Some people define consciousness as a subjective experience that can only be detected by the conscious agent. That’s the kind of untestable definition that I’m talking about. It is useless.

To me, intelligence and consciousness are the same thing. If I say I’m conscious of something, that just means I’m thinking about it. If I’m self-aware, well, that means I’m thinking about myself. I know some facts about the entity called “myself”, and my plans for the future include this entity. Don’t know what more there is.

The definition is useless because it defines consciousness in terms of consciousness (i.e. “conscious agent”). If you could detect whether an agent detects itself to be conscious (e.g. watch their brain for thoughts “only I can detect this subjective experience I am feeling”). Of course, then you need a definition of agent, and a method for determining when an agent realises ve is conscious.

The idea is the fact that humans worry about consciousness, but plausibly many AI designs (e.g. AIXI) wouldn’t, is evidence that humans are conscious.

OTOH, I’m dealing playing with words I don’t properly understand here, so take this with the appropriate grain of salt.

“To me, intelligence and consciousness are the same thing. If I say I’m conscious of something, that just means I’m thinking about it. If I’m self-aware, well, that means I’m thinking about myself. I know some facts about the entity called “myself”, and my plans for the future include this entity. Don’t know what more there is.”

The fact that people get confused over whether they have conscious experience, wondering what is *really* red about red. This doesn’t seem like a necessary property of all reflective planners, but a specifically human quirk.

It’s best to keep these words distinct and not use “consciousness” for the more straightforward self-awareness.

I’m sorry, i’m not following you. People are conscious because they’re afraid they might not be?

I like to define it as the ability to optimize the universe towards the agent’s goal state. Anything that stands in my way - prison, bias or laziness - makes me less free. The laws of physics do as well, but just because I’m bound by some simple rules, that doesn’t mean I’m a slave.

On the other hand, I don’t like qualia, because the only definition I’ve heard for them is all-exclusive.

How does your conclusion follow from this fact?

This doesn’t show humans have consciousness as some humans think it. It shows humans have some quirk which causes them to sometimes get confused about this. A straightforward expected utility maximiser would not get confused like this.

This is actually difficult to address, because often when someone asserts that they or something else have free will, it’s a mushy, poorly defined, and emotionally infused conception. My perception is that when most people assert “free will”, they automatically assume that it is some sort of mystical, causeless freedom of desire that doesn’t require any justification within “scientific” reality. My assertion is that dynamic human desires follow the rules of causality. That the mind, and the desires of the mind follow from an algorithmic process. In short, that our dynamic “will” doesn’t magically emerge from the aether. That they, our dynamic desires, are caused by something, and that we can exploit the rules of causality to create a Friendly AI. In my opinion, there is no being that has a dynamic “will” that doesn’t also abide by the rules of causality. I don’t dispute that it is possible for a human to “feel” varying degrees of “freedom”, such as imprisonment as you mentioned.

Words for instance, are not objects but rather concepts. And we can analyse words. (look at the “What’s really red about red?” comment.)

A phrase is a fabrication of ours that links multiple concepts together, something which can only be observed in humans. An animal’s intelligence can allow it to learn about how to react to a certain situation. But you’ll never hear that animal talk about the situation.

I also agree that consiousness is only an advanced version of animal intelligence. It’s focus is however on intellectual objects rather than just stimuli.

In order to have an “AC”, you would need a computer so advanced that it can program itself, I doubt we will every achieve such a thing. To create AC would require us to at least be capable of fully understanding the brain in it’s very last details. The incredible network of brain cells is nothing more than a much greater application of a computer’s “If, Then, Else”. Those cells mostly work by generating(then) or inhibiting(else) “charges”, which has always reminded me of the “if-then-else”.

(Foot note : I’m not an expert on the matter. My knowledge is limited to a few biology classes in college and a somewhat greater amount of education when it comes to programming.)

I think that consciousness is the result of a long sequence of (standard) calculations revealing a calculated probability distribution of what the immediately preceding “input” (of any particular type) “had to be” (ie. was most probable). Its surely got to be one of the deepest mysteries of the brain - how such very subtle differences in algorithm structure (eg. between different brain modules) can cause such a wide range of perception, from vision to emotion to memories and all that other stuff. Very weird. However, I suspect that it won’t be necessary to solve *all* the mysteries of the human brain in order to make an AGI. We really only need to capture the salient aspects, and we’ll have powerful software models to help us out along the way.

It would be nice to know at what probability value a given throughput would become a conscious perception. It would have to be less than 100% probability - but it’s hard to say more than that. Just to throw out a guess, I imagine it would be something quite close to 100% probability without quite reaching it. Only algorithms beyond a certain level of complexity would be able to “reveal” the perception with a sufficiently high probability value.

Ahh, speculation is simply too much fun - probably to an unproductive degree, even.