Conscious AI

The following article is a summary of my keynote on April 7th at DATAIA and is my first attempt to put together my research in the field of Consciousness, a topic that I have become obsessed with recently.

Introduction:

We hear more and more about Conscious AI, as the next frontier in advancements of AI. We have succeeded in creating AI that can mimic human speech and various analytical tasks that do not need to have the consciousness to do the job of classification and pattern recognition. But the most basic capabilities of us humans are still a big challenge to machines today. Tasks such as creativity, empathy, compassion, and meta-thinking, all require consciousness and self-awareness, and these are the main barriers for a real General Artificial Intelligence to be born. How could we artificially create consciousness? How probable is it? Some field experts claim that this is no longer unrealistic, but many also question its ethical aspects and the reason for its existence.

The piece you are about to read is a philosophical point of view on this matter, based on my personal reflections on human consciousness and the technologies that follow our curious minds. I will touch on human consciousness, the basics of the brain model for AI replications, and ethics.

Why choosing Consciousness?

The last two years had been life-changing for me and for many people. In fact, the pandemic gave us the opportunity to think differently about our purpose in life. We saw that borders, countries, and our differences became insignificant in the wake of a global disaster. Who would have thought that a little virus in a small town in a corner of the world would have such a tremendous impact on our economy and society? I believe many of us realized the importance of global collaboration and conscious decisions. And that’s why I thought about consciousness as my topic today.

As an industrial engineer, and a financial analyst, who then quit banking to become a tech entrepreneur, I have been fascinated by how technologies such as AI can enable us to do things that we could never do before. I also have been fascinated by the Human mind and how much we can push ourselves to go beyond what we think is possible. I enjoy challenging myself by surpassing my limits and confronting my instinctive impulses such as the fear of death, pain, and hunger. That’s why I love jumping from the plane and running marathons.

I’m also fascinated by ancient civilizations because they are proofs of lost wisdom by people who left traces for the next generations to say they existed one day, as their attempt for human regeneration and survival.

I had the chance to live with some indigenous tribes, get to know their spiritual beliefs, and learn about plant medicine. I was fascinated by their definition of consciousness. In fact, some believe we can acquire knowledge by connecting to a plant’s consciousness. I experienced deep shifts in my belief system after being exposed to such traditions and practicing meditation on a daily basis. I started to be so obsessed with the subject of consciousness.

As a woman in AI, I’ve been trying to connect the dots between the two worlds of technology and nature. I’m looking for answers and this piece that I’m sharing with you is a collection of my early attempts to get to that answer.

Disclosure: I’m not a neuroscientist, data scientist, shaman, Buddhist, or philosopher. All the ideas that I present here are purely for showing different perspectives for the sake of discussion.

For a while, we’ve been hearing a lot about AI becoming conscious. From MIT researchers warning us not to be ignorant about the AI becoming conscious, or Open AI researchers claiming that AI might already BE a bit conscious and might be already laughing at us. Also, some say that AI might never be able to compete with human consciousness. And I don’t know about you, but I love these conversations and love to follow up with them, even though it might seem to some people that it’s useless, it’s too far in the future and it’s too philosophical.

In the end, all technologies were once a sci-fi story. and I believe there’s value in imagining the unimaginable.

Definition of Consciousness

So you might ask yourself, why are all these people arguing? That was the first question I asked myself too.

The problem with Consciousness is that it is a very elusive subject, meaning that is difficult to define Consciousness. because it is an “internal subjective experience”. Any experience is always from a given point of view, and it is hard to be objective about our internal experiences. Because we cannot remove ourselves from the process!

There is no separation of subject and object.

The other problem involved with describing subjective experiences is the use of proper language. The language we employ to articulate our subjective experiences have roots in our unique cultural, historic, and linguistic backgrounds

Another problem is the Mind-Body relationship.

• On a wide spectrum, on one side, we have the materialistic view that believes: mental states are all physical. and it studies the behavior of matter to explain mind and consciousness
• On another extreme we have idealists who believe that physical states are really mental. and that the physical world is an empirical world and, it is the intersubjective product of our collective experience.
• Somewhere in between, we have dualists who believe mental and the physical are both real and fundamentally different. and neither can be fully explained in terms of the other.

Merriam Webster defines Consciousness as follows:

1. the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself
2. the state or fact of being conscious of an external object, state, or fact: AWARENESS
3. the state of being characterized by sensation, emotion, volition, and thought: MIND
4. the upper level of the mental life of which the person is aware as contrasted with unconscious processes

The pure Scientific view defines consciousness as follows:

• Consciousness is an emergent property of a complex organization or of the matter called the brain. It is a physical process that arises through the structure and dynamics of the brain.
• The nerve cell complexity of the brain is the seat of Consciousness.
• The human emotions, visual perceptions, or psyche cannot arise in the absence of the brain or the appropriate faculty.
• Consciousness vanishes after death when the brain decomposes or when it is no longer capable of functioning.

The Spiritual view of consciousness says that:

• Human Consciousness emerges not from the brain or matter; but from a deeper level.
• Mind is like a mirror or light that illumines what the brain is doing giving us conscious experience.
• As the brain ceases, the Consciousness will dissolve back into the universe’s substrate and carries on from lifetime to lifetime.

After reading both scientists, and spiritual views, I found that they have many points in common. For instance, according to Buddhism five factors that constitute a sentient being are physical form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. This is similar to what we define in science as well.

Both Buddhists and scientists support the idea that our stream of consciousness is in constant flux. both assert that the brain and body are constantly changing and that nothing corresponds to the sense of an unchanging self. there is no true self but an entity that is always changing.

The difference:

In the context of AI, currently, we are trying to create the computer with a sense of self and other and to focus on creating that sense of separation between subject and object. while in spiritual beliefs there is no substantial self.

What I personally think is that both Science and Spirituality show part of the reality. They each see the world through their own lens. and I believe there is value in joining them as they are complementary.

Levels of Consciousness

When talking about consciousness almost all schools talk about different levels of consciousness. Here I studied the Barrett’s 7 levels of Consciousness which describes a progressive model, from a basic survival level, which is the most selfish level, to the highest level where the person feels the most collaborative, socially responsible, and selfless.

Combining it with Ken Wilbert’s model, where he adds the different ages of humans to it, we can get a better idea of these different levels of consciousness. Here Wilbert talks about some levels of consciousness than can be very difficult for most of us to imagine, especially the stages after level 6 where he talks about pure being, unity in duality, pure awareness and non-duality. These are stages that high-level practitioners of meditation and spiritual traditions can really experience, and they are very difficult to be described in words.

Looking at all these definitions of consciousness, I can summarize consciousness as follows:

1. Consciousness is an inner experience.
2. Is a state of self-awareness, “I exist”, and “something out of me exists”.
3. There are different levels and stages of consciousness.
4. The consciousness that spiritual leaders talk about is different from the one that the scientists refer to in developing conscious machines.

Altered States of Consciousness

There are ways to manipulate consciousness and reach the Altered States of Consciousness through Hypnosis, psychoactive drugs, meditation, and mind-body practices. There are many studies about how for instance psychedelics shift people’s views of the world. People claim a deeper connection to the self and to nature, and they experience going beyond their bodies. They feel an infinite existence that surpasses their current known reality. You could experience such things through meditative practices as well.

What these drugs do is not create consciousness. Consciousness stays present all the way through, but what changes is the content that manipulates sensory organs to create the underlying experience.

Consciousness in other beings

As humans, we know that we are conscious. But are other beings such as animals and plants conscious too? We can’t really understand and feel their consciousness, but something is sure that they are also sentient beings who feel pain and pleasure, and they have a sense of self. They have their own communication forms and ways of expressing their inner truth.

The difference between animals and us is their level of intelligence.

Intelligence, another difficult word to define

”There seem to be almost as many definitions of intelligence as there were experts asked to define it.” Robert.J.Sternberg

I searched the whole web for the definition of Intelligence and found maybe the biggest most accurate aggregation of these definitions in an effort by Legg and Hutter that describes Intelligence as follows:

“Intelligence measures an agent’s ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments.”

They came up with this definition based on 3 common points across +70 credible definitions, saying that intelligence:

1. it is a property that an individual agent has as it interacts with its environment
2. it is related to the agent’s ability to succeed with respect to some goal
3. it depends on how able the agent is to adapt to different goals and environments

The difference between Intelligence and Consciousness is that Intelligence is about doing, while Consciousness is about being.

Can the Brain be the answer to Consciousness?

We relate intelligence to the brain, but is the brain what creates consciousness as well? We know that in some patients with epilepsy disease half of the brain can be removed and the person still can continue life with minimal effect on their wellbeing. They don’t lose their consciousness. But we also know that if we didn’t have this brain, we wouldn’t be able to have consciousness. So what is it in the brain that creates consciousness?

There are many things that we still don’t know about the brain but we know quite a few things. We know for instance that our brain is composed of 2 main parts, the older brain Cerebrum, and the Cerebral Cortex. The most outer part of the Cerebral Cortex is the neocortex which exists only in mammals. That’s this part that scientists refer consciousness to it. and it’s this part that has the grey matter.

We also know that our brain throughout evolution has changed, from the reptilian brain to the emotional brain and then to the neocortex. The reptilian brain is responsible for our survival, reproduction, and aggression, the emotional brain creates the sense of community and love, and the neocortex is responsible for intellectual tasks and that’s where the language and creativity emerge.

To answer the question about the brain and consciousness, I have referred to the book A Thousand Brains by Jeff Hawkins, in which he has presented a new theory of intelligence and how we could create intelligent machines that could eventually have consciousness.

He says “Humans are intelligent not because they can do anything well, but because they can do practically anything.”

In his theory, he talks about how our brain functions based on a Model of the world that it uses as a Map to navigate the world.

This happens by having some Reference Frames & Cortical Columns.

According to him cortical columns, which are made of hundreds of neurons, attach reference frames to objects in the world — and to abstract concepts. There are “what” columns that attach frames to external objects, and “where” columns that attach frames to your body. This is what enables your brain to understand where it is in the world and to navigate it.

Hawkins says that there is no central control room in our brains. Instead, our perception is a consensus that columns reach by voting.

Our brain constantly makes predictions about the world and updates its map of the world.

He claims that an intelligent being needs to have the 4 following elements to exist:

1. Movement (gathering data)
2. Continuous learning (updating)
3. Adaptation (new parameters)
4. Flexibility (do many things, have many maps)

Reality or Illusion

Thinking about how the brain functions and the model of the brain, you can imagine that each of us has a unique model of the world that creates what we call “cognitive bias”. Depending on which environments we have been exposed to and the reference frames that our brains have created, our brain makes different assumptions and predictions and creates a “subjective reality” of the world.

Also, if you look at the brain, it is in a closed box which is our skull, isolated from the outside. The only way our brain can know what’s happening is by the sensory system connected to it. There is no light or sound entering the brain directly.

Everything we perceive, such as colors, sounds, and tastes, is fabricated in the brain as a “property of the universe”.

So, in a sense the reality that we think is real is a construction of our brain, trying to make sense of things. it seems almost like a virtual reality happening in our brain. that’s in fact on this ability of our brain that technologies such as metaverse and VR benefit from. Porn also works based on that.

You have probably seen the Rubber hand illusion, The famous Dress or the Ballerina. These are some examples of how we can tweak our brains and create illusions.

Are we in a simulation?

So, we might think, are we in a simulation? Since our brain is constantly creating a model of the world, we could say in fact we are seeing a simulation of the world, but not in a computer, in our own brain.

For instance, people who lost a limb, for a while still can feel pain or itchiness in their lost leg, a phenomenon that is called a “Phantom leg”. This is due to the fact that their brain still has not updated its model of the world without the lost limb.

Sam Harris who is a philosopher says:

“There is a collaboration between our mind and the world to produce what we call reality”

Nonbiological Consciousness

Let’s say we created an intelligent machine that learns a model of the world using the same principles as the brain and the internal states of the machine will be equivalent to the states of neurons in the brain. If the machine could remember these states as they occur and replay these memories, would it be aware and be conscious of its existence in the same way as us?

In my opinion, if we translate consciousness as “The sense of presence, being an active agent in the world”, yes, it could exist. But I doubt the higher levels of consciousness that I previously mentioned for a sentient being to happen.

In fact, I cannot imagine a nonbiological consciousness that could feel pain and pleasure. It could for sure make an illusion of that for us to believe it.

Question of Embodiment

Based on the new theory of the brain, an intelligent agent needs to move in the world, so it needs a body. In theory, to create an intelligent machine we do not need to have a physical body. It could also be a virtual body, an avatar, or a bot on the web.

As humans, we know that the role of our bodies in consciousness is very important. Our bodies are a portal to reach consciousness.

In other words, the body is the container for the soul. But our body is not our consciousness. We are not defined by this body. The body is a manifestation of our consciousness in such form. When someone loses a limb or gets burned or goes through physical transformations, their consciousness remains untouched.

So, if we are not our bodies, and our consciousness doesn’t depend on it, then could it mean that we could have a different body with the same consciousness? Could it mean that we could upload our consciousness into a non-biological body? This is what Whole Brain Emulation technologies are under investigation.

It seems that one main barrier to creating successful General Artificial Intelligence or GAI is consciousness. We can’t create GAI without solving the puzzle of consciousness and creating artificial consciousness.

Jeff Hawkins in his book A Thousand Brains suggests that there are 2 paths to achieving GAI:

1. One that we are already working on: to make computers that can outperform humans, and hopefully one day we can make machines to excel over humans.

2. The second which he suggests is a better approach: to focus on Flexibility, meaning to create machines that do many things, starting with the ability of a 5-year-old child. He claims that if we find out how to make flexible machines then we can make them better. But this has been proved to be difficult because even a daily information amount stored and processed by a 5-year-old is beyond the processing power of our computers.

Ethics

There comes of course many ethical questions here:

• Do we REALLY need to create a sentient machine like humans?
• Should we embed love into these machines? Or jealousy, or anger?
• What if some humans develop emotions for them? Start having relationships with them? This is actually already happening in parts of the world, we see robots and holograms as spouses or sex slaves.
• What if they go out of control or they become harmful and manipulative? Because, once an AI starts acting conscious, it becomes difficult for humans not to believe it.
• Would turning them off be equal to murder?

I personally believe that we do not need to create machines that are like humans. They don’t have to look like us. It’s even harder to create the emotional brain, so if we create only the neocortex it is a better easier thing to do.

Existential Risks

Creating machines that are much smarter than the smartest human in the world on all levels, who can manipulate us, gives us no power to negotiate with them. This is the existential risk that some figures like Nick Bostrom, Elon Musk, and many more have been warning us about. This is in my point of view, a very far point in the future but not unimaginable.

In fact, their reasoning is as follows: you either have bad people using the technology to harm other people and use it to get more power and dominance over others, such as mass destructive self-controlling weaponized AI, or you create an Intelligence Explosion by creating machines that are smarter than humans, and assign them to create other machines that are smarter than them, and those machines continue creating other machines smarter than themselves, and it results in a sudden drastic gap of intelligence between the human and the last intelligent machine. We will therefore end up being unable to control them because we have no idea how they are made, and one day they might decide that they don’t need us anymore: human extinction.

Human’s nature: Ego and Fear of Death

The truth is that human nature is bound by ego and fear of death. There are two strong forces in the universe, love, and fear. And they control our instincts. The fear of death is the strongest fear among all and is what dictates us to do, eat, and feel. In fact, most human technologies are based on this fear of death and the need for survival. The fact that we don’t want to die from cancer so we develop a technology to detect the disease early, or we want to win an election so we develop a strong data analytics software to manipulate people’s behavior, or we know that we have overused the planet resources so we are building rockets to go to Mars, are all driven by this force.

We are ultimately primitives but in a little more stylish dress!

Our only difference is our larger collective knowledge and our level of awareness. We have today many tools to help us simulate and understand the consequences of our actions, we have tools to learn things faster and better, to save and store our knowledge and make it accessible to human beings across the globe. And we are able to make conscious decisions that can control our old animal brains.

A good example of it is the climate change problem. We all know that it is made by 2 factors: increase in population and increase in pollution per person. So it would make sense that by stopping making babies the problem would be solved, right? But our genes want to reproduce and our animal brain doesn’t understand this logic.

That’s where human intellect can jump in and fix the problem by putting rules and regulations, like what for instance China did to control the population with the single-child policy. Or the Invention of birth control that let the old brain have sex without making babies. Another cost-effective solution is to give women equal rights, equal pay, education, and abortion right. It leads to a more sustainable world with less suffering.

The reality is that economic benefit is the primary reason for advancing digital technology and the automation of society so in all solutions we need to consider this element and strategize around it.

Conclusion

I don’t know if we would ever be able to create a conscious AI, but I am 100% sure that we can create AI consciously, and we can do that already today. I feel there is a lot of value in befriending science and spirituality and reconcile these two worlds. I believe they each have part of the answer that we are looking for, and it cannot be found without connecting our collective consciousness and looking at the world from many different lenses, so we can finally see a more complete reality.

A balance between the scientific community and spirituality is what could shed more light on our understanding of consciousness and answer the ethical questions that we have on technologies such as AI.

we need diversity: philosophers, technology experts, Philanthropists, teachers, politicians, neuroscientists, engineers, human rights advocates, environmentalists, all women and men coming together to discuss and decide on the charts of ethics of AI.

It’s so hard already to find a group as such, let alone find a common ground to come up with an agreement. I once saw a priest in a public hearing at one of the sessions at the European Commission and I was shocked! I enjoyed it a lot that session because of the diversity of thoughts that were shared there. I believe, that even though it’s hard, this is what we need to do to succeed.

All world problems today such as global warming can be solved only if we are willing to change.

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” , Albert Einstein