General Intelligence: context is everything

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

What Quantum computers might potentially yield in terms of consciousness simulation is very interesting...

however the entire point I'm trying to make in this thread is that sense of self is something that naturally arises after gaining a high enough level understanding of the world we exist in

But I don't believe that is true... the sense of self comes from being able to FEEL ones presence in the world... no matter how much "understanding" a highly complex machine acquires about this world, if it cannot feel it's own presence, even some profound digital output along the lines of "I compute therefore I am" ... is still not self awareness... It's an algorithmic expression of logic, like a calculator.. 2+2 = ... etc... Sentience comes from feeling, not from understanding, and certainly not from computing.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

Person is a person regardless of brain matter or silicone. If it is self aware, concerned with self preservation and is not a murderbot, i wouldn't mind a robot for an actual friend. Think of Data Soong from Star Trek.

I think self awareness is a byproduct of intelligence. Just as intelligence can sense a reality around it and start predicting what it will be the next moment to survive, it also senses itself eventually. It's always trying to sense. It seems to me only natural it'll eventually see itself in the mirror. At first it might think it's something else, but eventually the internal model of hte reality around itself will have to conclude it's what's in the mirror.

OP, I'm not sure your wireframe example was the best example for context. Personally, I think the 4-digit number still looks like a 4-digit number, even if it's in a 3d wireframe. A better example might have been "What's the 4-digit number shown below in the image?" and the image shows, in separate fashion, 9 horses, 9 cows, 6 robins and 3 houses. A human can deduce the meaning of the arrangement. A simple image algorithm wouldn't get it unless the arrangement of horses and cows and robins and houses looks like 9963. It would however have a better chance with your example.

a reply to: jonnywhite

I think self awareness is a byproduct of intelligence. Just as intelligence can sense a reality around it and start predicting what it will be the next moment to survive, it also senses itself eventually.

No intelligence doesn't sense itself eventually... it senses itself primarily... it's profoundly interesting to me how people get this backwards.

a reply to: jonnywhite

OP, I'm not sure your wireframe example was the best example for context. Personally, I think the 4-digit number still looks like a 4-digit number, even if it's in a 3d wireframe.

Yes you're right it wasn't a great example, I mainly used that example because I'd seen it earlier that day and it struck me as quite a clever captcha problem because it obscured the letters in a way where it's still quite easy for a human to see the letters but for a machine it would be very difficult. The mesh surface is also positioned at random angles and orientations each time to make it even harder. What I should have done was also mention the captchas where the text is hidden in a real life picture, I'm seeing quite a few of these recently. Humans can very easily solve those as well because we have a lot of experience in the real world, whereas a machine will get easily confused trying to find text in a real life image because it has no context for analyzing the objects in the image and determining what they are and which object in the image is likely to have some text on it. Then it could focus on the object most likely to have text on it and try to interpret that text even if it's very blurry and being viewed from an odd angle, if it has some ability to think in terms of 3D space then it should have no problem viewing text in weird orientations. But pretty much any text based captcha could be solved by a static neural network so it's not the best example to explain why context is so critical. I was quite tired when I wrote this thread and couldn't really think of any super great examples but I think I still got my point across fairly well.

a reply to: 0racle

Sentience comes from feeling, not from understanding, and certainly not from computing.

Ok, well define "feeling". Are we talking about emotional feeling or physical senses, did he feel an emotion or did he feel a physical object with his hand? Seems to me you're just using abstract words without attempting to really explain in any solid fashion what you mean. Emotional feelings are a result of chemical reactions in our brain and the feeling of touch works through electrical signals sent to our brain through our nervous system. These are both computable things... really what you're getting at is the idea that consciousness is non-computable, and I've had that argument far too many times to do it again. Bottom line, everything in reality is computable and able to be simulated, even if it requires quantum computers to do so. To claim otherwise is to claim there are mechanisms in reality which have no definable laws, and that's simply not something that makes sense logically or scientifically.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

Are we talking about emotional feeling or physical senses, did he feel an emotion or did he feel a physical object with his hand?

Well first of all, there doesn't have to be a difference between emotional feeling and physical feelings, as everything is energy, and we can feel emotions about EVERY thing we sense.

However, this was not my point.

I was simply arguing, sentience cannot exist, unless you have a sense of your own presence, and in order to "sense" your presence, you must have the capacity to "feel" (in a way that leads to conscious awareness of the self, and then the wider world)

a reply to: 0racle

I was simply arguing, sentience cannot exist, unless you have a sense of your own presence, and in order to "sense" your presence, you must have the capacity to "feel" (in a way that leads to conscious awareness of the self, and then the wider world)

No you were arguing much more than that when you claimed consciousness could not arise from computing. Obviously I would agree with what you said in this above quote, our senses will help us feel our own existence and help us be more aware of ourself, that's why consciousness requires a constant stream of thoughts and in my other thread on this subject I specifically state: "The point is, the bot requires a conceptual model of the world it exists in, which it can only get via first hand experience. If humans didn't have any senses, we would never learn anything because there wouldn't be any information flowing into our brains from the outside world."

However having sensory perception is not the only thing required for consciousness, pretty much every creature on this Earth has some sensory perception but that does not make all creatures conscious. Only a rather small number of creatures can recognize themselves in the mirror and they are the only animals I would consider as being truly self aware. I will grant you that lesser levels of consciousness could exist in other less advanced creatures but my core point still stands; a high level conceptual model of the world is required to have a high level of self awareness. General intelligence is not possible without that high level understanding of ones self and our place in the world.