[p2p-research] Building the One Machine, call for discussion

[Chris Watkins]

On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 10:27, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Dear Mushin et al,
>
> I'm going to publish two items, hoping you will pitch in.
>
> You have time, it's slated for the seventh,
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/why-the-one-machine-wont-take-over/2008/11/07,
> and eight,
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/individual-consciousness-is-not-enough-the-case-for-virtual-collective-selves/2008/11/08,
> respectively
>
> The orginal source is from
> http://www.twine.com/item/11ktvpjz6-rl/how-to-build-the-global-mind
>
> *text 1:*
>
> Why the One Machine won't take over<http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/why-the-one-machine-wont-take-over/2008/11/07>
>
>  "Because humans are the actual witnesses and knowers of what the One
> Machine does and thinks, the function of the OM will very likely be to serve
> and amplify humans, rather than to replace them. It will be a system that is
> comprised of humans and machines working together, for human benefit, not
> for machine benefit. This is a very different future outlook than that of
> people who predict a kind of "Terminator-esque" future in which machines get
> smart enough to exterminate the human race. It won't happen that way.
> Machines will very likely not get that smart for a long time, if ever,
> because they are not going to be conscious. I think we should be much more
> afraid of humans exterminating humanity than of machines doing it."
>
> The above citation is from a brilliant contribution by Nova Spivack<http://www.twine.com/item/11ktvpjz6-rl/how-to-build-the-global-mind>,
> which is a counter-argument to the transhumanist hypothesis that 'AI
> machines will take over'. The reason they can't, is that consciousness is a
> irreducible founding characteristic of the universe, which cannot be
> synthetized or 'created' artificially.
>
> The key argument is this:
>
> *If consciousness is a property of the substrate, then it may be
> impossible to synthesize. For example, we never synthesize space, time or
> energy — no matter what we do, we are simply using the space, time and
> energy of the substrate that is this universe.*
>

This seems to be an assertion of a mystical belief rather than a scientific
truth. I'm not setting out to refute mysticism, but I personally am not a
mystic and this argument doesn't resonate with me. (I'm not sure it's
consistent either - why couldn't this property of the universe be captured
artificially? But I'll let the mystics fight that one out.)

Regardless of this, some of the ideas and conclusions are thought-provoking.
The movement towards Meta-Individuals is an interesting and important
question - my view of the ultimate form that it might take, or how far down
this path we can go, might be different to Nova Spivack's, but many of the
same steps might apply, regardless of worldview.

Chris

> *Nova Spivack:*
>
> "*Today, humans still make up the majority of processors in the OM. Each
> human nervous system comprises billions of processors, and there are
> billions of humans. That's a lot of processors.*
>
> *However, Ray Kurzweil posits that the balance of processors is rapidly
> moving towards favoring machines — and that sometime in the latter half of
> this century, machine processors will outnumber or at least outcompute all
> the human processors combined, perhaps many times over.*
>
> *While agree with Ray's point that machine intelligence will soon
> outnumber human intelligence, I'm skeptical of Kurzweil's timeline,
> especially in light of recent research that shows evidence of quantum level
> computation within microtubules inside neurons. If in fact the brain
> computes at the tubulin level then it may have many orders of magnitude more
> processors than currently though. This remains to be determined. Those who
> argue against this claim that the brain can be modelled on a Classical level
> and that quantum computing need not be invoked. To be clear, I am not
> claiming that the brain is a quantum computer, I am claiming that there
> seems to be evidence that computation in the brain takes place at the
> quantum level, or near it. Whether quantum effects have any measurable
> effect on what the brain does is not the question, the question is simply
> whether microtubules are the lowest level processing elements of the brain.
> If they are, then there are a whole lot more processors in the brain than
> previously thought.*
>
> *Another point worth considering is that much of the brain's computation
> is not taking place within the neurons but rather in the gaps between
> synapses, and this computation happens chemically rather than electrically.
> There are vastly more synapses than neurons, and computation within the
> synapses happens at a much faster and more granular level than neuronal
> firings. It is definitely the case that chemical-level computations take
> place with elements that are many orders of magnitude smaller than neurons.
> This is another case for the brain computing at a much lower level than is
> currently thought.*
>
> *In other words the resolution of computation in the human brain is still
> unknown. We have several competing approximations but no final answer on
> this. I do think however that evidence points to computation being much more
> granular than we currently think.*
>
> *In any case, I do agree with Kurzweil that at least it is definitely the
> case that artificial computers will outnumber naturally occurring human
> computers on this planet — it's just a question of when. In my view it will
> take a little longer than he thinks: it is likely to happen after 100 to 200
> years at the most.*
>
> *There is another aspect of my thinking on this subject which I think may
> throw a wrench in the works. I don't think that what we call "consciousness"
> is something that can be synthesized. Humans appear to be conscious, but we
> have no idea what that means yet. It is undeniable that we all have an
> experience of being conscious, and this experience is mysterious. It is also
> the case that at least so far, nobody has bult a software program or
> hardware device that seems to be having this experience. We don't even know
> how to test for consciousness in fact. For example, the much touted Turing
> Test does not test consciousness, it tests humanlike intelligence. There
> really isn't a test for consciousness yet. Devising one is an interesting an
> important goal that we should perhaps be working on.*
>
> *In my own view, consciousness is probably fundamental to the substrate of
> the universe, like space, time and energy. We really don't know what space,
> time and energy really are. We cannot actually measure them directly either.
> All our measurements of space, time and energy are indirect — we measure
> other things that imply that space, time and energy exist. Space, time and
> energy are inferred by effects we observe on material things that we can
> measure. I think the same may be true of consciousness. So the question
> is, what are the measureable effects of consciousness? Well one candidate
> seems to be the Double Slit experiment, which shows that the act of
> observation causes the quantum wave function to collapse. Are there other
> effects we can cite as evidence of consciousness?*
>
> *I have recently been wondering how connected consciousness is to the
> substrate of the universe we are in. If consciousness is a property of the
> substrate, then it may be impossible to synthesize. For example, we never
> synthesize space, time or energy — no matter what we do, we are simply using
> the space, time and energy of the substrate that is this universe.*
>
> *If this is the case, then creating consciousness is impossible. The best
> we can do is somehow channel the consciousness that is already there in the
> substrate of the universe. In fact, that may be what the human nervous
> system does: it channels consciousness, much in the way that an electrical
> circuit channels electricity. The reason that software programs will
> probably not become conscious is that they are too many levels removed from
> the substrate*."
>
>
>
> *text 2:*
>
> Individual consciousness is not enough: the case for virtual collectives
> selves <http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=2049>
>
>  "Most individuals today do not have healthy selves — they have highly
> delluded, unhealthy self-constructs. This in turn is reflected in the
> higher-order self-constructs of the groups, organizations and communities we
> build.
>
> One of the most important things we can work on now is creating systems
> that provide collectives — groups, organizations and communities — with
> sophisticated, healthy, virtual selves. These virtual selves provide
> collectives with a mirror of themselves. Having a mirror enables the members
> of those systems to see the whole, and how they fit in. Once they can see
> this they can then begin to adjust their own behavior to fit what the whole
> is trying to do. This simple mirroring function can catalyze dramatic new
> levels of self-organization and synchrony in what would otherwise be a
> totally chaotic "crowd" of individual entities."
>
> We continue excerpting from a brilliant contribution<http://www.twine.com/item/11ktvpjz6-rl/how-to-build-the-global-mind>by Nova Spivack,
> *on how to build the global mind*.
>
> These excerpts make a good case for the need of collective intersubjective
> maturation and how we can facilitate its emergence.
>
> *1. Individual Selves and their insufficient levels of integration*
>
> "*The global superorganism is already conscious, in my opinion, but it has
> not achieved very high resolution or unity. This is because most humans, and
> most human groups and organizations, have only been able to achive the most
> basic levels of consciousness themselves. Since humans, and groups of
> humans, comprise the consciousness of the global superorganism, our
> individual and collective conscious evolution is directly related to the
> conscious evolution of the superorganism as a whole. This is why it is
> important for individuals and groups to work on their own consciousnesses.
> Consciousness is "there" as a basic property of the physical substrate, but
> like mass or energy, it can be channelled and accumulated and shaped.
> Currently the consciousness that is present in us as individuals, and in
> groups of us, is at best, nascent and underdeveloped.*
>
> *In our young, dualistic, materialistic, and externally-obsessed
> civilization, we have made very little progress on working with
> consciousness. Instead we have focused most or all of our energy on working
> with certain other more material-seeming aspects of the substrate — space,
> time and energy. In my opinion a civilization becomes fully mature when it
> spends equal if not more time on the concsiousness dimension of the
> substrate. That is something we are just beginning to work on, thanks to the
> strangeness of quantum mechanics breaking our classical physical paradims
> and forcing us to admit that consciousness might play a role in our reality.
> *
>
> *But there are ways to speed up the evolution of individual and collective
> consciousness, and in doing so we can advance our civilization as a whole. I
> have lately been writing and speaking about this in more detail.*
>
> *On an individual level one way to rapidly develop our own consciousness
> is the path of meditation and spirituality — this is most important and
> effective. There may also be technological improvements, such as augmented
> reality, or sensory augmentation, that can improve how we perceive, and what
> we perceive. In the not too distant future we will probably have the
> opportunity to dramatically improve the range and resolution of our sense
> organs using computers or biological means. We may even develop new senses
> that we cannot imagine yet. In addition, using the Internet for example, we
> will be able to be aware of more things at once than ever before. But
> ultimately, the scope of our individual consciousness has to develop on an
> internal level in order to truly reach higher levels of resolution and
> unity. Machine augmentation can help perhaps, but it is not a substitute for
> actually increasing the capacity of our consciousnesses. For example, if we
> use machines to get access to vastly more data, but our consciousnesses
> remain at a relatively low-capacity level, we may not be able to integrate
> or make use of all that new data anyway*."
>
> *2. Providing collectives with healthy virtual selves*
>
> "*On a collective level, there are also things we can do to make groups,
> organizations and communities more conscious. In particular, we can build
> systems that do for groups what the "self construct" does for individuals.
> *
>
> *The self is an illusion. And that's good news. If it wasn't an illusion
> we could never see through it and so for one thing spiritual enlightenment
> would not be possible to achieve. Furthermore, if it wasn't an illusion we
> could never hope to synthesize it for machines, or for large collectives.
> The fact that "self" is an illusion is something that Buddhist,
> neuroscientists, and cognitive scientists all seem to agree on. The self is
> an illusion, a mere mental construct. But it's a very useful one, when
> applied in the right way. Without some concept of self we humans would find
> it difficult to communicate or even navigate down the street. Similarly,
> without some concept of self groups, organizations and communities also
> cannot function very productively.*
>
> *The self construct provides an entity with a model of itself, and its
> environment. This model includes what is taking place "inside" and what is
> taking place "outside" what is considered to be self or "me." By creating
> this artificial boundary, and modelling what is taking place on both sides
> of the boundary, the self construct is able to measure and plan behavior,
> and to enable a system to adjust and adapt to "itself" and the external
> environment. Entities that have a self construct are able to behave far more
> intelligently than those which do not. For example, consider the difference
> between the intelligence of a dog and that of a human. Much of this is
> really a difference in the sophistication of the self-constructs of these
> two different species. Human selves are far more self-aware, introspective,
> and sophisticated than that of dogs. They are equally conscious, but humans
> have more developed self-constructs. This applies to simple AI programs as
> well, and to collective intelligences such as workgroups, enterprises, and
> online communities. The more sophisticated the self-construct, the smarter
> the system can be.*
>
> *The key to appropriate and effective application of the self-construct is
> to develop a healthy self, rather than to eliminate the self entirely.
> Eradication of the self is form of nihilism that leads to an inability to
> function in the world. That is not something that Buddhist or
> neuroscientists advocate. So what is a healthy self? In an individual, a
> healthy self is a construct that accurately represents past, present and
> projected future internal and external state, and that is highly self-aware,
> rational but not overly so, adaptable, respectful of external systems and
> other beings, and open to learning and changing to fit new situations. The
> same is true for a healthy collective self. However, most individuals today
> do not have healthy selves — they have highly delluded, unhealthy
> self-constructs. This in turn is reflected in the higher-order
> self-constructs of the groups, organizations and communities we build.*
>
> *One of the most important things we can work on now is creating systems
> that provide collectives — groups, organizations and communities — with
> sophisticated, healthy, virtual selves. These virtual selves provide
> collectives with a mirror of themselves. Having a mirror enables the members
> of those systems to see the whole, and how they fit in. Once they can see
> this they can then begin to adjust their own behavior to fit what the whole
> is trying to do. This simple mirroring function can catalyze dramatic new
> levels of self-organization and synchrony in what would otherwise be a
> totally chaotic "crowd" of individual entities*."
>
> *3. Three levels in the creation of healthy collective selves*
>
> "*I think that collectives move through three levels of development:*
>
> ** Level 1: Crowds. *
>
> *Crowds are collectives in which the individuals are not aware of the
> whole and in which there is no unified sense of identity or purpose.
> Nevertheless crowds do intelligent things. Consider for example, schools of
> fish, or flocks of birds. There is no single leader, yet the individuals, by
> adapting to what their nearby neighbors are doing, behave collectively as a
> single entity of sorts. Crowds are amoebic entities that ooze around in a
> bloblike fashion. They are not that different from physical models of
> gasses.*
>
> ** Level 2: Groups. *
>
> *Groups are the next step up from crowds. Groups have some form of
> structure, which usually includes a system for command and control. They are
> more organized. Groups are capable of much more directed and intelligent
> behaviors. Families, cities, workgroups, sports teams, armies, universities,
> corporations, and nations are examples of groups. Most groups have
> intelligences that are roughly similar to that of simple animals. They may
> have a primitive sense of identity and self, and on the basis of that, they
> are capable of planning and acting in a more coordinated fashion.*
>
> ** Level 3: Meta-Individuals. *
>
> *The highest level of collective intelligence is the meta-individual. This
> emerges when what was once a crowd of separate individuals, evolves to
> become a new individual in its own right, and is faciliated by the formation
> of a sophisticated meta-level self-construct for the collective. This
> evolutionary leap is called a metasystem transition — the parts join
> together to form a new higher-order whole that is made of the parts
> themselves. This new whole resembles the parts, but transcends their
> abilities. To evolve a collective to the level of being a true individual,
> it has to have a well-designed nervous system, it has to have a collective
> brain and mind, and most importantly it has to achieve a high-level of
> collective consciousness. High level collective consciousness requires a
> sophisticated collective self construct to serve as a catalyst. Fortunately,
> this is something we can actually build, because as has been asserted
> previously, self is an illusion, a consturct, and therefore selves can be
> built, even for large collectives comprised of millions or billions of
> members*."
>
>
>
>
>
> --
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> alternatives.
>
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>
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-- 
Chris Watkins (a.k.a. Chriswaterguy)

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I like this: five.sentenc.es
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