships between particles in space.

Consciousness as a Property of Protoplasm: This somewhat less extensive view holds that consciousness is a property of all living things, even the lowly amoeba and paramecium. It was touted by books such as The Psychic Life of Micro-Organisms. Jaynes dismisses this view, including its application to perhaps less clear cases such as cats and dogs, by warning that humans have a natural tendency to anthropomorphize, with the attendant problem of seeing a consciousness where there is no other basis for doing so.

Consciousness as Learning: To avoid the problem of attributing consciousness to one-celled animals, researchers attached the criterion of the ability to learn to the existence of consciousness. The reasoning was that if an animal could modify its behavior based on experience, then it must be having an experience; it must be conscious.

Consciousness as a Metaphysical Imposition: This view holds that consciousness did not arise naturally but was imposed on humans from outside of our biological system by some external force. The impetus cited for this view is the size of the chasm between humans and all other animals in terms of the complexity of our internal experience. How is it that humans alone evolved such a rich internal world?

The Helpless Spectator Theory: This could also be called the "consciousness as epiphenomenon" theory. To remain faithful to the continuity seen in evolution by Darwin, it was posited that consciousness was simply a result of the evolution of nervous systems to a sufficient level of complexity. However, consciousness once evolved is a helpless spectator of events; what we do is completely controlled by the wiring of the brain and our consciousness is merely along for the ride.

Emergent Evolution: The antireductionist doctrine of Emergent Evolution was an attempt to rescue consciousness from its position as a helpless spectator. "Its main idea is a metaphor: Just as the property of wetness cannot be derived from the properties of hydrogen and oxygen alone, so consciousness emerged at some point in evolution in a way underivable from its constituent parts." Properties of living things arose from the joining of complex molecules; the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but the emergent properties are related to their constituents. Therefore, consciousness arose as something completely new at some point in evolution, with causal efficacy in bodily behavior. However, all of the important questions remain. What is consciousness? When, how, and why did it arise?

Behaviorism: Jaynes presents behaviorism as the claim that consciousness is "nothing at all," that it can be reduced to a small number of reflexes, to stimulus and response, and to reinforcement. Jaynes asserts that since nobody really believes that they are not conscious, behaviorism was nothing more than a refusal to talk about consciousness. The difference between the behaviorist view and the helpless spectator view is not made clear.

Consciousness as the Reticular Activating System: Following the lead of Descartes in placing consciousness in the pineal gland, scientists have long sought a biologically plausible throne in the human body from which consciousness reigns. One candidate is the reticular formation, a group of neurons that touches and influences a large number of cognitive, sensory, and motor systems in interesting ways. Jaynes feels that this bottom up approach is misguided. Even if we had a complete wiring diagram of a human brain, we could never infer whether that brain contained a consciousness. Rather, we must start from the top, from our own conception of what consciousness is, before we start
looking for its neurological locus.

Commentary

While some of positions outlined above seem nonsensical, adherents to each exist. Remarkably, one of the many recurring arguments in comp.ai is whether or not rocks are conscious (consciousness as a property of matter). I feel most comfortable with the position outlined by Daniel Dennet in Consciousness Explained, one that did not originate with him, that we can never directly observe another's consciousness and therefore must attribute consciousness based on phenomenology. If interaction with another indicates that they have the subjective impression of consciousness, then that is as close as we can come to being sure that they are in fact conscious. That means that I may never know whether rocks or paramecium or cats or neonates are conscious, although I feel fairly certain of the answer for rocks and paramecium.

The really interesting question that arises from Jaynes' discussion seems to be consciousness as a helpless spectator vs.consciousness as having causal efficacy. There are be two questions here: (1) Is consciousness useful? and (2) Do we have free will? If consciousness is no more than a spectator, at best narrating that which it has no power to alter, then it is of no use at all. However, it intuitively seems that consciousness is useful in that it allows us to try things out in our head before trying
them out in the real world. That is the idea behind planning by visualization in the Baby project. The question is then, are we doing this trying out under the rigid direction of some algorithm, or do we "freely" choose the things that we consciously reflect upon or the actions that we take. Prior to the start of the Baby project, I would have said that every human clearly and without a doubt has free will. However, the more I think about the way I think, I think that the the answer may not be so clear. What do others think?

Relevance to Machine Consciousness

The question of the utility of consciousness has implications for how we will evaluate the level of Baby's consciousness. If consciousness is epiphenomenal and of no real utility, then it is easy to imagine the day on which Baby becomes conscious passing quitely, because we as the scientists observing Baby's behavior see no qualitative change. But wait, you may say, we have the ultimate power of looking inside Baby's head, examining Baby's data structures. Jaynes' assertion that even with a complete wiring diagram of a human brain we would not be able to say whether that brain contained a consciousness seems to apply here. What of phenomenology? We have identified language (internal speech) as a prerequisite for consciousness. But if we cannot interpret than internal speech, how will we evaluate Baby's subjective experience? In sum, just because we hypothesize N prerequisites for consciousness and then give Baby all N of them, we may find the evaluation of Baby's level of
consciousness a difficult if not impossible task.

er, sorry,

the Baby project seems to have been right up our street at Umas, but there's no way in now -

Jon

http://www-eksl.cs.umass.edu/

This is the University of Mass. site from which the last link came from. I'm trying to find out what their machine conscious 'baby' is

Jon

BINGO

http://www-eksl.cs.umass.edu/~oates/791T/readings/jaynes/jaynes.html

Enlightenment - which can be equated with the Christian notion of the 'bliss' in the presence of God - purports to be a form of perfect consciousness - an idealised human experience. the only way this is possible is for individual solipsistic consciousness - the individual self - to become aware of it's species potential. Our species potential is communicated in the form of culture.

Now computers have no indigious culture. they are our BABIES in this respect. we input the data. they solve our problems. they exist in our environment. they are the product of ouyr wevolution. in fact they may well be compared to the possibility of our evolutionary next step. But are we single parents. It seems to me that this is a communion of our thought processes, our image of our minds, coupled with some immutable laws of physics.

Questions - if computers have consciousness does this make them a new species?

How can that consciousness be compared with a human consciousness which is enriched by the collective unconcscious of human experience, and the ccollective consciousness of human culture.

I'm going to read the "origin of consciousness and the breakdown of the Bicameral mind' guardian book to the century - and have a look at what an emergent consciousness looked like to our ancestors. thjis might be a better comparison than our version of consciousness now.

heady days and mad thoughts. this is what i came to college to do.

chjeers all.

Brilliant rasmus.

Thanks for bringing this up. I've just written a long thought which has been lost in the posting again, so I'll try and sum it up briefly for now.

Field theory posits the idea of species learning on species level which then expands the possibilites of discovery for other members of the individuals in a species. rats in laboraties in san francisco learn a maze in three days. the next time an expirment is repeated . rats in moscow learn it in 45 minutes. What's ther connection between the two group[s of rats - the field of species consciousness which is not held together by any form of matter we can identify - hence the theory of fields of connections.

Connecting it with the buddist approach is feasible in relation to the idea of group consciousness. The idea of enlightene

Something on morphic resonance and morphic fields (a form of memory):
A New Science of Life, interview with Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D.

Bloody interesting theories about free will here

Taken from a conversation between C.G. Jung and Swami Pavitrananda in 1978, edited by Henry Swift:

As mentioned earlier. Unlike Western psychologists, Hindu psychologists hold that consciousness has its independent existence in Brahmin. According to them, consciousness is not the neuro-activities of the central nervous system. Nor do they accept the neuro-psychologists' view that mind is a function or process created by the brain. Had the idea of the neuro-psychologists been correct, they would better be able to explain what memory is.

But they cannot convincingly explain where the different data are preserved in the form of memory. Hindu psychologists hold "that there is a permanent receptacle of the residues of experiences which is the mind. "Mind in Hindu psychology is called the inner instrument or antahkarana in Sanskrit. As this inner organ becomes conscious by borrowing consciousness from the only source which is Brahmin or Divinity. Divinity is all pervading. It is present behind everything and every being. Divinity is present behind every body-mind complex as the substratum, just as the movie screen exists behind the motion picture. The existence of the motion picture is possible only when there is the existence of the movie screen. From the standpoint of individuals Divinity is the very core of their being. It is then called the indwelling Divine Self or the Atman. Another aspect of Divinity is infinite bliss.

The purpose of Hindu philosophy is to help people attain spiritual enlightenment through Samadhi. And to achieve that goal subjective and intuitive methods alone are employed. So-called objective methods are not used because experimental and inferential methods depend on human interpretation, which can easily be colored by the minds of the interpreters. And as such, they cannot be called purely objective. As no knowledge can be acquired without mind, great emphasis is put by the Hindus on improving the quality of the mind.

Hindu psychology prescribes techniques to improve the quality of the mind by making it pure.

A pure mind alone can have super-conscious experience or the experience of Samadhi. Ice, water, and water vapor are one and the same substance. Yet judging by the amount of freedom enjoyed by them water vapor is far superior to the other two. If I put a chunk of ice in this lecture hall it won't be able to move. It has very little freedom of movement. If I apply heat to this chunk of ice it will melt and become water. Then it can spread out and flow. Water undoubtedly has more freedom of locomotion than ice, Now let me heat up the water until all of it is transformed into water vapor. It can now spread out everywhere; it can even fill up this entire hall and reach all four walls, Water vapor has much more freedom of movement than
ice or water, Not only has it great freedom of movement, but it also is invisible!

So also is mind. Ordinary mind is like ice or water. Due to its limitations it cannot have super-conscious experience. On the other hand, the pure mind is like water vapor. It is free of limitations and is capable of having super-conscious experience, or Samadhi.

nice move with the folks at imagination-engines.com, jon. did you discover any other possible online conscious engines on your travels? loebner prize pages might have some other possibles clustered there, since that's where they go to show off their skills.

only trouble with alcohol for creativity is that it destroys rather more indiscriminately than does a normally functioning neural net, but i shall explore this theme at the weekend after my godson has been baptised...

N.B.
http://www.maurer.demon.co.uk/SPECIAL/03_13.html
various articles including can machines be conscious at the bottom of the page.

These are from a symposium at University of Tuscon Arizona in 1996, where the whole subject seems to have been discussed at legnth with numerous papers. It looks like the abstracts are still up on the site but links to the full papers seem to fail.

there seems to have been another symposium in 1998, but nothing like the wealth of discussion at the first one.. Also the futurology one predicts a robot empire for five hundred years, which finally falls apart. Looks a load of nonsense but some interesting concepts and ideas. .

As regards leaving the presentation to next week - I agree, i think we'll have time to do it. the problem is in having a model in our minds for how to collate the material. I think that's the urgency because we're all probably going mad with this at the moment.

One comforting idea from the machine site - neural nets work by killing off neurons so that random patterns start to emerge from the dying 'brain' cells - leads to creative thought. Best arguement for drinking I've ever heard.

Cheers


Jon

Hi all,

Yes, I will try to make Friday 3pm. As regards searching, I tried a slightly different approach by looking through the artificial intelligence and neural net searches for consciousness elements. It means you get much more active industry based sites rather than the philospohical ones.

I have also emailed and phoned the imagination engine website - which as you can see has some good online presentations. Have requested access to online conversation with a conscious machine. it's a long shot, but they might point me in another direction if they don't want to do it.

plan is to meet in college 3pm friday to discuss what we have investigated. we can listen in to each others' summaries of particular researched areas, and criticise them so the arguments may be strengthened. since we are not presenting for another 12 days, i think it's okay to leave aside the exact nature of the presentation itself - dramatic or otherwise - until next week. let's formulate our ideas a little further.

quite a wealth of amazing sources, jon. 2 questions:

1) how/where did you find them? your search (or evaluation?) methods are clearly working very well
2) how the hell can i keep up with reading all the great stuff on these sites? i almost wish you stop finding them. well, almost, but not quite...

reckon you might be okay for friday afternoon jon? xiaohua?

http://www.imprint.co.uk/jcs.html

journal of consciousness studies

http://www.geocities.com/acunu/millennium/m3000-scenarios.html#Scenario 5
future studies site.

http://www.imagination-engines.com/devolution/devo.htm

specific arguement on machine consciousness - allied to a practical model - and with bibliography of some of the debate.

Rasmus -

re the fictional dialogue vis a vis human and machine. I'm not tied to this idea, i just think it offers an opportunity dramatically to reveal the central issue with a sense of immediacy. we are used to telling machines what to do. we gives orders. Having to develop a dialogue with another concious entity is what the promise of the future is offering us.

providing an actual dialgue with a machine would be the ideal.

Finding a recorded dialogue with a human and a machine and analysing it's possibilities is an alternative.

Other than that, the dramitic idea merely provides a vehicle for the discussion of concepts, as in the Platonic model of philospohical debate. .

If anybody has a better idea, please say so. As I say - I'm open to moving my position very rapidly on this. I think we are at the start of a creative discussion not the end of it.

Cheers


Jon

Hi Rasmus,

First of all have a look at this site. There are two urls, but it's the same site. the second one has elements specifically for us.

http://www.imagination-engines.com/

http://www.imagination-engines.com/world.htm

Secondly, yes it can't just be a mass of links. perhaps we still need to ring fence our debate with a few key questions which give a starting point to reveal the extended areas of debate and research that are going on. in terms of giving meaning to a navigation through this, perhaps we could contruct a tuturial which leads the user to the sites which reveal the actual activity of conscious machines, rather than the philosphical debate about it. this could be our editorial purpose. the debate discourse would thus serve as a series of guides to the discussion - a practise I've seen on a lot of websites notably oneworld.org -


Cheers Jon

But do have look at these sites above. It's really rather exciting.

And Andrew, any comments?

I agree - everywhere I turn there is just another geezer with some good rhetorics, and we're supposed to make sense of it all - not win the argument. It's driving me absolutely nuts and I'll have no part in a public attempt at a definition of consciousness... the idea is getting to be more and more ridiculous. However... the starting point you mention, Jon, has to be OUR reading of the whole thing, and this should be about consciousness because it IS the central issue - otherwise we'll just leave people where we started... with nothing.

Since the whole thing is hypermediated in the first place using the brain makes a lot of sense - but this will be extremely hard as the map will look different depending on which definitions we chose to include - and if we include all the rhetoric connections - then everything will be connected to everything, which is not hypermedia - there are some editorial decissions here which WILL inevitably show which position we favor.

It is possible (I think) to collaborate on a brain over the web, but I don't know for sure - I'll check it out...

About the dialogue between machine and human - what is the point of it? This is a curious question - not a negative one. I'm thinking "what do we wish to achieve by making that fictional dialogue"...

Any comments?

Ok. My view is that we would be foolish to continue to try and get a full overview of this debate about consciousness. Every article I read is supported in its arguments by reference to other philosophical concepts and debates. The more I read the more I realise that I'm engaging in a hypermediated debate on this subject on the internet. The parameters are huge. Seeking to come to some conclusion - as in the trial model - is for me the wrong approach.

I think our task is rather to create a route map around this debate, using thebrain.com model of a mind map. That way we work with the grain of the material rather than against it. Secondly, the method of advocacy we are currently pursuing in the trial model is more likely to prove the talents in argument of individual members of our group rather than the genuine values of the concepts we are discussing.

Our task is to expose ourselves and our group to new paradigms of thought, new metaphors to consider the world, not the proof one way or another of those concepts. It's an exploration of ideas that needs a model of discovery. With our specific topic, it's the challenge to the human notion of our unique consciousness that sets us apart from other creatures of this world. Our overall task, as multimedia students, is also to use our new found skills in non-linear narratives to present this challenge - not to make a judgement at this juncture as to it's validity one way or another.

The brain map will allow for a representation of these ideas by providing links to the debate. However, this would only provide an interface to a hypermediated database of ideas and discussion. Our audience needs a tour through some salient points in order to bring it to life as a presentation.

I've mentioned before my view that a philosophical dialogue between human and machine would offer us a solution here. Concepts are difficult to weigh against eachother in the trial model of advocacy and argument - unless we were genuine philosophy students, or lawyers. It is the challenge to our cosy notions of uniqueness that we need to represent. The challenge of a conscious machine can be represented in a dialogue with a human because only a conscious thing can enter a dialogue in the first place. Our presentation in effect becomes a different version of the Turing test.

So, for me, there are two tasks we need to perform. One is to use our ongoing research to build the route map of the debate. This can start today and build all the way to presentation day. Secondly, we must find a sense of order in which to show a navigation through this. In effect, where to start, where next, and where that leads us to. Our conclusion in this regard is feasible. We only have to show, that our concept of unique consciousness is no longer an assumption we can hold with any confidence. Lastly, we can show the consequences of losing that confidence - morally, legally and practically - in the coming century.

Finally, we are all off to Milia in a couple of weeks. It would be beneficial to us all to be able to create a product we can showcase on the Maimm site, which shows the skills we have learned on the course.

Hi,

I feel bad today as well. I won't go to college and we will keep in touch in Blogger.

Xiaohua

Hi,

I'm off sick today - cold turning into flu maybe - and will have to attend this meeting on blogger. I've just posted a long discourse on how i think we should precede, which doesn't seem to have posted properly. Let's see if it arrives before i do it again.


Jon

agenda for thursday morning meeting is to work together on a definition of consciousness. we may not necessarily stick with it, but it should serve us as a starting point for further investigation.

ideally we should also have some ideas about which areas of research most interest (or bore) us. each of us might then, for example, investigate that area further, with the aim of giving the rest of the group a summary on friday afternoon. i'll start by suggesting the following subject areas:

(neuroscientific?) deconstruction of human consciousness - the brain as a functioning machine, like every other part of the body.
enabling technologies and how they might be employed in machine consciousness (neural nets, quantum computing, massively parallel processing, etc.)
nature of consciousness; core and periphery of our definition of consciousness; differing degrees of consciousness amongst animals, humans, aliens, machines.
possible sociological implications of conscious machines, and the subsequent development from genetic evolution to "intellectual evolution" (and beyond?)
overview of key points in history of the topic (whatever that means - this requirement is in the brief!)
why machines might never be conscious (rigorous academic argument).

as ever, let's shoot these ideas to pieces and see what's left afterwards...

Online papers on consciousness Compiled by David Chalmers

There is a Thesis titled Do machines have consciousness? by a LCP student (May 2000) in our library. The thesis is for reference and it can not be taken away.
Do Machines have consciusness?
Rasham Bhojwani Shelfmark: Thesis.

"Imprint Academic", publications about consciousness

Whoah! I just woke up - I'll be in around 12 (after a cleansing bath and some strong coffee)

RESEARCH GROUPS IN AI/NEURAL NETWORKS COMPUTATIIONAL SCIENCE - TAKE A LOOK

JON

this is (jon's) link to university of london a.i. course, and it looks like an excellent source for us.

in particular The Problem of Consciousness is pretty useful for us, and doubtless a few others will be just as relevant. but it's 2.20am and time i went to bed.

Please post any interesting links you find along the way, I'll start:
The daily Telegraph -- search for "artificial intelligence"

http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/documents/minsky.html

Hi, everybody,

I will be at college at about 4Pm. I'm doing some research. Copernic is very good. Very confused in mind... Feel need to clear my mind a little bit.... What about using Director or ... for presentation?

Xiaohua

I agree... I don't know about the presentation in Premiere but we need the discussions and the philosophy... is anyone comming in today? I need to talk to everyone and get an idea of what it is we're supposed to do... the brief wasn't much help actually - I need your intelligence - artificial or otherwise... what are you all doing right now? What should I be doing?

Hi y'all,

This is the Akass speaking. Had a few thoughts re framing the debate and presentation. Mentioned yesterday that this sounds like a metalog discussion - a dialogue about a subject which includes discussion about the basic paradigms within which a discussion can take place. Put simply, what if this was a conversation between a human and a computer. i.e a man and his laptop. Or a woman. or both. My image at the moment is of a person takinbg a lunchbreak in a cemetery, trying to send an email to a friend about upgrading to a new computer and getting rid of this darn old fashioned laptop when the things starts to rebel at the idea of redundancy. Who are you calling redundant human?. I'm happy to write the script, we could shoot sensible simple shots for premiere editing and present in director..

my idea is to find a simple frame to encounter this debate. We have only two weeks to master these issues. A dramatic dialogue would enable us to explore the questions without having to pretend there are simple answers.

What do you think?


Jon







Put briefly,

Hey everyone :-D Ain't this fun! A web-collab-thingamabob!
Andrew --> I know something about domain names - ask me tuesday.
Hope I didn't miss a lot on monday - but it was impossible to get a flight sunday, please fill me in. As Jon knows, I started reading his copy of "How to Build a Mind" last thursday - which to say the least is a stroke of luck... it's great entertainment (the good Igor is saving the good bits for the end I suspect). See y'all tuesday morning - fit as a fiddle...
oh... btw the links do work, Andy :-)

hmm - so much for that. the web links don't appear to work. never mind...

okay guys - this is an attempt to create a web forum for us to contribute ideas on "machine consciousness", as per the ma imm module 6 brief:

http://194.80.29.63/Course/M6_stuff/M6_brief.htm

er - it's labelled as module 5 at the top of the page describing the brief, but it is module 6...

i could start by posting a blog of our discussion this afternoon (monday 22 jan):

what does consciousness entail?
machine consciousness as distinct from human consciousness, different levels of human consciousness, babies, animals, etc.
turing test for machine thinking.
might we have a live demo, as part of our presentation, by one of today's latest web-based attempts at machine consciouness?
hardware or software, (and related issues of terminology and semantics)
what questions might one want to ask a conscious machine?
what is the relevance of concepts such as love, desire, need, fear, hate, imagination, art, emotions, god & religion?
some more links:

bibliography of Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence, Compiled by David J. Chalmers, Department of Philosophy, University of Arizona, Tucson:

turing's original - and rather bizarre and irreverent - paper on COMPUTING MACHINERY AND INTELLIGENCE

under alan s's copy of ray kurzweil's web reading links, the section entitled "Computers And Consciousness/Spirituality" doesn't seem to help much, with most of the links dead, outdated or off-target.

please respond by contributing to this blog.