Large neural networks are used to create artificial intelligence. They can solve many problems, including those in medicine, finance and research. But could these large neural networks be translating into consciousness? Experts believe it’s possible it already has.
On Wednesday, OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever claimed on Twitter that ‘it may be that today’s largest neural networks are slightly conscious,’ first reported by Futurism.
He didn’t name any specific developments, but is likely referring to the mega-scale neural networks, such as GPT-3, a 175 billion parameter language processing system built by OpenAI for translation, question answering, and filling in missing words.
It is also unclear what ‘slightly conscious’ actually means, because the concept of consciousness in artificial intelligence is a controversial idea.
An artificial neural network is a collection of connected units or nodes that model the neurons found within a biological brain, that can be trained to perform tasks and activities without human input – by learning, however, most experts say these systems aren’t even close to human intelligence, let alone consciousness.
For decades science fiction has peddled the idea of artificial intelligence on a human scale, from Mr Data in Star Trek, to HAL 9000, the artificial intelligence character in Arthur C. Clarke’s Space Odyssey that opts to kill astronauts to save itself.
When asked to open the pod bay doors to let the astronauts return to the spacecraft, HAL says ‘I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that’.
On Thursday, OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever claimed that ‘it may be that today’s largest neural networks are slightly conscious’
Artificial intelligence, built on large neural networks, are helping solve problems in finance, research and medicine – but could they be reaching consciousness? One expert thinks it is possible. Stock image
While AI has been seen to perform impressive tasks, including flying aircraft, driving cars and creating an artificial voice or face, claims of consciousness are ‘hype’.
Sutskever faced a backlash soon after posting his tweet, with most researchers concerned he was over stating how advanced AI had become, Futurism reported.
‘Every time such speculative comments get an airing, it takes months of effort to get the conversation back to the more realistic opportunities and threats posed by AI,’ according to UNSW Sidney AI researcher Toby Walsh.
Professor Marek Kowalkiewicz, from the Center for the Digital Economy at QUT, questioned whether we even know what consciousness might look like.
Thomas G Dietterich, an expert in AI at Oregon State University, said on Twitter he hasn’t seen any evidence of consciousness, and suggested Stuskever was ‘trolling’.
‘If consciousness is the ability to reflect upon and model themselves, I haven’t seen any such capability in today’s nets. But perhaps if I were more conscious myself, I’d recognize that you are just trolling,’ he said.
The exact nature of consciousness, even in humans, has been subject to speculation, debate and philosophical pondering for centuries.
However, it is generally seen as ‘everything you experience’ in your life, according to neuroscientist Christof Koch.
Thomas G Dietterich, an expert in AI at Oregon State University, said on Twitter he hasn’t seen any evidence of consciousness, and suggested Stuskever was ‘trolling’
While he did not name specific developments, it’s likely that he is referring the massive-scale neural networks such as GPT-3 (a 175 billion paralanguage processing system) built by OpenAI to support translation, answer answering, filling in for missing words and other tasks. Image from stock
A paper was written by him for Nature. He stated that it is “the tune stuck in my head, the sweetness in chocolate mousse and the pain in my teeth.”
In 1990, a book was published that describes various levels of consciousness. It explains how the normal state can compromise wakefulness, awareness, or alertness.
It is possible that Sutskever (who has not responded to DailyMail.com’s requests for comment) refers to neural networks reaching these stages.
Other experts feel that discussing artificial consciousness distracts from the actual topic.
Valentino Zocca, an expert in deep learning technology, described these claims as being hype, more than anything else, and Jürgen Geuter, a sociotechnologist suggested Sutskever was making a simple sales pitch, not a real idea.
Geuter said, “It could also be that these take have no basis in fact and are just a pitch to claim magic tech capabilities for startup that runs very simplistic statistics, just lots of them.”
Others believed that OpenAI scientist, who suggested a slight conscious artificial intelligence, was ‘full-of-it’.
Elisabeth Hildt’s opinion piece, published by the Illinois Institute of Technology, in 2019, stated that “current machines and robotics are not conscious”, despite science fiction.
And this doesn’t seem to have changed following years, with an article published in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence in 2021 by JE Korteling and colleagues, declaring that human-level intelligence was some way off.
“No matter how smart and autonomous AI agents are in certain aspects, at least in the near future, they likely will remain unconscious machines, or special-purpose devices that assist humans in complex, specific tasks,” they said.
Sutskever is OpenAI’s chief scientist. He has been long preoccupied with artificial general intelligence (AI that can operate at human- or superhuman capacities), so the claim is not out of the ordinary.
His appearance in a documentary called iHuman was where he claimed that AI could solve all problems around the globe, and also offer the possibility of creating stable dictatorships.
OpenAi, which Sutskever founded with Elon Musk and the current CEO Sam Altman was launched in 2016 by Sutskever. But this marks his first assertion that machine consciousness has ‘already arrived’.
Musk quit the group over fears that it would hire the same people as Tesla and the possibility of a fake news generator.
OpenAI is not without controversy.
It claims that it reconfigured AI since the incident to increase its behavior and decrease the chance of it occurring again.
A TIMELINE OF ELON MUSK’S COMMENTS ABOUT AI
Musk is a vocal and longstanding critic of AI technology.
Elon Musk is a prominent name in the development of technologies.
He is the billionaire entrepreneur who runs SpaceX and Tesla as well as Boring.
While he’s at the forefront of AI technologies creation, he’s also very aware of their dangers.
This timeline contains all Musk’s thoughts, premonitions, and warnings regarding AI.
August 2014.– “We must be extremely careful with AI. Potently even more dangerous than nuclear weapons
October 2014 – “I believe we need to be careful with artificial intelligence. If I were to guess like what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. Artificial intelligence is a threat to our survival.
October 2014“With artificial intelligence, we summon the demon.”
June 2016“The positive situation for ultra-intelligent artificial intelligence is that it would make us so much less intelligent than we are now, and we could be more like pets or house cats.”
July 2017, – ‘I think AI is something that is risky at the civilisation level, not merely at the individual risk level, and that’s why it really demands a lot of safety research.’
July 2017, – ‘I have exposure to the very most cutting-edge AI and I think people should be really concerned about it.’
July 2017, – ‘I keep sounding the alarm bell but until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react because it seems so ethereal.’
August 2017, – ‘If you’re not concerned about AI safety, you should be. There is a lot more danger than North Korea.
November 2017. – ‘Maybe there’s a five to 10 percent chance of success [of making AI safe].’
March 2018– “AI is far more dangerous that nukes.” Why is it that there’s no oversight of regulatory activities?
April 2018, – ‘[AI is]This is a vital topic. It will have an impact on our lives that we cannot even begin to imagine.
April 2018, – ‘[We could create]An immortal dictator, from whom we could never flee.
November 2018, – ‘Maybe AI will make me follow it, laugh like a demon & say who’s the pet now.’
September 2019, – ‘If advanced AI (beyond basic bots) hasn’t been applied to manipulate social media, it won’t be long before it is.’
February 2020 – ‘At Tesla, using AI to solve self-driving isn’t just icing on the cake, it the cake.’
July 2020 – ‘We’re headed toward a situation where AI is vastly smarter than humans and I think that time frame is less than five years from now. But that doesn’t mean that everything goes to hell in five years. This is just a sign that things become unstable or strange.