Lecture 7 - Consciousness Flashcards
Intelligence in AI
Supervised learning… like chatgpt (specialized skills
Unsupervised learning… like rotation of figures: amount of rotation correlates to the reaction time… (specialized skills)
Reinforcement learning: like rat in maze… (complex skills in diverse environment)
Vernon’s cognitive components
- Embodiment: some humanlike sensory capacities (bodylike)
-symbol grounding and helping out - Perception: ability to focus perception on specific things (zooming in)
- Action: do meaningful things in the real world… how motor commands affect the real world
- Anticipation: finding patterns in the world (input leads to output)
- Adaptation: change depending on what’s happening, adapt to environment, relearn
- Motivation: needs, actions governed by needs and desires
- Autonomy: self-sustaining, preservation drive, develop and progress on its own
(see detailed list in slide 14, helpful)
But what about communication, social skills, empathy? Sustainability?
Examples in RL environments:
-Mujoco (figures that walk forward)
1) Embodiment, (3) Action, (7) Autonomy?
-The AI Economist
(4) Anticipation (5) Adaptation (6) Motivation
-Nocturne (road maps bit by bit)
(2) Perception (3) Action (4) Anticipation (5) Adaptation?
-Malmo (minecraft)
(1) Embodiment
(2) Perception
(3) Action
(4) Anticipation
(5) Adaptation
(6) Motivation
(7) Autonomy
Communication?
Social Skills, Empathy?
Sustainability?
(see evaluations of different tests)
Missing: Universal Test Battery
Consciousness: Visual Priming
Visual priming: if the target object is the same kind of thing as the priming image (even though the prime was so fast and barely perceptible), then reaction time much faster than if it’s something else random
Same type of thing = congruent (ex: tool prime and tool target)… much faster/smaller reaction time
Different type of thing = incongruent (ex: face prime and tool target)
So we can do “vision” without consciousness
Semantic Priming
Semantic priming
The blurp of patterns are distractors
V= verbal (letter)… ex: NINE
A= arabic number… ex : 6
Congruent trial: show verbal number larger than 5 (very fast) and show arabic number larger than 5. Shorter reaction time!
Incongruent trial: show verbal number smaller than 5 (very fast) and show arabic number larger than 5. Longer reaction time.
(I don’t get what they had to do though… what does the reaction time mean here…relisten)
Anyways the point is that info doesn’t even reach consciousness but still affects decision making…. Unconscious
Also that we can do “language” without consciousness
Dissociation in Neuropsychology
System B is broken and A is still working
…A is dissociated from B
But to show they are fully independent, we need double dissociation: system B is broken and system A works AND (in other patients or other conditions for same patient) system A is broken and system B works
… proves A and B are independent
Awareness (unilateral spatial neglect, blindsight and sleepwalking)
Damage in brain right hemisphere = attention deficit of stuff on the left
Both when copying image and when spontaneous drawing, completely neglect what is on the left side (but they do draw the full contour of example a clock or a face… know they are round but don’t pay attention to what’s inside on the left)
Blindsight
Complete neglect of left side (feel like they can’t see it, report no awareness on that side… not a vision problem though, but right hemisphere damage)
Patient D.B.
Felt like they were guessing what the animal was but was correct around 89% of the time! Not guessing!
Awareness doesn’t need consciousness
Sleepwalking
Again, the brain knows how to walk, eat, talk, drive even when asleep.
Awareness doesn’t need consciousness
Purpose of consciousness
Purpose of consciousness = ‘’voluntary’’ action, retention
Vision for perception/vision for action
Linked to the Two-streams hypothesis (where and what pathways)
Where= dorsal (top of brain), location/spatial… more subconscious (low conscious processing)
What = ventral …. More conscious (high conscious processing)… closer to Broca’s area (speech center), so makes sense more conscious
Vision for perception/vision for action
Mailbox test
Visual form agnosia= no conscious awareness of shapes and orientations
Ventral stream damage but dorsal stream intact… so could match the orientation using visuomotor ‘’posting’’ instead of perceptual orientation matching
Other examples:
Ebbinghaus illusion: two dots look different sizes because of dots surrounding (but they are the same)
How to solve?
(Un)conscious grasping
Fingers will make the right size for the two circles even though brain is telling you they are a different size
Need consciousness for action
Consciousness also needed for Retention
Retention
Unconscious can only retain prime for so long. If distractor is longer, priming effect gone
Need consciousness for memory, keep stuff in mind longer
Chalmer’s Hard/Easy Problems
Easy:
● (Conscious) information processing
● (Conscious) information exchange
● Experimentally measurable
Hard:
● Felt experience / qualia
he Hard Problem: What’s is like being you
56
“The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of
experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of
information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel
(1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious
organism. This subjective aspect is experience.
When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt
quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth
in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different
modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs.
Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental
images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and
the experience of a stream of conscious thought.
What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in
them. All of them are states of experience.”
Chalmers, 1995, “Facing up
to the problem of
consciousness”
Block’s Access Consciousness and Phenomenal Consciousness
Access Consciousness
● “Direct control of thought and action”
● X ∈ A-Consciousness IF (something is a part of consciousness if)
○ Used in reasoning
○ Used in control/action
○ Used in speech
Phenomenal Consciousness
● What you see, hear, smell, taste
● Sensations
● Emotions
But not super clear how something goes from P to A consciousness
Summary
● Intelligence (AI)
○ (Un)supervised Learning → specialized skills
○ Reinforcement Learning → complex skills in diverse environments
○ Missing: Universal Test Battery
● No Consciousness
○ Visual Priming → Vision
○ Semantic Priming → Language
○ Blindsight → “Awareness”
● Purpose of Consciousness → “voluntary” action, retention
○ 2-stream hypothesis
● Philosophyʼs take: 2 types of consciousness
○ Easy/A-Consciousness: information processing, measurable
○ Hard/P-Consciousness: qualia, forever mysterious
