Consciousness, this state one experiences everything in life through, is perplexing. It is something so deeply mysterious compared to the objective, measurable universe yet so fundamental to people’s views of themselves. Consciousness is often described as more than just the state of being alive: sentient people are capable of original thought, deliberately affecting the world, and questioning the meaning of their existence. But is this idea of being and the passion for life it elicits beyond the scope of human understanding? Currently, the information processing, logical side of the human mind is the part that is mainly understood and used to make helpful computers, but more complexities exist in the subconscious level that prevent technology from becoming “human.” However, artificial intelligence has come a long way towards replicating creativity, analysis, and intelligence and even offers humans an opportunity to improve their lives by changing or uploading their brains. With all these technological advances, what will it take to have a future where robots and people both have consciousness? And, if this happens, how can these two groups best function together to maximize prosperity?
If the human mind is not understood, it cannot be replicated. There are still large parts of the human mind that are uncharted, inexplicable territory, even for neuroscientists. These gaps in understanding lead some to believe that the brain’s activities are inexplicable and even supernatural since only complex, controlled studies can uncover how we think and remember at the most basic level. In her article in the Smithsonian Magazine titled “The Strange and Mysterious History of the Ouija Board”, author Linda Rodriguez McRobbie describes how things like “dowsing rods, Oujia boards, [and] pendulums” are “all devices whereby quite a small muscular movement can cause quite a large effect,” and lead people to believe supernatural elements are controlling them (McRobbie). Human brains are so complex that their owners cannot even comprehend just how many factors are at play, so they can only explain it in non-scientific, subjective terms. If the brain is so misunderstood, how can programmers abstract away its various functions to replicate it without replicating it down to the behavior of every single atom? And even if they can, scientists may not understand the universe well enough at the atomic level for this to work. The amount left to discover truly seems unfathomable.
However, understanding what goes on in the brain below our conscious awareness could lead to discoveries never before imaginable. Researchers at the University of British Columbia’s Visual Cognition Lab designed an experiment to test whether individuals would know the answers to more questions if they allowed their subconscious to decide. In the experiment, “when participants were asked, verbally, to guess the answers to the best of their ability, they were right only around 50 percent of the time, a typical result for guessing. But when they answered using the board, believing that the answers were coming from someplace else, they answered correctly upwards of 65 percent of the time” (McRobbie). The subconscious appears to give individuals enigmatic super powers. It retains more information than humans think that they know, and who knows what else it is capable of. Perhaps being able to replicate and control it with artificial brains, we will unlock out of this world abilities. The potential for what computers can do if they have a system that simulates parts of the brain like the subconsciousness is incredible. So, will adding these types of features transform robots from machines to conscious artificial beings? Developing a more thorough understanding of human minds is essential to replacing, replicating, or enhancing them.
Today, robots and computers are slaves to homosapians, enabling smarter workflow by satisfying the need for information processing, decision making, and mechanical tasks while humans provide direction and focus on more creative fields. Author Kim Tingley outlines in her article, “Learning to Love our Robot Co-Workers” in the New York Times, the idea that collaborative robots, which are “multifunctional and reprogrammable” without “functions [that] are determined at purchase” offer employees the “power to influence how they will be used to maximize the time [they] spend on the facets of their jobs that they find most fulfilling” (Tingley). There are certain tasks that robots are better at than humans that are easily replaced by automation nowadays. To humans, the best robots are collaborative: they are responsive to input and work alongside their biology-based counterparts. Humans provide direction and careful instructions for robots to carry out what they believe is necessary for making societies function. That being said, robots are getting better and better at doing human activities such as talking to people, driving cars, and being collaborative. If robots approach the level of functionality that humans have, perhaps by developing consciousness, they may different ideas about the best way to run societies that could be better than ours.
The idea of whether consciousness is actually something exclusively human or not is unclear. If human brains are just biological computers and artificial intelligence is just computerized biology, does that change how humans fundamentally understand and interact with the universe? In a TED Radio Hour episode titled “The Unknown Brain” by NPR, David Chalmers explores a new explanation of what consciousness could be.
“If you can't explain consciousness in terms of the existing fundamentals - space, time - the natural thing to do is to postulate consciousness itself as something fundamental - a fundamental building block of nature. The second crazy idea is that consciousness might be universal. This view is sometimes called panpsychism - pan, for all - psych, for mind. Every system is conscious. Not just humans, dogs, mice, flies, but even microbes. Even a photon has some degree of consciousness” (Chalmers).
The specific neural wiring behind humans may not be the source of consciousness, meaning that machines could likewise be conscious. And, if they are, then taking that consciousness away is an ethical dilemma that should be considered. Humans desire the sensation of consciousness intensely and consistently strive to stay alive. But, people have no way of knowing if taking a computer’s consciousness away is similarly painful. They could appear to be conscious in a way humans understand by acting like them, but this may not be convincing enough.
If everything is conscious, then there’s no reason why a conscious, artificial brain could not be built, so what will it take for robots to reach the same level of sentience as homosapiens and what will differentiate the two at that level? Amy Harmon’s article titled “A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future” in the New York Times, explains that Ray Kurzweil, the google engineering director and “others who call themselves transhumanists have argued that exponential increases in computing power will generate an assortment of new technologies that will enable us to transcend our bodies and upload our minds onto a computer” (Harmon). The same idea of reality and the perception of consciousness could theoretically exist with either neurons firing or ones and zeroes changing. In this case, conscious is nothing special or unique to life, it is just an illusion of the self as something separate that arises from the act of processing information and responding to an environment. And, if the uploaded minds are exact replicas, will the versions of uploaded humans actually be the same people they were before?
Advancements in technology may be a solution to humanities issues with dying and suffering. As people grow, get older, and have new experiences, the makeup of their brains changes. If people are still the same person when they are forty than when they are three, would the small changes that could happen from uploading a person’s consciousness or replicating it still make them the same person? To answer this question, “‘you’d ask yourself how many mistakes could you make and still have the same person,’ [which] Joshua R. Sanes, director of the Center for Brain Science at Harvard University, said in an interview. ‘The ability of us to keep being ourselves in the face of changes in our nervous system is pretty amazing’” (Harmon). If small changes to people’s brains don’t affect their sense of identity, then perhaps consciousness is more to do with memory than with having exactly the same thought processes. If artificial brains have the same memories, and can react to life based on those memories, then they may be the same as the people they are replicated from, bringing into question the usefulness of robotics in enhancing life. In the aforementioned TED Radio Hour episode titled “The unknown Brain” by NPR, Jill Bolte-Taylor, a neuroscientists at Harvard describes how having a stroke changed her brain for the better and allowed her to understand herself: “I see myself as a very different person with a very different value structure than I had before. And there was a lot of pain in my past that got relieved. And wasn't that a lovely thing to be able to hit the reset button on my emotional circuitry so that I'm then capable of functioning fresh and new without any antagonism towards anybody?” (Bolte-Taylor).
Jill’s sentiments are up-lifting. The only thing that makes Jill the person she was before is her memories and her body. Her way of behaving is entirely different, and in her view, better. If changing certain brain wiring can help a person so much, scientists should treat manipulation of brain centers like they do other forms of medical treatment. Selectively removing unnecessary suffering may be possible if computer models of brains are understood enough to be changed. We are devoted as a species to trying to keep people alive in whatever way we can. So, why not extend that to replicating or prolonging consciousness, especially if the goal of humans is to make the world as good as it can be with the least amount of suffering. Consciousness makes people really want to live, so isn’t it worth a try?
In a TED Radio Hour episode titled “The Digital Industrial Revolution” by NPR. Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at MIT is asked if it is possible to create an artificial thing that behaves as a human. He explains that “in between your ears is a proof that there's a physical object that can do all those things. And I don't think there's some ghost in there. I think it's made of atoms and obeys the laws of physics” (Brynjolfsson). This revolution is entirely possible, but the results are what we make out of it. Through the human desire to constantly improve our lives with bigger and better things, this digital revolution is going to happen because it has the capacity to help us. As Brynjolfsson says, “Technology is not destiny. We shape our destiny.” There’s is incredible potential to fix all of our problems with all of this technology, humans must simply strive to build the technology that helps people the most. There is a societal need for an acceptance of the complexity of consciousness and a desire to push towards the truth of who we are despite our uncertainty of our own minds and the limits of technology. Biology and computers may not be different: the true value is in the connections between different modules and ideas. In the future, shouldn’t we strive for the systems that bring about the most good in the world, whatever combination of human and robotic minds that may be? And, will AI ever be human enough to ask the infamous shakespearean question in their own language of ones and zeroes: to beep or not to beep?
Works Cited
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