Consciousness
The Mystery of Consciousness
A few years ago I was at a conference attended by various people involved in genetic algorithms and evolutionary computation. I had been doing research on XCS, a learning classifier system, research that really didn't lead anywhere interesting. One of the conference attendees, David Goldberg gave a talk about some of the more interesting things happening in the field that I caught most of. I was a bit late due to having a flat tire on the trip to Champaign-Urbana. The key point that I remember, that has stuck with me since, was that we really need to work out what exactly it means to be conscious, what a minimally conscious machine would look like. I have since pondered this quite a bit and the more I think about it the less I really think it means to be minimally conscious. The magic just doesn't happen at that level. I really believe that a thermostat is minimally conscious. The real problem, like many problems, is the problem of drawing lines in concepts that don't naturally have lines. That's where I am now, but it doesn't take anything away from David Goldberg. His problem still stands. The only difference is a matter of how we phrase it. There is a line somewhere that when crossed causes a machine to be more like us, to have a self awareness that we can relate to. We just can't define the terms well enough to have any real discussion of the topic. The point Dr. Goldberg made was that these were the things we need to be thinking of, the things we need to hammer out. He's right.
I read an interesting article today that discusses the issues surrounding the study of consciousness. It is a good article for the lay person that I really enjoyed reading. Read it and then think about our minimally conscious machine. Think about when self awareness becomes something we care about. How do we make it happen?