Is the hat conscious or not? Ben Goertzel on consciousness, panpsychism, and AGI
This hat is conscious or not?
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Panpsychism is a belief that everything in the world has a consciousness. The theory is: you’re conscious. Ben Goertzel has consciousness. Ben Goertzel is conscious. Goertzel says that panpsychism isn’t even interesting to him. It’s obvious. It’s the basis, the beginning of thinking about consciousness. What’s next excites him. He is excited by the technology that could allow us to connect our minds with bricks, hats and earthworms as well as super AGIs such as Sophia and possibly glimpse the fabric of conscious. Goertzel thinks that brain-computer and brain-brain interfaces will be developed in the next few decades. This could help us to finally understand consciousness and whether panpsychism is true.
Ben Goertzel, CEO and chief scientist of SingularityNET is a project that aims to create benevolent, decentralized artificial intelligence. He is also the chief scientist at financial prediction company Aidyia Holdings, and robotics company Hanson Robotics. He is the chairman of AI software firm Novamente LLC and Chairman of the Artificial General Intelligence Society. His latest book, AGI Revolution: A View from the Inside of the Rise in Artificial General Intelligence is available.
TRANSCRIPT:
BEN GOERTZEL : Consciousness, a word and concept that is a great source of confusion and vexation for many people. Intelligent people have different opinions and could debate about it forever. Panpsychism is my own view of consciousness. It is the belief that consciousness, like space and time, is inherent in all existence. Panpsychism means that all the things we see are situated in space and time, and that consciousness is also a part of that continuum. It’s an obvious idea, but it is a good starting point for understanding consciousness. It’s true that a cool hat may be more aware than the average one, but the brain is able to model itself and respond differently to different stimuli. Many properties of the mind seem to be associated with its more powerful and dynamic states. If you accept panpsychism and that everything has an element of conscious, then some things will still be more conscious. And some things will also be different. Then, things start to get interesting.
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