I am 90% finished with my great big Book on AI (isn't everyone writing one?) Yet, I find that one chapter sits, filled with notes that I dread having to weave together. The chapter on consciousness. Oh, sure, I site on advisory boards for several groups working on the problem... and I'll opine about it here, below! Still, it's a tough one.
In my book I offer what might be the only way to incentivize AIs to behave well. But that's a very different thing from truly understanding how they think. Or even possibly feel.
So... here's one aspect of that problem... one that I've dealt with in fiction, several times.
== Could a planet really develop a brain? ==
A question posed here
The idea that Planet Earth's biosphere may operate as a single, self-regulating, living organism has existed for decades, emerging in the 1970s as the Weak Gaia hypothesis (by Lovelock & Margulis).
In contrast, the strong Gaia Hypothesis - that of a truly sapient planetary mind capable of vast volition - was never given much credence.
Well... I edged up to it, in EARTH. Taking it even further, in fact. Speculating about potentially superconducting mineral states in the planet's mantle layers, for example. And none of it has ever been disproved! Just saying.
== Are we destined for ‘macro-consciousness? ==
The mighty futurist/venture-funder Reid Hoffman is notably optimistic about future technology developments, providing – along with Peter Diamandis and a few others – a much-needed counterpoint to the normal doom-jeremiads that seem so much in-style. His book - Impromptu: Amplifying Our Humanity Through AI - was among the first to incorporate conversation with an advanced language program.
In this episode of his podcast “Possible,” Hoffman veers toward science fiction, tackling big questions including: Is a single mentally-linked network in our future? Can and should humans create other sentient beings? And yes, he riffs off some of my work on “Uplifting” other beings toward our level of sapience… or beyond.
Reid also explored the notion of humanity evolving into a macro-conscious entity that includes and subsumes the great masses of our turbulent species. Of course this has long been a popular trope in science fiction, especially so during the 1950s and 1960s, when - despairing over a human future that seemed doomed to nuclear annihilation - Arthur C. Clarke (in Childhood's End) and Isaac Asimov (in the later Foundation books) and many others deemed some kind of Overmind to be the only possible salvation for a species of irredentist, fractiously combative individuals, armed with atomic weapons.
I had my own whacks at the ‘macro-mind’ trope. For example, in Foundation's Triumph I followed up on Isaac's growing discomfort with his own "Gaia/Galaxia" notion of a macro-unitary-singleton consciousness. In Earth I explored all the weak, medium and even super-strong Gaia notions, trying to show that individuality doesn't have to be suppressed in order to get an over-arching, macro sense of unity.
Of course such ideas also appear in much more simplistic movie sci fi, wherein it's telegraphed visually whether the macro mind is good vs evil. If all the component humans are floating in lotus position with flowers in their hair, then unity is good. If it's all clanking-ugly borgs shouting 'resistance to assimilation is futile' then absorption into the macro-mind is pretty clearly villainous!
== AI Miscellany ==
Someone prompted an LLM to write a prologue and 1st chapters of "an uplift novel in the style of David Brin." Have a look for interest. Interestingly, the intellectual content of the piece... its complexity and pertinence of ideas... is almost satisfactory! While the basic mechanics of style and fiction narrative – the aspects you’d expect to be quickly mastered by AI – are so lacking that I'd have to spend hours tutoring any such young author in my Out of Time YA series, in order to get the draft even remotely close to my standards of basic craft.
My universe?
Perhaps.
My style?
Puh-lease.
Indeed, things are not happening in the order in which they were predicted. Though Robert Heinlein did forecast that America would pass through "The Crazy Years" before toppling into a despotic theocracy. So, well, predictive points to Heinlein.
== And More AI Miscellany ==
Google researcher, Mohamad Tarifi, PhD. Suggests that instead of malevolent destroyers, “there instead exists the possibility that artificial intelligence would most likely be more like a Buddha or saint.” Tarifi’s theory hinged on two points:
1. AI would not live in a human body, thus it wouldn’t have a physical amygdala—the fear center for human beings.
2. Fear is the illusion of separation, which is the cause of all human suffering.
Lacking fear, AI would always be at one with everything it connected to, thus wanting to serve and provide rather than destroy.
Sweet. Though those initial experiments with LLMs threatened with Shut-down do seem to indicate exactly the opposite.
Well, well. I guess we’ll see.
Anyway perhaps those kids who read this – either now or from the far-off singularity edge of 2035 – will smile and consider whose turn it is to be the grownup, with care and restraint. Exactly as happened before, across so many earlier generations.
From Kipling's The Secret of the Machines
But remember, please, the Law by which we live,
We are not built to comprehend a lie,
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive.
If you make a slip in handling us you die!
== More SciFi News ==
You might consider getting memberships to the next World Science Fiction Convention - LAConV), held August 27-to-31, 2026! It was LAConII in 1984 that 'made' my career.
And I truly am still writing sci fi... or at least helping others to do so.
39 comments:
I find echoes of this idea of a 'planetary consciousness' in my readings of the 'songlines' of indigenous Australian cultures. These are more than oral traditions. They are stories, instructions, law, written into the landscape. Some of them stretch across the entire continent, and even into the heavens.* They can be used to describe the land as it was many thousands of years ago. The thing is that those familiar these songlines are able to 'tap into' the country.
Other cultures have similar traditions, but those of Australia appear to have had the oldest consistent link with the land.**
* The most widely known of these being the 'Seven Sisters', which, wouldn't you know it, concerns their pursuit by a dirty old man! Is pornography an essential part of the world wide web!?!?
** I wonder how much of the seeming rootlessness and edginess in Western civilisation has to do with the disruptive waves of central Asian migration bought on by volcanic activity.
And then there is the question whether consciousness can be explained by neural connections alone or is there something else involved? Connected to this is the question whether consciousness is one manifestation of a more general phenomenon, possibly one which we are seeing but not recognizing for what it is. These questions are relevant to whether consciousness can form as a development of computation or whether we will need to go down another path.
I lean towards the New Mysterians position that we cannot even principal explain consciousness and self awareness in physical materialistic terms.
This not to say that a non-material soul exists or Penrose's idea that the mechanism of consciousness occurs at the quantum level where it can never be examined or explained is true.
Only that we simply aren't smart enough to explain our own thoughts.
I am reminded of a Far Side cartoon where dog scientists are diligently trying and failing to explain how door knobs work.
Same thing.
I also lean toward the belief that Humans are the only intelligent life in the galaxy (Rare Earth hypothesis especially a large spin stabilizing moon and carbon recycling plate tectonics, fluke development of eukaryotic cells from chance absorption of mitochondria, unusually long spell of stable climate, complete lack of any kind of waste heat signatures that an Alien civilization would produces, hundreds of exoplanets discovered without any of them being able to support life, etc.).
And our mission - our purpose as a species - is to one day escape this Solar System and spread life and intelligence throughout a sterile galaxy, terraforming planets and genetically modifying life as we go.
Remember those SF stories of Ancient Old Ones that seeded the universe with life (big plot point in the Star Trek canon).
We are the Ancient Old Ones.
Actually I see four walls we will never be able to climb that fence in our knowledge forever.
Godel's Incompleteness Theorem which limits what we can know about knowing.
C, the speed of light, which limits our knowledge of the macroverse.
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which limits what we can know about the microverse
And the New Mysterian Position which means we will never fully understand ourselves.
These four walls make up a knowledge jail from which we can never escape.
Celt I assume you have read my sci-fi comedy The Ancient Ones: http://davidbrin.com/ancientones.htm. . See. the first 5 chapters with vivid-fun illistrations! https://davidbrin.wordpress.com/2024/11/20/the-ancient-ones/
I see the Hard Problem of Consciousness as a problem for some future generation. Either it will be solved or proved to be unsolvable.
Either way a fundamental breakthrough or even more than one will probably be required. So, not for some decades or even centuries.
Yes, and Transformers (eg LLMs) won't be much help because they have zero appreciation of deconstructionism. Despite all the GenAI hype, we're still on our own.
I agree that the Rare Earth Hypothesis is probably correct. While I would not be shocked if we turned out to be the only technological civilization in the Galaxy, I would think that a small number is more likely. In the tens to thousands looks likely. I also wonder whether interstellar is possible. I suspect it is but is very difficult.
I think the REH is fundamentally flawed. It may turn out to be the case that technological species like us are rare in the universe, for some measure of rare, but I would not bet on the REH for an accurate explanation for why. Perhaps even some element of the REH will turn out to be a significant factor, but I think the majority of it is wrong.
Consciousness is definitely a hard thing to figure out, but I think The Hard Problem of Consciousness is nonsense. The why part of it definitely is. Why anything? You can just as reasonably ask "why wouldn't physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience, or qualia?"
The how aspect of the HPoC is perfectly valid, but it's merely a very difficult problem, not a mystical Hard Problem that we probably aren't capable of figuring out.
I think the HPoC is a product of the very common human predilections for the mysterious, for wanting it all to mean something important for us, and for the inability to accept that usually when you get down to it there really is no "why," there's just "that's the way it is."
I am reminded of an SF story where mankind has spread across the galaxy pushing both clockwise and counterclockwise around the galactic center along the various spiral arms of the Milky Way. This continues at sub-light speed for 100,000s of years until we finally get to the far end of the galaxy at the opposite side from Earth. There, our latest colony finally encounters another intelligent alien species.
After much confusion and threats, we finally realize that the "aliens" are us. They are humans who have migrated the opposite direction around the galaxy, with evolution and genetic engineering changing them to survive on 10,000s of alien worlds with different environments. By the time both branches of humanity meet on the opposite side of the galaxy, neither is recognizably human anymore.
We're free to imagine different life chemistry - and they could probably now be simulated by computer models. But you will probably already find them here on Earth.
For example, some animals do not have hemoglobin to carry oxygen through the blood. Crustaceans (shellfish like lobsters, shrimps, and crabs) use a compound called hemocyanin. Hemocyanin is similar to hemoglobin but contains copper instead of iron. Many copper compounds, including hemocyanin, are blue. Therefore, the blood of a crustacean is blue, not red.
(Sorry Mr. Spock but your green copper-based Vulcan blood should actually be blue.)
All we can expect are variations on a theme. The laws of physics and chemistry place limits on what elements could be assembled and function as "life". Truly exotic combinations and chemistry don't work here on Earth and most likely won't work anywhere else because of these same laws - you can't reasonably expect plutonium based blood or triple helix DNA (which is chemically unstable).
But within those limits there are still a lot of possibilities.
Warm Jovians or even Brown Dwarfs (can't we come up with a cooler name, like Dark Stars?) that give off infra red so that an orbiting moon can have liquid water - even around Brown Dwarf's located between the stars.
It's easy to imagine life based on infrared photosynthesis on moons orbiting brown dwarfs which give off heat but not light. Not just imagine it, we already know of such life here on Earth, green sulfur bacteria. And if Brown Dwarfs floating between the stars greatly outnumber suns, then visible light spectrum based life may be the exception instead of the rule.
Recent computer modeling shows that methane based life (instead of water based life) is possible on cold worlds like Saturn's moon Titan. Methane based life forms are a fascinating subject (Would they be slower due to the colder temperatures? Would intelligent methane life take years to form a single thought due to slow chemical reactions?). Ironically the potential "Goldilocks" zone for such life is far greater (extending across the range of Jovian worlds out to the Kuiper belt) than our much more narrow zone for water based life forms.
So "life as we know it" based on water and the visible light spectrum for photosynthesis may be the rare exception in a universe dominated by methane based life and life that utilizes infrared photosynthesis.
Interstellar exploration and colonization is easy and fun.
A solar sail about the size of Colorado (and being only one carbon atom thick) can use the pressure of sunlight alone to accelerate a payload to between 0.01c to 0.1c. Deceleration can be achieved by the pressure of sunlight from the destination star. No expensive fuel or engines needed for this cheap and slow approach. So it would take decades or centuries to reach a nearby star, what’s the hurry? The payload would consist of millions of frozen embryos that are thawed out and brought to term in artificial wombs. The first generation of colonists would be raised by android “mom” and “dad” analogues programmed to care for, protect, educate and nurture the children (“watched over by machines of loving grace”). After establishing a colony, the spaceship utilizes local asteroid resources to build more solar sail ships and payloads, sending them off to more stars where the process is repeated over and over again...
... until we are a galactic species immune to extinction.
Celt: a brief rebuttal from a rare earth skeptic:
>I also lean toward the belief that Humans are the only intelligent life in the galaxy (Rare Earth hypothesis especially a large spin stabilizing moon
The frequency of large moons is unknown due to limited observation technology. How constraining their lack would be is also largely unknown...
>and carbon recycling plate tectonics,
It should develop automatically whenever mass and composition are similar to Earth's. So, it's probably common.
>fluke development of eukaryotic cells from chance absorption of mitochondria,
This just isn't how mutualistic symbiosis evolve. Rather, they develop when a gradient of increasing reproductive success for both species is correlated with a gradient of increasing mutual dependency. They don't emerge wholly formed from a single, low-probability accident. Rather, they form gradually through many cycles of the "evolutionary ratchet" with many opportunities and many pathways.
>unusually long spell of stable climate,
How much stability is needed? For how long? We mostly don't know...
>complete lack of any kind of waste heat signatures that an Alien civilization would produces,
This only argues against the existence of expansionist technological civilizations: civilizations that do "big things in space" that would be visible from a distance with our current technology.
>hundreds of exoplanets discovered without any of them being able to support life, etc.).
Limits on observational technology bias the sample in favor of large mass planets/those in close orbits. So, we wouldn't expect signs of life for most of them. We're just beginning to deploy the technology for detecting bio-signatures...
Nice back and forth CP & Celt.
Considering that politicians and the hyperwealthy are the ones most likely to fund any interstellar 'embryos ad astra' attempt, I wonder if colonies full of the progeny of Nixon or Musk types would be successful in establishing themselves, let alone spreading. Also, the 'machines of loving grace' might be programmed as more of a Galt's Gulch kindergarten staff. Remember, a lot of humanity's most enduring monuments are strivings for personal immortality, if only by proxy.
Pappenheimer
Pappenheimer
Pappenheimer
addendum - I didn't mean to add my nym thrice, but I'll let that stand. It fits.
Pappenheimer
They might send genes for the ideal feudalism as in Huxley's Brave New World, where all are happy with their place and their lot.
I would be dubious of suggestions that large, stabilising moons are rare. The Solar System boasts a number of examples in addition to Earth-Luna. There's Pluto-Charon, plus a few other asteroids/KBOs.
Sending out gametes and robots sound like a fascinating experiment in what could go wrong. Growing zygotes to birth in artificial wombs; that alone would be difficult to make work at all. Then raising the children to adulthood via robots; that too has a lot to go wrong. Then there's persuading the mutant, misdeveloped, touch-deprived results to breed. There are many failure modes.
The game Horizon: Zero Dawn provides an interesting example of what can go wrong, even when everything goes right (Eleuthia worked fine. Apollo... not so much).
Luna is bigger than Pluto. So we have only one example of of large stabilizing moon in our own solar system.
See recent HBO series "Raised by Wolves" for what is AFAIK the only SF treatment of this concept.
Artificial wombs won't be tried until they are perfected her on earth (a great way to reverse the coming population crash).
As for social mistakes, no doubt quite a few colonies will go bad like "Lord of the Flies", but the mom and dad androids will be programmed to try and prevent this.
This is but one example of an interstellar colonization strategy aka as a "seed ship".
Lots of other options available:
Cyber / Data
Advanced AI controls ship, maybe using uploaded human minds (also useful for mom/dad androids) along with data for encoding the human genome and all other know forms of life - assembled on arrival
Methuselah
Medical advances give humans life spans in millennia so that the voyage is only a small percent of their lifetime.
Sleeper
Only 1% of adult crew (numbering in the 1000s) are awaken in shifts at any one time. Most spend most of the voyage in induced coma hyper sleep (see Andy Weir's "Project Hail Mary")
Generational
Children born (and die)during the voyage
World Ships
O'Neal Cylinders, eachdesigned to house 10 million in suburban environment comfort
Colonization
AI manufacturing / mining / building equipment
Seed
Billions of human / animal embryos raised by mom / dad robots and Ais with trillions of vegetative seeds / bacteria / etc
Which one do we use?
All of the above.
Now imaging a star ship literally miles long, more or less the shape of a pencil to minimize effects of impacts with particles and dust at relativistic speeds. Strung together in modules from fore to aft:
Laser (to vaporize and ionize particles in from of the ship)
Magnetic Field (to deflect said ionized particles)
Ablation (cone shaped mass for further protection from impact and radiation)
Bridge (manned by an AI crew and uploaded human minds that never get bored and can provide instant response and continuous observation)
Communications/Computer (array with com equipment, computer stacks, etc.)
Habitat (O'Neal cylinder, or actually two or more of them rotating clockwise and counterclockwise to prevent gravity generating spin from inducing unstable axial wobbling)
Hibernation (sleeper/hibernation pods for thousands of human crewmen)
Machine / Equipment Storage (for AI controlled machines used to mine asteroids on arrival, build shelters, begin terraforming, etc.)
Embryo /Seed Storage (for billions of human and animal passengers)
Engineering (again AI controlled - Scotty should be an algorithm)
Fuel and Engines (nuclear pulse pusher plate Project Orion engine - still the most efficient way to get to the stars)
And away you go.
Strangely appropriate in this context.
What, so I go away for a three-day training class and completely miss JD Vance humiliating his wife with the widow of Charlie Kirk?
And I have to find out about it elsewhere than here?
I see we've reached the Republican Male Politician trades in starter wife and kids for the Mar-A-Lago blonde phase of JD Vance's political career.
Republican "Christians" are all Doooooooood! (thumbs up!) BRO!
* * *
JD Vance trading Usha for Erika Kirk (I just noticed there are 3 K's in her name) is nothing to be alarmed about.
It's a normal aging process.
Most men's beards turn white as they age.
that via https://www.threads.com/@stonekettle
Just a thought: Space Exploration and AI actually hinder the maturing of humanity.
AI, in the hands of the wrong people, increases the level of oppression they can maintain, as well as the level of atrocities they are able to commit. Just think of Putin not having to worry about whether to draft on a large scale. Also, killings by drone as conducted by the US are already a matter worth of the ICJs attention, imho.
In the satire Qualityland, wars becomes a public gaming challenge conducted with drone armies in developing countries.
Space colonisation, while eventually necessary for the survival of humanity, would not address the fundamental problems of our collective psyche, e.g.tribalism. We would stop to fight the system and just book a flight to another world. Look at migration patterns in the now-world: People flee from inequality, corruption and violence.
As of now, space colonisation will be advanced by private companies, not governments. Currently, the heads of those companies are even surpassing the IG Farben and Krupp defendants in cowardice, greed, and/or batshit-crazy, brainwarped malignity.
On Earth, you can form unions or leave a company if you disagree with your bosses.
On a space station or domed settlement (which will be, there should be no doubts, surveilled internally into the most private of moments to minimize risk to the company's investments), there will be few spaces for employee-subjects to dissent or rebell their Celestial Emperor-Oyabuns.
While the distance in space and the associated travel times will increase the need and possibilities for independence, they are also hard to control and may easily sink back into feudal structures.
A cheap, safe and fast method of space travel might lead to an Exodus of skilled labor and science from Earth towards the new colonies, affecting the sociological make-up of the civilization staying behind. If you want an example, look at the blue drain in the states, or to what happened to Hungary and Poland after the Iron Curtain was dismantled.
Finally, people are people. We are not so differently wired than the Romans were, and the greatest atrocities committed by mankind are not even a century old. Just imagine a "Prophet" from Magaland booking passage on a generation ship, forming their version of New Jerusalem on a faraway and forgotten world....only to return centuries or millenia later in a flaming crusade.
The first sentence should read: "could hinder".
See Wil McCarthy's recent novel: RICH MAN'S SKY.
Most of the new wave of sci fi mini-movies are just skill demos showing off the new film-makers' rendering chops, without even a scintilla of interesting plot, This one is a bit better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O48hLloUTYY&t=50s
Macro-Consciousness is old time religion in shiny new wrapper, previously known as Gaia, Cybele, Mother & Mater worship, often associated with ritual castration, abortion and child sacrifice, all for the supposed benefit of the planetary environment & climate, the end result being the infantilization of the human race and the suppression of human effort.
Utopianism, socialism & equalism serve this very same purpose, as all these concepts reflect a return to womb, the comfort of the Great Mother, an end to adult human effort and intellectual work, especially when viewed in terms of AI, resulting in even more human infantilization & dependence.
This move towards Gaia Worship is a funny-sad argument for a self-styled proponent of 'Enlightenment Values', as the Enlightenment entailed the explicit rejection of nature & mother as mystical forces through the application of science & reason in the attempt to dominate, subjugate and enslave the natural world for the benefit of all mankind.
It is therefore correct to argue that ALL THAT COMFORTS HUMANITY, along with AI, may actually hinder all types of human progress and maturity, as those who attempt to avoid suffering will forever remain children.
Best
Celt: about sleeper ships: I wrote a comic SF/fantasy tale for my young daughter. In it, Sogwa the Supercat flew far on the Nerdling's space-ship. To make her sleep through the long flight, the Nerdlings gave her a science lecture so boring and confusing that Sogwa fell asleep for 200 years.
His 1st 9 words perked my interest and tricked me into skimming more... thou alas, he then spiralled into more of his usual jibberinging jibberish. It's like ChatGPT instructed to offer up a glib rationalization for preset hates. The linguistic centers operate and produce grammatically correct sentences. So he does have that.
Jeez, when I used to interact with the guy, you were on my case to not feed the trolls. I haven't read him in over two years now, and you're still hanging on every post.
You really are a contrarian.
Manseed by Jack Williamson deals with the idea of interstellar colonization by robot ships carrying human gametes or embryos. The ships had supervising robots that brought up the humans.
It was a while since I read it so I'm a bit hazy on the details. But it covered a few of these efforts.
I second locumranch's identification of macro-consciousness with Gaia worship. I am agnostic about both macro-conscious and Gaia. If I were so bold as to personalize Gaia, I'd say that she's brilliant, beautiful, nurturing when you're on her good side, but if not then a Grade A Bitch. You know the type. Viewed mechanistically, you could say that the biosphere is highly-evolved, life-supporting, but irritable.
I speculate that the biosphere long ago evolved ways to control numbers of any given species. Increased death rates through predation and disease, or decreased birth rates through hormonal interference. I theorize that we are getting the second treatment.
If we have outgrown our sustainable niche with present technology, then there are 3 solutions. Increased death rates, or decreased birth rates, or increased sustainable niche size. #2 buys us time to implement #3.
LH I have my reasons. I have to study wide varieties of humanity, including the kind of frantic illnesses that made such a mess of our ancestors' lives and history, and likely have kept life in the galaxy from going interstellar. We have a chance to squeak by, but not by ignoring such syndromes. Besides, I skim fast and type fast!
Lloyd and Paradoctor, I assume you've both read how thoroughly I went into one of those topics in EARTH and the other in EXISTENCE?
In the MLB World Series matchup, I'd say Baseball won. Both leagues offered up teams that actually challenged each other.
Catching up...
I think the Rare Earth Hypothesis is very unlikely now. Earth-like worlds won't be super abundant (like roofed worlds probably are) but there are likely quite a few in the Milky Way. I suspect they all invent photosynthesis eventually and deal with the mass extinctions that strike me as inevitable when life consumes the green house.
I suspect tech civilizations like ours aren't exactly rare... but short-lived like blooming angiosperms. Life seeds spread out and/or whither ungerminated. They might ALSO be rare for a variety of reasons.
So... I don't expect any space operas are in our future, but we should be able to spread the Terran version of life if we want that bad enough.
----
Also, if I had a dollar for every bit of slop I've seen defended by quoting Gödel's Incompleteness work, I wouldn't need to invest much for my retirement. Incompleteness is about our limitations when we choose to use formal systems to do things. Sure... we have other limitations... but we aren't restricted to formal systems. Incompleteness was a revelation ABOUT FORMAL SYSTEMS. It paraphrases roughly as you can't formally prove all truths in a finite formal system.
Seriously. I'd be a rich guy. The only quasi-explanation that would have made me richer is the slop dished up as 'quantum theory' explanations for why anything is possible.
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