A radical theory of consciousness | AI researcher Joscha Bach

Most are sceptical that artificial intelligence will one day become conscious. But might this scepticism be misguided? Join leading AI researcher, Joscha Bach, as he argues that we can create artificial consciousness if we open ourselves up to the possibility of cyber-animism, the idea that consciousness and spirit is akin to a software agent that naturally emerges in a biological organism.

Dr. Joscha Bach introduces a surprising idea called "cyber animism" in his AGI-24 talk - the notion that nature might be full of self-organizing software agents, similar to the spirits in ancient belief systems. Bach suggests that consciousness could be a kind of software running on our brains, and wonders if similar "programs" might exist in plants or even entire ecosystems.

Joscha takes us on a tour de force through history, philosophy, and cutting-edge computer science, teasing us to rethink what we know about minds, machines, and the world around us. Joscha believes we should blur the lines between human, artificial, and natural intelligence, and argues that consciousness might be more widespread and interconnected than we ever thought possible.

TOC:

00:00:00 Introduction: AGI and Cyberanimism
00:03:57 The Nature of Consciousness
00:08:46 Aristotle's Concepts of Mind and Consciousness
00:13:23 The Hard Problem of Consciousness
00:16:17 Functional Definition of Consciousness
00:20:24 Comparing LLMs and Human Consciousness
00:26:52 Testing for Consciousness in AI Systems
00:30:00 Animism and Software Agents in Nature
00:37:02 Plant Consciousness and Ecosystem Intelligence
00:40:36 The California Institute for Machine Consciousness
00:44:52 Ethics of Conscious AI and Suffering
00:46:29 Philosophical Perspectives on Consciousness
00:49:55 Q&A: Formalisms for Conscious Systems
00:53:27 Coherence, Self-Organization, and Compute Resources

Refs:
Aristotle's work on the soul and consciousness
Richard Dawkins' work on genes and evolution
Gerald Edelman's concept of Neural Darwinism
Thomas Metzinger's book "Being No One"
Yoshua Bengio's concept of the "consciousness prior"
Stuart Hameroff's theories on microtubules and consciousness
Christof Koch's work on consciousness
Daniel Dennett's "Cartesian Theater" concept
Giulio Tononi's Integrated Information Theory
Mike Levin's work on organismal intelligence
The concept of animism in various cultures
Freud's model of the mind
Buddhist perspectives on consciousness and meditation
The Genesis creation narrative (for its metaphorical interpretation)
California Institute for Machine Consciousness

Bach's idea is hardly new - it essentially is that making the materialist assumption that consciousness is an emergent property of the immensely complex activity of the brain's neuronal structures, then maybe AI could similarly develop consciousness as an emergent property of the activity of immensely complex computer processing. This rehashes the entire convoluted and contentious collision of materialist scientism with the boatload of paranormal evidence for consciousness being nonmaterial and existing independently of the brain neuronal structures, and numerous strong philosophical arguments also invalidating materialism. 

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Bach's idea is hardly new - it essentially is that making the materialist assumption that consciousness is an emergent property of the immensely complex activity of the brain's neuronal structures, then maybe AI could similarly develop consciousness as an emergent property of the activity of immensely complex computer processing. This rehashes the entire convoluted and contentious collision of materialist scientism with the boatload of paranormal evidence for consciousness being nonmaterial and existing independently of the brain neuronal structures, and numerous strong philosophical arguments also invalidating materialism. 

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I would agree that I don't believe Bach is correct, but what is interesting is how close he comes to the idea that the conscious agent isn't a physical entity.

In fact once one accepts "emergence" is an illogical, Something from Nothing, belief of the materialist faith his view seems to a combination of Platonism + Animism...