Sentient robots? Not possible if you do the maths So long, robot pals – and robot overlords. Sentient machines http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21829171.900-consciousness-why-we-need-to-build-sentient-machines.html may never exist, according to a variation on a leading mathematical model of how our brains create consciousness http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22229645.000-the-fourth-state-of-matter-consciousness.html. Over the past decade, Giulio Tononi at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his colleagues have developed a mathematical framework for consciousness http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1003588 that has become one of the most influential theories in the field. According to their model, the ability to integrate information is a key property of consciousness. They argue that in conscious minds, integrated information cannot be reduced into smaller components. For instance, when a human perceives a red triangle, the brain cannot register the object as a colourless triangle plus a shapeless patch of red. But there is a catch, argues Phil Maguire http://www.cs.nuim.ie/~pmaguire/ at the National University of Ireland in Maynooth. He points to a computational device called the XOR logic gate, which involves two inputs, A and B. The output of the gate is "1" if A and B are the same and "0" if A and B are different. In this scenario, it is impossible to predict the output based on A or B alone – you need both. Memory edit Crucially, this type of integration requires loss of information, says Maguire: "You have put in two bits, and you get one out. If the brain integrated information in this fashion, it would have to be continuously haemorrhaging information." Maguire and his colleagues say the brain is unlikely to do this, because repeated retrieval of memories would eventually destroy them. Instead, they define integration in terms of how difficult information is to edit. Consider an album of digital photographs. The pictures are compiled but not integrated, so deleting or modifying individual images is easy. But when we create memories, we integrate those snapshots of information into our bank of earlier memories. This makes it extremely difficult to selectively edit out one scene from the "album" in our brain. Based on this definition, Maguire and his team have shown mathematically that computers can't handle any process that integrates information completely. If you accept that consciousness is based on total integration, then computers can't be conscious. Read the whole story here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25560-sentient-robots-not-possible-if-you-do-the-maths.html#.U3SA5_ldVZK http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25560-sentient-robots-not-possible-if-you-do-the-maths.html#.U3SA5_ldVZK
But no, you won't find anything about actual transcending - whatever that is - that was a joke on John's surreal exposition from the weekend. I suspect that for a robot to transcend we would have to program it to have a set of emotional and spacial/visual recognition components that could be rearranged to reflect an inner state of disengagement from non-metaphorical stimulus/response routines and a corresponding increase of reward systems, possibly feedbacking into total rejection of programmed response to outer awareness in favour of self-satisfaction. Basically we'd have to build a robot to be just like us. But most scientists into the idea of artificial intelligence aren't thinking along those lines. In fact the best thing about this article is the link to one of the latest theories of consciousness: Integrated information theory (IIT) approaches the relationship between consciousness and its physical substrate by first identifying the fundamental properties of experience itself: existence, composition, information, integration, and exclusion. IIT then postulates that the physical substrate of consciousness must satisfy these very properties. We develop a detailed mathematical framework in which composition, information, integration, and exclusion are defined precisely and made operational. This allows us to establish to what extent simple systems of mechanisms, such as logic gates or neuron-like elements, can form complexes that can account for the fundamental properties of consciousness. Based on this principled approach, we show that IIT can explain many known facts about consciousness and the brain, leads to specific predictions, and allows us to infer, at least in principle, both the quantity and quality of consciousness for systems whose causal structure is known. For example, we show that some simple systems can be minimally conscious, some complicated systems can be unconscious, and two different systems can be functionally equivalent, yet one is conscious and the other one is not. Read all about it, but if you're used to thinking about consciousness in terms of touchy-feely spiritual-speak it'll be like cycling uphill with the brakes on. It is worth the effort though: http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1003588 http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1003588
