Consciousness, AI, babies, morality, politics, empathy, suffering, memory ...
A discussion with Brian Greene
With the exception of my regular podcasts with Robert Wright (here), I never use Small Potatoes to announce online conversations I have. But, a little while ago, I had a 2-hour conversation with the physicist Brian Greene that was exceptionally interesting and covered many topics I’ve written about in my books, articles, and Substack posts. Brian was a delight to talk with, and my hair was exceptionally well-behaved. The video has just been released, and I want to share it with my subscribers.
My only complaint is the title. We briefly discussed memory but spent more time on topics such as consciousness, artificial intelligence, and morality. Here goes:
It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461, and here is a video of Jeff Krichmar talking about some of the Darwin automata, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Uh9phc1Ow
This should be great! Is it available in the podcast feed? I've searched for it and don't find it.
PS: about 40 minutes into it (on YT). I love your comment about panpsychism - LOL! (p91-94 here https://www.onestepforanimals.org/uploads/2/7/9/9/27990461/losingmyreligions.pdf )
And not to get into an argument about Sam Harris, you could explain how consciousness works, but I can't imagine an explanation that makes me think, "Oh, so THAT is how matter and energy becomes subjective experience." (And I'm a Sapolsky-level determinist.)