Will a Robot/AI develop consciousness?

A lot of Neuroscientist speak about the integration of technology and consciousness and how building such sophisticated products could one day lead to Robots understanding not just sight, touch, smell, & taste but also a sense of understanding.

Original Published: November 5th, 2018

believe in my lifetime I could possibly see something close to it. I mean it in a way that Robots can understand but not start to make choices on their own and if this does come to pass it will only be in 1 domain and that could be the automotive domain.

The reason why I would say it would happen in the Automotive domain in America is because that is the only place so far that has all of the below:

Tons of data

Government backing

ambitious entrepreneurs

& Elon Musk

There is so much that goes into building a Robot/AI(Artificial Intelligence) agent with the ability to complete the last mile and that is “thought” and I don’t believe we are ready nor, able to completely understand that yet.

Many neuroscientists believe that the critical processes for consciousness involve the integration of neural activity among different brain regions. That is exactly what I mean when it comes to building an all General AI & spoke about in my last writing.

The global workspace theory states “ Specific mental contents (such as perceptions, thoughts, or intentions to act) remain unconscious unless or until they gain access to a “global workspace” which broadcasts their contents across the brain, making them available for the flexible control of behavior.

I have seen so many robots and they are most like walking machines. The Chinese have made a ton of robots but most of them haven’t touched the surface because of interface, likability, workability and more. We are at the beginning of the AI industrial age and we need to start understanding what makes these robots really understand. So I will speak about a few things.

Working at 55B Labs

I was fortunate to move throughout a few different domains. Virtual Reality (Definition) was one of the first ones when it came to understanding spatial mapping and virtual avatars.

That phase was great because it really allowed me to understand just how far away we were from anything understanding their surroundings and if you throw in random change it just gets worse. I mean it gets more complex and with more complexity comes harder engineers, better understand, and more education in the space.

Then I moved to one of my favorite and funniest industries and that was Augmented Reality (Definition) and this industry made me fully aware of the infrastructure that isn't even built yet with consistent AR cloud services that encompass point cloud data from one state/city to city. The ability to build a software that can scale and be used for multiple solutions like robots, AI and the two technologies above.

We are still sometime away from even building an environment in which these technologies can live. I would say that is where the Chinese government does have an upper hand & it started a while ago and now is starting to pay off.

Ok back to Robots & AI agents:

Both robots and AI agents need something and as a practicing neuroscientist I would say it isn’t a heart, or something we can train but an ITT (Integrated information theory)

An ITT is all about the network, but its starting point is that every conscious experience is unique-one among a repertoire of possible experiences-resulting in the generation of an enormous amount of information. Consciousness is also integrated in the sense that all the sounds, sights, thoughts, and emotions we experience at any moment are bound together into a single conscious scene.

Neural Networks from our brain and in our networks look like molecules all attached to each other but consciousness is all of them working together in a synchronized group. I say that like an orchestra, and say that the conductor is leading the band but all of the members, violins, cellos, and more are the ones connected.

If this is a forward thought for us to want to move together in a “singularity” like method then we haven’t done a good job of laying down what needs to be in place.

What do I mean by that?

There is still a lot as a country and a society here on earth that we need to understand about ourselves before we can get to singularity(consciousness).

I would love to fast forward but the best that I can do is give some open theory that wraps you around in practicality & history that is rewriting itself every day. Robots will talk to each other in the coming years and I say that in about around 20 years.

We already have AI agents that want to speak to each other in order to make our streets safer. The only way to do that is to recreate parts of the brain that connect to each other and speak to one another. We can use neurons/neurotransmitters which are very small parts of the brain but makeup so much communication it will make your head explode.

That is WHY communication is so important but yet so very complicated when it comes to speaking about what “robots” & AI(agents) will be able to do. I see us being able to do that with software which we have on certain levels before we get to do that in a physical space like a Telsa car.

Communication is the key to life!

Increasing our sensibility of the world is what got us here and what will carry us on afterlife. The ability to read, write, & speak is a big part of our civilization as a species and every day that you can articulate and communicate better with the world the better you are at being human.

Imagine a robot that already has all of the information that it needs and all it wants to do is service us as humans. All it wants us to do is for us to go back to the tasks that really matter in society and that is being conscious.

ROBOTS WILL NEVER TAKE OVER THE WORLD

Listen to my talk below if you want to hear more about AI and consciousness

We are going to continue several breakthroughs when it comes to deep learning(AI) I believe in the next few years with research dollars and the ability to understand the brain better there is no true reason for us not to be able to explore or get closer to answering the question of not why we are here but How we will continue to evolve.