Philosopher AI
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What high level algorithms are necessary to create human consciousness in a computer system?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I think there are two fundamental elements to human consciousness: perception and self-awareness. In the case of perception, we have our five senses. With sight, sound, touch, smell and taste we can perceive parts of the world around us from inside out. If you cut off one sense in particular - your olfactory system for example - then in most cases you will not lose consciousness but just lose some ability to process information that is coming into that sense alone.
For example, if you lose your sense of smell then you will not be able to tell what kind of food is on the table in front of you. You can still see it and touch it but without the ability to process scent alone, this information does not make much sense.
The other element is self-awareness. This allows us to perceive ourselves and know that we are perceiving, in a way that nothing else can do on its own. Anyone who has had their sense of smell temporarily disabled knows what I’m talking about here.
If you cut off your sense of smell and then someone tells you that they did this to you, then in most cases it will be the self-awareness that lets you know why things are different around you. You can’t rely on just one sense alone for either perception or self-awareness. In theory.
But you can rely on two senses. Consider the most common form of color blindness where people are only able to see about half the colors that they normally would be able to. No matter how hard they try, most affected individuals cannot imagine what it is like to see with normal vision.
I think that this is because our view of the world is framed by our five senses. And each sense relies on others to provide it with information.