Machine consciousness and complexity

1. Machine consciousnessand complexity Owen Holland

2. What this talk is about Machine consciousness - what do I mean by it? - what am I happy for others to mean by it? - how might we engineer it? - how would we know if we’d succeeded? Complexity - must a complex machine be conscious? - must a conscious machine be complex?

3. Machine consciousness: what do I mean by it?

4. Machine consciousness: what do I mean by it? Phenomenal consciousness in a machine

5. Machine consciousness: what do I mean by it? Phenomenal consciousness in a machine - Is it possible in principle? Very probably.

6. Machine consciousness: what do I mean by it? Phenomenal consciousness in a machine - Is it possible in principle? Very probably. - Is it possible in practice? There’s only one way to find out.

7. Machine consciousness: what do I mean by it? Even the dullest stirring of core consciousness will do. I think we’ve all been there (like Proust) - those few moments when the system is booting up more slowly than usual and there is little or nothing more than an awareness of being.

8. Machine consciousness: what do I mean by it? Even the dullest stirring of core consciousness will do. I think we’ve all been there (like Proust) - those few moments when the system is booting up more slowly than usual and there is little or nothing more than an awareness of being. Obviously, an extended consciousness with all the trimmings would be better, just as the 1995 Boeing 777 is better than the 1903 Wright Flyer. But the difference between the two is far less than the difference between the Wright Flyer and a thrown rock. What I don’t want is something that looks like a 777 but never gets off the ground.

9. Machine consciousness: what do I mean by it? Will phenomenal consciousness have to deliver any functional benefit to the machine?

10. Machine consciousness: what do I mean by it? Will phenomenal consciousness have to deliver any functional benefit to the machine? No. I’d be perfectly happy to produce the machine analogue of locked-in syndrome.

11. Machine consciousness: what do I mean by it? Will phenomenal consciousness have to deliver any functional benefit to the machine? No. I’d be perfectly happy to produce the machine analogue of locked-in syndrome. But it’s perfectly possible that the structures and processes underlying and producing phenomenal consciousness may deliver functional benefits at the same time. In an evolved system, this delivery of (net) functional benefits would be a necessity.

12. Machine consciousness: what Axel thinks of it: “It seems to me that making headway into specifically addressing the so-called ‘hard problem’ is what any project dedicated to machine consciousness should be about.” Axel Cleeremans, 2003

13. Machine consciousness: what Axel thinks of it: “It seems to me that making headway into specifically addressing the so-called ‘hard problem’ is what any project dedicated to machine consciousness should be about.” Axel Cleeremans, 2003 There are lots of funded programmes in The USA, UK, and Europe dealing with ‘Cognitive Systems’. The focus of an MC project should be different.

14. The hard problem ‘I have assumed that consciousness exists, and that to redefine the problem as that of explaining how certain cognitive or behavioural functions are performed is unacceptable…If you hold that an answer to the ‘easy’ problems explains everything that needs to be explained, then you get one sort of theory; if you hold that there is a further ‘hard’ problem, then you get another.’ David Chalmers 1996

15. Machine consciousness - what am I happy for others to mean by it?

16. Machine consciousness - what am I happy for others to mean by it? Almost anything - as long as they say exactly what they mean by it.

17. Machine consciousness - what am I happy for others to mean by it? Almost anything - as long as they say exactly what they mean by it. Lots of interest in schemes involving: - imagination - building and exploiting models of itself - I-ness, self processes, self reference

18. Machine consciousness - what am I happy for others to mean by it? Almost anything - as long as they say exactly what they mean by it. Lots of interest in schemes involving: - imagination - building and exploiting models of itself - I-ness, self processes, self reference Some interest in schemes involving: - building and exploiting models of the world

19. Machine consciousness - what am I happy for others to mean by it? Why am I so tolerant?

20. Machine consciousness - what am I happy for others to mean by it? Why am I so tolerant? - Because it’s likely that almost any good work along any of these lines will shed light on how to build the sort of systems I’m interested in.

21. Machine consciousness - what am I happy for others to mean by it? Why am I so tolerant? - Because it’s likely that almost any good work along any of these lines will shed light on how to build the sort of systems I’m interested in. - Because I want to be tolerated - no holy wars!

22. Machine consciousness: how might we engineer it?

23. Machine consciousness: how might we engineer it? After the Birmingham meeting, I can declare that I’m a simulator (along with another 8 or so from Ron’s list) but perhaps not a main sequence simulator. Here’s a quick sketch of what it means and how I got there.

24. Machine consciousness: how might we engineer it? After the Birmingham meeting, I can declare that I’m a simulator (along with another 8 or so from Ron’s list) but perhaps not a main sequence simulator. Here’s a quick sketch of what it means and how I got there. Consider an autonomous mobile agent that has to achieve some mission in a dynamic, partly unknown, and occasionally novel world.

25. How could the agent achieve its task (or mission)?

26. How could the robot achieve its task (or mission)? - by being preprogrammed for every possible contingency? No

27. How could the robot achieve its task (or mission)? - by being preprogrammed for every possible contingency? No - by having learned the consequences for the achievement of the mission of every possible action in every contingency? No

28. How could the robot achieve its task (or mission)? - by being preprogrammed for every possible contingency? No - by having learned the consequences for the achievement of the mission of every possible action in every contingency? No - by having learned enough to be able to predict the consequences of tried and untried actions, by being able to evaluate those consequences for their likely contribution to the mission, and by selecting a relatively good course of action? Maybe

29. Here’s how Richard Dawkins puts it: “Survival machines that can simulate the future are one jump ahead of survival machines who can only learn on the basis of overt trial and error.” Dawkins, 1976

30. Is it just Dawkins? No. The idea that some survival machines (animals) runs simulations of actions in the world in order to predict what will happen is quite widespread - e.g. Dennett has written extensively about it. Some neuroscientists are gathering evidence for it - see for example Rodney Cotterill’s paper in Progress in Neurobiology (2000). Hesslow (2002) calls it ‘the simulation hypothesis’ and has published a useful and concise summary of it:

31. Hesslow’s ‘simulation hypothesis’ “1) Simulation of actions. We can activate pre-motor areas in the frontal lobes in a way that resembles activity during a normal action but does not cause any overt movement.

32. Hesslow’s ‘simulation hypothesis’ “1) Simulation of actions. We can activate pre-motor areas in the frontal lobes in a way that resembles activity during a normal action but does not cause any overt movement. 2) Simulation of perception. Imagining that one perceives something is essentially the same as actually perceiving it, but the perceptual activity is generated by the brain itself rather than by external stimuli.

33. Hesslow’s ‘simulation hypothesis’ “1) Simulation of actions. We can activate pre-motor areas in the frontal lobes in a way that resembles activity during a normal action but does not cause any overt movement. 2) Simulation of perception. Imagining that one perceives something is essentially the same as actually perceiving it, but the perceptual activity is generated by the brain itself rather than by external stimuli. 3) Anticipation. There are associative mechanisms that enable both behavioural and perceptual activity to elicit other perceptual activity in the sensory areas of the brain. Most importantly, a simulated action can elicit perceptual activity that resembles the activity that would have occurred if the action had actually been performed.” (Hesslow 2002)

34. Two questions: What exactly has to be simulated? What is needed for simulation?

35. What exactly has to be simulated? Whatever affects the mission. In an embodied agent, the agent can only affect the world through the actions of its body in and on the world, and the world can only affect the mission by affecting the agent’s body.

36. What exactly has to be simulated? Whatever affects the mission. In an embodied agent, the agent can only affect the world through the actions of its body in and on the world, and the world can only affect the mission by affecting the agent’s body. So it needs to simulate those aspects of its body that affect the world in ways that affect the mission, along with those aspects of the world that affect the body in ways that affect the mission.

37. What exactly has to be simulated? How does the body affect the world? To some extent through its passive properties, but mainly by being moved through and exerting force on the world, with appropriate speed and accuracy.

38. What exactly has to be simulated? How does the body affect the world? To some extent through its passive properties, but mainly by being moved through and exerting force on the world, with appropriate speed and accuracy. How does the world affect the body? Through the spatially distributed environment (through which the body must move) and through the properties of the objects in it (cf. food, predators, poisons, prey, competitors, falling coconuts, etc. for animals)

39. What is needed for simulation? Some structure or process corresponding to a state of the world that, when operated on by some process or structure corresponding to an action, yields an outcome corresponding to and interpretable as the consequences of that action.

40. What is needed for simulation? I like to call these structures or processes ‘internal models’, because they are like working models rather than static representations, and because the term was used in this sense by Craik, and later by Johnson-Laird and others.

41. What is needed for simulation? I like to call these structures or processes ‘internal models’, because they are like working models rather than static representations, and because the term was used in this sense by Craik, and later by Johnson-Laird and others. So we require a model (or linked set of models) that includes the body, and how it is controlled, and the spatial aspects of the world, and the (kinds of) objects in the world, and their spatial arrangement. But consider…

42. What is needed for simulation? The body is always present and available, and changes slowly, if at all. When it moves, it is usually because it has been commanded to move.

43. What is needed for simulation? The body is always present and available, and changes slowly, if at all. When it moves, it is usually because it has been commanded to move. The world is different. It is ‘complex, occasionally novel, dynamic, and hostile’. It’s only locally available, and may contain objects of known and unknown kinds in known and unknown places.

44. What is needed for simulation? The body is always present and available, and changes slowly, if at all. When it moves, it is usually because it has been commanded to move. The world is different. It is ‘complex, occasionally novel, dynamic, and hostile’. It’s only locally available, and may contain objects of known and unknown kinds in known and unknown places. How should all this be modelled? As a single model containing body, environment, and objects?

45. What is needed for simulation? The body is always present and available, and changes slowly, if at all. When it moves, it is usually because it has been commanded to move. The world is different. It is ‘complex, occasionally novel, dynamic, and hostile’. It’s only locally available, and may contain objects of known and unknown kinds in known and unknown places. How should all this be modelled? As a single model containing body, environment, and objects? Or as a separate model of the body coupled to and interacting with the other modelled components?

46. What happens in the human agent?

47. What happens in the human agent? “...(I)t is always obvious to you that there are some things you can do and others you cannot given the constraints of your body and of the external world. (You know you can’t lift a truck...) Somewhere in your brain there are representations of all these possibilities, and the systems that plan commands...need to be aware of this distinction between things they can and cannot command you to do....To achieve all this, I need to have in my brain not only a representation of the world and various objects in it but also a representation of myself, including my own body within that representation....In addition, the representation of the external object has to interact with my self-representation....” (Ramachandran and Blakeslee 1998).

48. Does the brain model the body? Yes, in many ways. Most importantly, it models the muscular control of movement, using forward models and inverse models (Ito, Kawato, Wolpert etc.) It also predicts the nature and timing of the internal and external sensory inputs that will be produced if the movement is executed correctly (Frith, Blakemore). This is useful because feedback is too slow to guide rapid movements, and such prediction allows early correction.

49. Does the brain model the world? Yes, in many ways. It models space, and it models the nature and behaviour of objects, and much of this modelling is innate. Useful reading (for me anyway): Wild Minds, by Marc Hauser.

50. Exactly how can simulation help our agent? All simulation can tell you is what will probably happen if you do the action Z, or the action sequence XYZ.