‘Artificial Intelligence is a misnomer’ - Sir Roger Penrose

Aha. That makes more sense, thank you. Though again, this possibility seems not unlike problems we already have with social media tech, just more intense.

I'm not sure about the analogy your making... an example would be great.

I'm not sure about the analogy your making... an example would be great.

Algorithmic bias is what I'm thinking of.

Algorithmic bias is what I'm thinking of.

got it, yes I agree...

...around the time google search was spidering web sites and inadvertently finding and indexing open doors, resulting in a few scandals where information that should have been secret was appearing in their search engine... I stumbled into a US Gov defence web site - I realised with hindsight - that I shouldn't have access to, images, video etc were still blocked... but the CSS file and plaintext for the html pages was still accessible... I couldn't go very far, but I could read some summaries of video presentations from defence scientists about how far they had got...

I realised they were much further ahead with the material substrate of evolutionary hardware than I could ever have imagined, (and this was quite a few years ago). God knows what they have now.

You might recall the F-117A Nighthawk stealth aircraft that was used in the 1990 Iraq campaign, when images got out, I think everyone was amazed that such a futuristic aircraft existed. Yet the aircraft itself had its maiden flight 9 years earlier, and was under development for 10 years prior to that, and scientific papers that lead to its development were from the 60's.

Then images got out of the tail rotor of a crashed stealth helicopter in 2011 used in the operation to kill Bin Laden... no one had any idea such technology existed.

All this is just to say that Adrian Thompsons seminal papers came out in 1997 and 1998. For all I know, 25 years later they may already have a rudimentary evolved synthetic mind/s helping them...

Well, to go with the example, if Orch Or is correct what generates an individual consciousness from a potential Source is certain structures in organic entities.

So these synthetic entities could be as conscious as we are. OTOH maybe a synthetic recreation of the brain's necessary structures doesn't produce anything at all, and the android just lies there.

We won't know until we're further down the line scientifically, though as Max notes by the time we know it might be too late...

Sounds like magic to me - the same as most materialist neuroscience practitioners' view, that mind and consciousness and subjective awareness are simply what the brain neurons do. Hard Problem again.

Sounds like magic to me - the same as most materialist neuroscience practitioners' view, that mind and consciousness and subjective awareness are simply what the brain neurons do. Hard Problem again.

Except Orch OR isn't necessarily materialist at all? It just says there are required structures to get a human consciousness. That seems like something everyone, no matter their metaphysical beliefs or rejection of Orch OR specifically*, has to accept - otherwise neuroscience would not have made any advancements on treatments. So if there are currently biological structures that matter to having a human consciousness - even if the brain is a filter/transmitter - the question then becomes can those structures be crafted using other non-organic materials or even some new engineering of organic materials.

The answer is we don't know, though to me it seems like it is quite plausible. Materialism being false just means that physical structures don't generate consciousness, and I'm not even sure the Hard Problem is relevant if the physical structures are a filter-transmitter, or some kind of arrangement under Idealism that causes a new consciousness to split from the Ur Mind, etc etc...

*To be clear not saying Orch OR is correct, I just used it as an example theory on a possible structural arrangement that could be necessary for having first person PoVs in our reality. Whether it's sufficient would go back to the above.

Except Orch OR isn't necessarily materialist at all? It just says there are required structures to get a human consciousness. That seems like something everyone, no matter their metaphysical beliefs or rejection of Orch OR specifically*, has to accept - otherwise neuroscience would not have made any advancements on treatments. So if there are currently biological structures that matter to having a human consciousness - even if the brain is a filter/transmitter - the question then becomes can those structures be crafted using other non-organic materials or even some new engineering of organic materials.

The answer is we don't know, though to me it seems like it is quite plausible. Materialism being false just means that physical structures don't generate consciousness, and I'm not even sure the Hard Problem is relevant if the physical structures are a filter-transmitter, or some kind of arrangement under Idealism that causes a new consciousness to split from the Ur Mind, etc etc...

*To be clear not saying Orch OR is correct, I just used it as an example theory on a possible structural arrangement that could be necessary for having first person PoVs in our reality. Whether it's sufficient would go back to the above.

To me, the Orch OR concept is almost a distraction. I mean does a quantum system (i.e. a physical system in which quantum superpositions can form because the system is well insulated from thermal dissipation) overcome the Hard Problem? I don't think it does. Therefore delving into the details of one particular possible QM mechanism isn't going to reveal much.

I think the brain must be coupled with something non-physical.

To me, the Orch OR concept is almost a distraction. I mean does a quantum system (i.e. a physical system in which quantum superpositions can form because the system is well insulated from thermal dissipation) overcome the Hard Problem? I don't think it does. Therefore delving into the details of one particular possible QM mechanism isn't going to reveal much.

I think the brain must be coupled with something non-physical.

The Hard Problem is just the question of how that which is physical (whatever that means) can generate consciousness. See here.

It doesn't change the importance of structures that anchor consciousness to a first-person-PoV, as can be seen from neuroscience - even if Idealism is true that would be unavoidable & probably why even some Idealists (like Donald Hoffman tho he calls himself a "Conscious Realist") think AI can become conscious.

So the structures that are part of Orch-OR or any other theory - like Integrated Information Theory - can still have a role and can still be reproduced synthetically.

Except Orch OR isn't necessarily materialist at all? It just says there are required structures to get a human consciousness. That seems like something everyone, no matter their metaphysical beliefs or rejection of Orch OR specifically*, has to accept - otherwise neuroscience would not have made any advancements on treatments. So if there are currently biological structures that matter to having a human consciousness - even if the brain is a filter/transmitter - the question then becomes can those structures be crafted using other non-organic materials or even some new engineering of organic materials.

The answer is we don't know, though to me it seems like it is quite plausible. Materialism being false just means that physical structures don't generate consciousness, and I'm not even sure the Hard Problem is relevant if the physical structures are a filter-transmitter, or some kind of arrangement under Idealism that causes a new consciousness to split from the Ur Mind, etc etc...

*To be clear not saying Orch OR is correct, I just used it as an example theory on a possible structural arrangement that could be necessary for having first person PoVs in our reality. Whether it's sufficient would go back to the above.

It seems to me Orch OR is definitely materialist - it apparently claims that these microscopic neural structures are required for human consciousness to exist, period, that they actually cause or create human consciousness. Substitute "neurons" for "microtubules", and that is the usual claim of materialist neuroscience. 

Hameroff and Penrose are not suggesting that the function of the microtubules is to allow human consciousness in the form of some sort of immaterial spirit to inhabit the physical brain and body, as is posited by interactive dualism. 

In any case, there is very extensive evidence that human consciousness is not dependent on the physical brain or its microtubules, in particular from very many NDEs. The existence of these many NDEs shows that human consciousness continues after the spirit leaves the body, and that as immaterial detached spirit it continues to maintain a first person subjective consciousness while out of body. First person subjective consciousness and awareness is ultimately independent of the brain and its microtubules and not dependent on them, except that in physical life it must usually be manifested through the brain.  

Perhaps the neural microtubules are the physical mechanism through which the ultimately separate and independent human spirit interacts with the brain to maintain a physical manifestation in the world via the physical body, but that doesn't seem to be what is being proposed by Hameroff and Penrose. They seem to be saying that human consciousness is actually being created by the microtubules. 

And there is no reason to expect that an artificial brain constructed of artificial neurons with artificial microtubules would be latched onto by human spirits. It might be possible, but I think they (ourselves, that is) would be smarter than that.

To me, the Orch OR concept is almost a distraction. I mean does a quantum system (i.e. a physical system in which quantum superpositions can form because the system is well insulated from thermal dissipation) overcome the Hard Problem? I don't think it does. Therefore delving into the details of one particular possible QM mechanism isn't going to reveal much.

I think the brain must be coupled with something non-physical.

I think you succinctly nailed it.

Hameroff and Penrose are not suggesting that the function of the microtubules is to allow human consciousness in the form of some sort of immaterial spirit to inhabit the physical brain and body, as is posited by interactive dualism.

And there is no reason to expect that an artificial brain constructed of artificial neurons with artificial microtubules would be latched onto by human spirits. It might be possible, but I think they (ourselves, that is) would be smarter than that.

If these spirits come into horrible lives as part of some plan or just to have new experiences...seems synthetic life could easily be something new to experience. It just seems odd to recognize that brains serve some kind of function but then insist that we can a priori reject synthetic life.

I can understand rejecting AI programs making Turing Machines conscious because that is "magic" in the sense of the program producing Something (mind) from Nothing (matter which has no mind). But Turing Machines are very specific structures, or rather an abstraction that can realized with different structures.

But it seems to me the reasoning for rejecting all synthetic life is too much of a leap given what we know about biology.