Consciousness as an Illusion: Rethinking True AI

Disclaimer: I’m a PR pro­fes­sion­al who enjoys think­ing, read­ing, and learn­ing about top­ics far bey­ond my aca­dem­ic background.

I think of con­scious­ness as an illusion.

This brief blog post explores the his­tor­ic­ally pro­voc­at­ive idea that human con­scious­ness might be an emer­gent illu­sion rather than a dis­tinct, tan­gible entity. 

Based on the grad­a­tions of con­scious­ness, its poten­tial as an emer­gent prop­erty of com­plex neur­al inter­ac­tions, and its implic­a­tions for the free will debate and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, I sug­gest we rethink the nature of self-aware­ness and its place in the nat­ur­al world.

Here we go:

A Critical Indistinguishability

The nature of con­scious­ness has long been a sub­ject of philo­soph­ic­al debate and sci­entif­ic inquiry. Traditional views tend to treat con­scious­ness as a con­crete aspect of human experience. 

However, an altern­at­ive per­spect­ive sug­gests that con­scious­ness might be an emer­gent illu­sion — a byproduct of com­plex neur­al pro­cesses. This hypo­thes­is chal­lenges our fun­da­ment­al under­stand­ing of con­scious­ness and its role in human cog­ni­tion and behaviour.

A crit­ic­al aspect of the illu­sion hypo­thes­is is the dif­fi­culty in dis­tin­guish­ing between the exper­i­ence of being con­scious and the belief that one is con­scious. This indis­tin­guishab­il­ity raises ques­tions about the object­ive exist­ence of con­scious­ness as a sep­ar­ate entity.

What we per­ceive as con­scious­ness may simply be a con­vin­cing illu­sion craf­ted by our cog­nit­ive pro­cesses, a notion that blurs the line between real­ity and per­cep­tion in under­stand­ing self-awareness.

Consciousness as a Result of Limitations

The phys­ic­al devel­op­ment of cog­nit­ive abil­it­ies sug­gests that con­scious­ness oper­ates on a slid­ing scale. 

A grown human pos­sesses great­er aware­ness than a new­born, sug­gest­ing that the acu­ity of con­scious­ness is pro­por­tion­al to cog­nit­ive devel­op­ment. This grad­a­tion sup­ports the the­ory that con­scious­ness emerges gradu­ally and is not an abso­lute state, fur­ther lend­ing cre­dence to the view that it is an emer­gent property.

However, the emer­gence is not neces­sar­ily cor­rel­ated with increased com­plex­ity. The phys­i­cist and Nobel prize win­ner Sir Roger Penrose poin­ted out that con­scious­ness might not res­ult from com­plex­ity. If it were, even a num­ber would become sen­tient, only if it were large enough. In that sense, all infin­ite num­bers would be conscious.

Instead of com­plex­ity, the illu­sion of con­scious­ness could res­ult from two sep­ar­ate yet deeply inter­con­nec­ted sys­tems in the brain: the con­scious and sub­con­scious systems.

The brain func­tions as two sep­ar­ate sys­tems, pro­cessing and inter­pret­ing many neur­al sig­nals. It could be that the inter­play between these two sys­tems con­trib­utes to the emer­gence of what we per­ceive as consciousness. 

“So Renner’s [i.e. Physicist Renato Renner at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH)] team designed a kind of ‘lobotom­ised’ neur­al net­work: two sub-net­works that were con­nec­ted to each oth­er through only a hand­ful of links-net­work would learn from the data, as in a typ­ic­al neur­al net­work, and the second would use that ‘exper­i­ence’ to make and test new pre­dic­tions. Because few links con­nec­ted the two sides, the first net­work was forced to pass inform­a­tion to the oth­er in a con­densed format. Renner likens it to how an adviser might pass on their acquired know­ledge to a stu­dent.”
Source: Nature ¹Castelvecchi, D. (2019). AI Copernicus “dis­cov­ers” that Earth orbits the Sun. Nature, 575(7782), 266 – 268. https://​go​.gale​.com/​p​s​/​i​.do

Altering — or fully access­ing! — these sub­con­scious pro­cesses could poten­tially dis­rupt, dimin­ish, or dis­solve the con­scious exper­i­ence, high­light­ing its emer­gent and con­di­tion­al nature.

Consciousness, Determinism, and Free Will

Viewing con­scious­ness as an illu­sion has sig­ni­fic­ant implic­a­tions for determ­in­ism and the free will debate.

The illu­sion hypo­thes­is sug­gests that the dis­tinc­tion between free will and the illu­sion of free will may be more semant­ic than sub­stant­ive. This per­spect­ive aligns with a determ­in­ist­ic view of the uni­verse, albeit one that allows for ele­ments of ran­dom­ness and uncer­tainty, which could still play a role in shap­ing con­scious experience.

The hypo­thes­is that con­scious­ness is an emer­gent illu­sion chal­lenges many con­ven­tion­al views on the nature of self-aware­ness. It opens new aven­ues for under­stand­ing the human mind. 

While this per­spect­ive is still debated, it offers a com­pel­ling frame­work for rethink­ing one of the most pro­found aspects of human exist­ence — our consciousness.

Implications for Artificial Intelligence

Many of us believe that AI poses an exist­en­tial risk for human­ity. Conscious AI could rep­lic­ate and evolve bey­ond humanity.

“For more than three thou­sand mil­lion years, DNA has been the only rep­lic­at­or worth talk­ing about in the world. But it does not neces­sar­ily hold these mono­poly rights for all time. Whenever con­di­tions arise in which a new kind of rep­lic­at­or can make cop­ies of itself, the new rep­lic­at­ors will tend to take over and start a new kind of evol­u­tion of their own.”
Source: The Selfish Gene ²Dawkins, R. (2023). The Selfish Gene: 30^th Anniversary Edition-with a new Introduction by the Author: Dawkins, Richard: 9780199291151: Amazon​.com: Books.

If con­scious­ness is indeed an emer­gent phe­nomen­on, it has pro­found implic­a­tions for the devel­op­ment of arti­fi­cial intelligence. 

The illu­sion hypo­thes­is sug­gests that AI may not need to cross a defin­it­ive sin­gu­lar­ity threshold to achieve some form of con­scious­ness. As an emer­gent phe­nomen­on, each exper­i­enced con­scious­ness is uniquely exper­i­enced, ren­der­ing arti­fi­cial con­scious­ness many unique exper­i­ences of consciousness. 

Thus, if the illu­sion hypo­thes­is is cor­rect, true AI could be achieved by allow­ing AI sys­tems only par­tial access to their own intern­al states.