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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 Consciousness  

A review and update of a controversial 20-year-old theory of consciousness published in Physics of Life Reviews claims that consciousness derives from deeper level, finer scale activities inside brain neurons.

A review and update of a controversial 20-year-old theory of consciousness published in Physics of Life Reviews claims that consciousness derives from deeper level, finer scale activities inside brain neurons. The recent discovery of quantum vibrations in "microtubules" inside brain neurons corroborates this theory, according to review authors Stuart Hameroff and Sir Roger Penrose.

They suggest that EEG rhythms (brain waves) also derive from deeper level microtubule vibrations, and that from a practical standpoint, treating brain microtubule vibrations could benefit a host of mental, neurological, and cognitive conditions.

The theory, called "orchestrated objective reduction" ('Orch OR'), was first put forward in the mid-1990s by the eminent mathematical physicist Penrose, and prominent anesthesiologist Hameroff, MD, Anesthesiology, Psychology and Center for Consciousness Studies, The University of Arizona, Tucson.

They suggested that quantum vibrational computations in microtubules were "orchestrated" ("Orch") by synaptic inputs and memory stored in microtubules, and terminated by Penrose "objective reduction" ('OR'), hence "Orch OR." Microtubules are major components of the cell structural skeleton.

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Orch OR was harshly criticized from its inception, as the brain was considered too "warm, wet, and noisy" for seemingly delicate quantum processes. However, evidence has now shown warm quantum coherence in plant photosynthesis, bird brain navigation, our sense of smell, and brain microtubules.

The recent discovery of warm temperature quantum vibrations in microtubules inside brain neurons by the research group led by Anirban Bandyopadhyay, PhD, at the National Institute of Material Sciences in Tsukuba, Japan (and now at MIT), corroborates the pair's theory and suggests that EEG rhythms also derive from deeper level microtubule vibrations.

In addition, work from the laboratory of Roderick G. Eckenhoff, MD, at the University of Pennsylvania, suggests that anesthesia, which selectively erases consciousness while sparing non-conscious brain activities, acts via microtubules in brain neurons.

"The origin of consciousness reflects our place in the universe, the nature of our existence. Did consciousness evolve from complex computations among brain neurons, as most scientists assert? Or has consciousness, in some sense, been here all along, as spiritual approaches maintain?" ask Hameroff and Penrose in the current review.

"This opens a potential Pandora's Box, but our theory accommodates both these views, suggesting consciousness derives from quantum vibrations in microtubules, protein polymers inside brain neurons, which both govern neuronal and synaptic function, and connect brain processes to self-organizing processes in the fine scale, 'proto-conscious' quantum structure of reality."

After 20 years of skeptical criticism, "the evidence now clearly supports Orch OR," continue Hameroff and Penrose. "Our new paper updates the evidence, clarifies Orch OR quantum bits, or "qubits," as helical pathways in microtubule lattices, rebuts critics, and reviews 20 testable predictions of Orch OR published in 1998 -- of these, six are confirmed and none refuted."

An important new facet of the theory is introduced. Microtubule quantum vibrations (e.g. in megahertz) appear to interfere and produce much slower EEG "beat frequencies." Despite a century of clinical use, the underlying origins of EEG rhythms have remained a mystery. Clinical trials of brief brain stimulation aimed at microtubule resonances with megahertz mechanical vibrations using transcranial ultrasound have shown reported improvements in mood, and may prove useful against Alzheimer's disease and brain injury in the future.

Lead author Hameroff concludes, "Orch OR is the most rigorous, comprehensive and successfully-tested theory of consciousness ever put forth. From a practical standpoint, treating brain microtubule vibrations could benefit a host of mental, neurological, and cognitive conditions."


SOURCE  Elsevier

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