Ray Kurzweil on When Machines Will Become Conscious

 Ray Kurzweil  

In a discussion last year at Singularity University, Ray Kurzweil shared his views on the schools of thought regarding consciousness and artificial intelligence.

S peaking last Fall at Singularity University "fireside chat", Ray Kurzweil reviewed some of the ideas from his book, How to Create a Mind and  elaborates on schools of thought regarding consciousness and artificial intelligence.

According to Kurzweil, there is no scientific way to determine if something is conscious.

"I believe that people will accept these entities are conscious, and we'd better believe it, because they will be smarter than we are."

Kurzweil discusses how there is no definition of consciousness that is widely accepted.  Some, like the philosopher John Searle suggest that a common sense definition is all that is required. "Consciousness consists of all those states of feeling or sentience or awareness. It begins in the morning when you wake up from a dreamless sleep, and it goes on all day until you fall asleep or die or otherwise become unconscious. Dreams are a form of consciousness on this definition."

Roger Penrose, on the other hand, attributes consciousness to a quantum process in the brain, specifically in microtubules in the neurons. "In my view, largely based on the fact that consciousness is mysterious, and quantum computing is mysterious, so they must be related in some way," says Kurzweil.

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With the debate over a scientific definition in mind, Kurzweil admits you have to have a leap of faith when dealing with consciousness. Some would say this makes consciousness an illusion, so it cannot be studied.  Kurzweil disagrees.

When it comes to machine intelligence, Kurzweil says:

If you can really realistically emulate the salient functional information processes that are going on the in brain, you'll achieve the equivalent of that brain, and if that brain is conscious, there is no reason why the recreation can't also be conscious.

There are a lot of details to this, he admits, but essentially if the pattern of processes are recreated, and the initial pattern represented consciousness, the recreation is conscious.

"I believe that people will accept these entities are conscious, and we'd better believe it, because they will be smarter than we are, and they'll get angry if we tell them they're not really conscious," Kurzweil sardonically says.


SOURCE  Singularity University

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