Consciousness has always lent itself to different interpretations, and the advent of artificial intelligence ended up giving new life to the age-old question in a debate held on Saturday at the Champalimaud Foundation, which brought together the famous neuroscientist Antonio Damasio and INESC President Arlindo Oliveira. The session will be moderated by Francisco Pinto Balsimao, founder of Expresso and president of Impresa, and professor at the Higher Institute of Technology Ana Paiva.
This is the can’t-miss moment bringing together some of the most renowned experts in human consciousness and machine intelligence ever recorded Responsible AI Forum 2023 Which we left here on this page a day after the event – but objectively it is likely to remain for much longer, which is confirmed by the words of Damasio who begins by recalling the “ambiguities” between the mind and the deep memory and the deep memory. The awareness or even ambiguity that the word “conscience” still retains in the Latin languages.
To make up for the lack of firmer definitions, the neuroscientist who taught at the University of Southern California, USA, quickly responded with a version that has been “refined” over time, and which he admits may be subject to revision in the coming years. “Consciousness equals the tangible life experience present in the organism.”
Getting to know “me”
The phrase seems to refer only to common sense, but the neuroscientist did not fail to remember during the discussion organized by the Center for Responsible Artificial Intelligence that consciousness has been treated specifically at a higher cognitive level by scientists when it can, in fact, be much more complex if it is Viewed as a result of the senses and feelings that are produced, they help create human perspectives on the world around them.
Antonio Damasio describes the process as “wonderful,” because it allows the creation of subjectivity and “I” consciousness that is properly present in the world. “We know that the mind is in our body because we feel the body, because we have a mind and we relate that to extrasensory information that determines our location in space,” the neuroscientist said. He added: “Consciousness places the mind in a particular organism.”
In the discussion with Arlindo Oliveira, Francisco Pinto Balsimao was quick to point out that AI has generated a lot of dollars and euros from companies of all sizes seeking to develop new products at the same time as they develop emotion recognition technology – which remains a major frontier in which It separates man from man.
“It’s interesting, and maybe a little worrying, because we don’t know if these chatbots won’t end up controlling everything,” the Expresso founder said, setting the tone for what has now become the central question in the debate over artificial intelligence.
Complexity of machines
If Antonio Damasio talked about the way human consciousness tries to study itself, Arlindo Oliveira took on the task of describing how machines develop – or how they could develop in the near future. “It is possible that we can bring these systems closer to something similar to consciousness,” admitted the IT specialist who has books on artificial intelligence on his resume.
In addition to the large linguistic models that are the origin of tools such as ChatGPT or Bard, AI can articulate various concepts and subsystems associated with evaluating correct actions or managing various events, among many approaches to approximating the “awareness” provided by algorithms with human consciousness. Arlindo Oliveira admits that consciousness is limited if it does not have a body at its disposal like that of humans and other animals, but at least it will be able to “make decisions and be responsible for those decisions.”
In the face of the increasing complexity of machines that Arlindo Oliveira foresees in the coming times, Antonio Damasio does not fail to remember another variable that is still open in the rules of artificial intelligence: “Who will control these machines?”
The question remains open – all the more reason to reconsider this unmissable debate.
“Friendly zombie fanatic. Analyst. Coffee buff. Professional music specialist. Communicator.”
