New Scientist - USA (2020-07-18)

38 | New Scientist | 18 July 2020

being processed in certain complex ways.

I think scientists owe it to the world to figure

out what those complex ways are.

What do you mean by “the way

information feels”?

Many people make the mistake of assuming

that, when you look around you and you see

different colours, that those experiences

somehow have something to do with the

outside world. For example, if you see an

apple and it’s red, and you think somehow

that you only have redness because there’s

an apple. That’s obviously wrong: you can

dream about an apple and you will still

experience it as being red, even though

now there is no outside world at all. So there

is something happening that’s just purely

inside your brain as the neurons fire. What

is this thing? I want to figure that out.

Do you think we will ever arrive at a full

description of how consciousness emerges

from atoms and molecules?

This is the Wild West where we are very

clueless and have to have very open minds,

obviously. But in the big picture, I think

about consciousness as the last bastion that

has still refused to be captured by physics.

Now even intelligence is beginning, little

by little, to yield to mathematical description,

right? That’s what artificial intelligence is all

about, and there are already some theories

out there trying to predict which information

processing is conscious and which isn’t.

It’s ripe for the scientific assault.

But the laws of physics are themselves

the product of conscious deliberation.

Isn’t consciousness always going to fall

down at describing itself?

Yeah, that’s a very fun idea. Is it possible for a

small part of something to be able to describe

the whole thing that it is part of, including

itself? Or do you get into some bizarre

recursive loop? Of course, I can’t know for sure

that we will be able to describe consciousness

with physics or machines. There are plenty of

people who think that we will never be able to

describe consciousness because it involves

some sort of soul or something that’s by

definition impossible to study.

I’m more optimistic. My personal guess is

that consciousness can be fully understood

in terms of information processing done

by particles moving around. But regardless

of whether you think it’s going to work out

or not, one way to guarantee failure is if

you start by convincing yourself that it’s

impossible. So let’s try our best. If this all

fails, it’s also going to be very cool.

Where do you see all this going?

I think we shouldn’t conflate intelligence with

consciousness here. On the intelligence side,

I have no doubt that we are going to keep

making more progress, unless we self-destruct

as a species by screwing up somehow. I just

hope we won’t end up saying that curiosity

killed the cat, that our curiosity to figure out

intelligence made us build things that we used

to drive ourselves extinct. That’s why I’m so

big on also thinking through the wisdom part.

Are we wising up to AI’s dangers?

I think there’s been a big shift for sure. Now

you can’t go to an AI conference without

coming across a bunch of talks about AI

safety, transparency, interpretability and

robustness. There is a lot of idealism in

the community. This is where I get a lot of

hope that we can use machine learning to

empower the grassroots, push back against

the powers that be and even sometimes use

those tools to uncover sneaky stuff.

That sounds like tech optimism again.

The key to having a good future is to be able

to formulate a vision that people around the

world can really get on board with. This isn’t

a zero-sum game: you can easily envisage

scenarios in which artificial intelligence

multiplies the world’s GDP by a factor of 100

or more. It’s very easy to envisage a future in

which everybody wins at the same time and

becomes much better off. But we have failed

epically so far to get humanity to collaborate

to make it real. ❚

Richard Webb is executive

editor at New Scientist

We can’t assume that

humanoid robots such

as Sophia (left) will

never have subjective

experiences

CH

INA

NE

WS

SE

RV

ICE

/YU

RU

IDO

NG

VI

A^ G

ET

TY

IM

AG

ES

“ I think about

consciousness as

the last bastion

that has refused

to be captured

by physics”