There was a recent thread on the Systemshock.org forums in which Kolya linked to an article on cybernetics titled “The Myth of Sentient Machines” by some Bobby Azarian. Kolya was posting the article in agreement with Azarian, but he’s wrong. Dead wrong. And what is missing from the formulation that so many transhumanists and cyberneticists (but not David Pierce) never mention is the factor of hedonics (or affective experience). A system for processing and storing hedonic data is all that is needed to make an artificial intelligence sentient. There is nothing special about the cybernetic experience of animals, no magic ingredient that can’t be simulated. So what is hedonic experience? Simply, it is the two opposed affectives: pleasure and suffering.
But what are pleasure and suffering, on a technical, neurological level? Quite simply they are feedback loops: pleasure is the experience caused by any stimulus that, by stimulating the cybernetic system, increases the likelihood that the action which lead to the stimulus is repeated by the owner of the cybernetic system; likewise and inversely, suffering is the experience caused by a stimulus that, by stimulating the cybernetic system, decreases the likelihood that the action which lead to the stimulus is repeated by the owner of the cybernetic system. Put more simply, pleasure is the effect of a stimulus that increases the likelihood of itself being repeated, whereas suffering is the effect of a stimulus that decreases the likelihood of itself being repeated.
The brain is a finite piece of matter which can hold an infinite amount of information. It can achieve this with feedback loops, neuroplasticity, and I might propose, communication between arbitrary synapses beyond their “normal” function (if they have any function) and being able to adapt as needed, to be there when called upon.
I’ll have more on this later.
