According to techno-futurists, the exponential development of technology in general and artificial intelligence (“AI”) in particular — including the complete digital replication of human brains — will radically transform humanity via two revolutions. The first is the "singularity," when artificial intelligence will redesign itself recursively and progressively,
such that AI will become vastly more powerful than human intelligence ("superstrong AI"). The second revolution will be "virtual immortality," when the fullness of our mental selves can be uploaded perfectly to nonbiological media (such as silicon chips), and our mental selves will live on beyond the demise of our fleshy, physical bodies.
AI singularity and virtual immortality would mark a startling, transhuman world that techno-futurists envision as inevitable and perhaps just over the horizon. They do not question whether their vision can be actualized; they only debate when will it occur, with estimates ranging from 10 to 100 years.
I'm not so sure. Actually, I'm a skeptic — not because I doubt the science, but because I challenge the philosophical foundation of the claims. Consciousness is the elephant in the room, and most techno-futurists do not see it. Whatever consciousness may be, it affects the nature of the AI singularity and determines whether virtual immortality is even possible.
It is an open question, post-singularity, whether superstrong AI without inner awareness would be in all respects just as powerful as superstrong AI with inner awareness, and in no respects deficient? In other words, are there kinds of cognition that, in principle or of necessity, require true consciousness? For assessing the AI singularity, the question of consciousness is profound .
What is consciousness?
Consciousness is a main theme of "Closer To Truth," and among the subtopics I discuss with scientists and philosophers on the program is the classic "mind-body problem" — what is the relationship between the mental thoughts in our minds and the physical brains in our heads? What is the deep cause of consciousness? (All quotes that follow are from "Closer To Truth.")
NYU Philosopher David Chalmers famously described the "hard problem" of consciousness: "Why does it feel like something inside? Why is all our brain processing — vast neural circuits and computational mechanisms — accompanied by conscious experience? Why do we have this amazing inner movie going on in our minds? I don't think the hard problem of consciousness can be solved purely in terms of neuroscience."
"Qualia" are the core of the mind-body-problem. "Qualia are the raw sensations of experience," Chalmers said. "I see colors — reds, greens, blues — and they feel a certain way to me. I see a red rose; I hear a clarinet; I smell mothballs. All of these feel a certain way to me. You must experience them to know what they're like. You could provide a perfect, complete map of my brain [down to elementary particles] — what's going on when I see, hear, smell — but if I haven't seen, heard, smelled for myself, that brain map is not going to tell me about the quality of seeing red, hearing a clarinet, smelling mothballs. You must experience it."
Can a computer be conscious?
To Berkeley philosopher John Searle, computer programs can never have a mind or be conscious in the human sense, even if they give rise to equivalent behaviors and interactions with the external world. (In Searle's "Chinese Room" argument, a person inside a closed space can use a rule book to match Chinese characters with English words and thus appear to understand Chinese, when, in fact, she does not.) But, I asked Searle, "Will it ever be possible, with hyperadvanced technology, for nonbiological intelligences to be conscious in the same sense that we are conscious? Can computers have 'inner experience'?"
"It's like the question, 'Can a machine artificially pump blood as the heart does?'" Searle responded. "Sure it can — we have artificial hearts. So if we can know exactly how the brain causes consciousness, down to its finest details, I don't see any obstacle, in principle, to building a conscious machine. That is, if you knew what was causally sufficient to produce consciousness in human beings and if you could have that [mechanism] in another system, then you would produce consciousness in that other system. Note that you don't need neurons to have consciousness. It's like saying you don't need feathers in order to fly. But to build a flying machine, you do need sufficient causal power to overcome the force of gravity."
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