Why current AI development is not going to reach consciousness. The antenna brain.

I need a preamble.

First of all, I have to remember nobody today has a clear definition of what consciousness) is, what ‘feeling/being alive’ is defined.

Certainly I cannot claim I do.

Second, worth remembering such a wayyy complicated subject cannot be exhausted in a silly few lines.?

Third, in this case, I am going to present one of my thoughts on the subject. I believe it is nowhere near close to being ‘conclusive’. Yet I believe it is worth sharing and it ‘sounds about right’ to me.

Let’s start.

Since I can't talk about consciousness directly (nobody knows), I'm going to focus here on 2 aspects of intelligence, more easily defined and still related to consciousness.? Intuition and reasoning.

My assumption here is, intuition is somehow more related to consciousness than reasoning. When you get an idea (intuition), raise the question ‘where does the idea come from?’ To me, this is a specific and contingent formulation of the broader ‘where consciousness comes from? The brain? God? Universe?’.

I may be wrong. Still is the assumption.

Now, when you have a difficult problem, both intuition and reasoning come into play in this respective order.? First you have an idea how to solve stuff, then you figure out how to apply it based on current knowledge and solution patterns.

Even assuming both are functions of the brain (arguably, I talk about that before ), it is clear that current AI research is deeply focused on reasoning.

To be clear, from a commercial point of view it makes a lot of sense. Most of our jobs require reasoning, not necessarily intuition.

Yes, AI research is getting more and more closer to ‘abstract’ reasoning: so things of problems are apparently unrelated but they are subject to the same ‘solution pattern’. And LLMs are increasingly good at it, finding a pattern solution from a marketing field and proposing that in another field (engineering for example).

But this is not intuition. (or other ‘components’ of consciousness like ‘feeling alive’ etc.).

You may argue that, when ChatGPT or alike will get constant internet access to every information available, then it can ‘experience’ the world in real time and make predictions... ‘Like intuition’. Maybe. But I am not talking about that.

I'm talking about situations where, despite all the data and reasoning going in a direction, yet you sense ‘something’: as simple as 'something is wrong even though it doesn't seem so' or detailed like 'I think it should do X instead Y regardless of reality around me.? It doesn't mean you are able to do or act on it: that's where reasoning or the internal brain may come in.

In other words, what you call intuition comes from a part of you that acts as an antenna (brain antenna if you like) and 'sense' something beyond the physical information your mind/body is exposed to. I stress, beyond your information knowledge (if it is within, that’s reasoning).

Now, after receiving that intuition, it is indeed the work of the reasoning of the brain to make something with it (questions like 'ok how can make it work with x1, 2? What happens if I go x3? Probability of the outcome x2 given what I know? Etc. ).?

This second part is the one we are focusing on with current AI research. Given data and reasoning structures, AI gives you likely solutions for a specific current situation.

That field you sense during your intuition moments, it has always been there ( and it was and it will, after you). You just are ‘intermittently conscious’ of it.

Back to the start.?

Did we ever research this external field or attempt to? Not really. You may argue, it never exists. Yet we do sense things contrarian to our reality. Faggin and others call this field ‘ Quantum Information Field’.

Is any AI in current development designed to sense an external field? No.?

#ai #future #artificialintelligence #consciousness