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No_one  1yr ago (rifters.com)   Edited 1yr ago   1848 thread views

The Pong Imperative: Driving Dishbrain to Suicide. ['post by Peter Watts on a recent experiment suggesting a consciousness / intelligence link ]

rifters.com

Ok, there was supposed to be text in the top near the link, there isn't, some I'm pasting the summary of the linked post here.

Peter Watts, the Canadian SF writer known for writing endearingly depressing SF books and promoting the idea consciousness is not essential to sentience has been forced to re-evaluate this position of his following a recent experiment by proponents of the Free Energy Model of consciousness.

Now it appears, at least to him, there may be an intrinsic link between subjective experience and problem solving by intelligent systems.

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I'm highly unimpressed with the evidence that this blob is conscious. It seems to be just equivocating about the word "sentience" where some people use it to mean something computational and others expect it to mean experiencing qualia

You're right- however, it's remarkable in itself that 'sentience' in the limited meaning arises seemingly spontaneously in a group of neurons just grown over a source of signals. You'd think you'd need some sort of brain-plan or organisation for that to happen. But maybe we should wait till they get a clearer signal.

Although, I do think he made kind of a leap over there with speculations about consciousness.

promoting the idea consciousness is not essential to sentience

I'm assuming that in this reading "consciousness" is something like "human-level intelligence"? Because in my normal reading consciousness and sentience are near synonyms.

I should have written it better; he made a claim that the 'intelligences' is completely orthogonal to 'consciousness', and wrote a novel about how first contact between very intelligent but wholly non-conscious entities and 'humanity' would go.

Interesting. First time I heard of the FEM, and it strikes me as intuitively believable.

Scott has posted a bunch of times about it, both at the old & new blog..

I only read a little Scott, guess FEM must've been in the majority of posts that I never saw.

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