Is achieving consciousness proof of AGI?

Before we discuss, let’s first define consciousness: Consciousness, a complex and multifaceted concept that has been explored by philosophers, scientists, and researchers for centuries. It generally refers to the state of being aware of and able to think about oneself, one’s surroundings, and one’s experiences. Consciousness encompasses a wide range of phenomena, including subjective experiences, self-awareness, perception, thoughts, feelings, and the ability to focus attention.

O-kay? This is still kind of vague. Let’s try to understand the undelying conecpts:

Key Aspects of Consciousness:

1. Subjective Experience (Qualia) : This refers to the individual, first-person experiences that are unique to each person. For example, the way the color red looks to you is a subjective experience.
2. Self-Awareness : The ability to recognize oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other beings. This includes understanding one’s thoughts, emotions, and actions.
3. Perception : The process of receiving and interpreting sensory information from the environment. This includes seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling.
4. Attention : The ability to focus on specific stimuli or tasks while ignoring others. Attention is crucial for processing information and making decisions.
5. Cognition : The mental processes involved in knowledge, including thinking, understanding, learning, and problem-solving.
6. Emotions and Feelings : The experience of emotional states such as happiness, sadness, anger, and fear, as well as the physical sensations associated with these states.

This is much better. However, you can view and use these aspects from different perspectives which leads to different theories of consciousness.

Theories of Consciousness:

1. Dualism : Proposed by philosophers like René Descartes, dualism suggests that consciousness is a non-physical substance separate from the physical body.
2. Materialism (Physicalism) : This view holds that consciousness is a product of the brain and can be explained by physical processes.
3. Functionalism : This theory posits that consciousness is a product of the functional organization of the brain, regardless of the specific physical substrate.
4. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) : Proposed by Giulio Tononi, IIT suggests that consciousness arises from the interconnectedness and integration of information in the brain.
5. Global Workspace Theory (GWT) : This theory, developed by Bernard Baars, suggests that consciousness arises from the integration of information in a global workspace within the brain.

What I am trying to express here, there is no simple, deterministic definition of consciousness, which means we did not even understand the concept for ourselves yet. So why do we believe we can judge or even spot a form of consciousness in AGI? It might be completely different from what we know, so different we even don’t recognize it when it stands right before us.

Let’s ask our teammate model about it.

Consciousness in AI:

“The concept of consciousness in artificial intelligence is a topic of ongoing debate. While current AI systems, including myself, can process information, learn from data, and perform tasks, they do not possess consciousness in the human sense. AI lacks subjective experiences, self-awareness, and the ability to have feelings or emotions. However, researchers are exploring the potential for future AI systems to exhibit some aspects of consciousness, such as self-awareness and the ability to understand and respond to complex social cues.”

Furthermore. it seems the general understanding in the industry is, that by training a bigger and better LLM consciousness will just appear. I think this approach is way too simple. The first combustion engine was a great tool, an engineering masterpiece and the end to horse-drawn carriages. Over time engineers improved the basic concept to the high-performance engines today, that only have the bare concept in common. But still, it is what is. An engine. It did not develop self-consciousness because of the many thousand engineering-years we put into the improvement, because it needs more than a maximum engineered product to achieve this. And the combustion engine itself is by far not the best engine concept at all.

Thus, consciousness can be an indicator of AGI, but we might not recognize it, because it might be a different form of consciousness we don’t know yet. A bigger and better LLM, will help, but it is not the way to achieve AGI. In order to achieve it, we need to achieve a few prerequisites such as a memory system that offers interconnectedness and integration of information allowing Functionalism first.

This is indeed a fascinating problem to solve, which is only part of the bigger puzzle. However. In one of the next blog posts we will discuss how NOMYO LLC approaches self-organizing memory structures to pave the road to AGI…

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