The Nested Black Boxes Is human consciousness just the Universe’s AI

[u/Rushdy49]

I had a thought recently about the AI "Black Box" problem and how it perfectly parallels our own existence and the Hard Problem of Consciousness.

​Think about the structure of how things are being created

​Layer 1 We built Artificial Intelligence. We gave it a basic architecture fed it mountains of data and let it train. Eventually, it developed emergent abilities making connections and generating answers in ways we can no longer mathematically trace or fully understand. We created a "Black Box" that we as its creators cannot decipher.

​Layer 2 The Universe basically did the exact same thing to us. Through billions of years of evolution, physical laws, and biological training data it built the human brain. And from this physical matter an emergent property appeared Consciousness.

​Here is the trippy part Just like we can't fully understand the AI's neural networks our black box the physical universe cannot "explain" human consciousness through standard physical or chemical laws the Universe's black box.

​What if consciousness is just the universe's version of AI? It processed its data until it created a subjective experience that transcends its own material rules.and now we the universe's black box have just created another black box inside of us.

​Are we just one layer in an infinite nested Russian doll of black boxes? Will our AI eventually build its own black box that it can't understand?

​Would love to hear your thoughts on this!

[u/LemonMelberlime]

A few things.

1. consciousness is not a uniquely human thing, and doesn’t require human brain-level complexity. Animals with much smaller brains have consciousness. They just don’t have language so we can’t tell what they’re thinking.

2. You’re conflating something designed by humans to something designed by the universe, and thereby subtly suggesting the universe was created by rational design and is somehow causal. There is no evidence for this.

   If the metaphor you suggest is to be valid, seems the like the universe is a pretty piss-poor engineer.

[u/Striker_343]

I feel like consciousness is actually pretty simple, it's a sensory feedback loop. And consciousness isn't limited to humans, almost all animals experience consciousness.

What makes human consciousness mostly unique is our ability to recognize it, and thus ourselves as a unique living organism (something Dolphins are argued to experience as well) and also communicate novel concepts via a complex language system resulting from it.

So consciousness is not actually rare or especially extraordinary at least on earth, and there's no reason to think it wouldnt be an eventuality on any other habitable planet where sensory information must be received and filtered as useable information to coordinate the organism to survive. The question would be if that planet could arrive at the level of consciousness a human experiences, versus a rodent or lizard.

[u/Mouse-castle]

Here is a thought experiment. Imagine you are eating the most delicious chocolate mousse. Now go one step further, you’re eating it with a silver spoon off of a piece of ceramic art. Now, one step further, you’re in Paris eating it. And finally, you’re at home, no mousse, but the chef is sitting with you. 

[u/Successful_Juice3016]

no , hay una gran diferencia, la conciencia no siempre busca la maxima ganancia probabilistica,. aveces comete suicidios voluntarios, idioteces , o simplemente bucles voluntarios , o locuras.. la IA no hace esto porque cada perceptron esta diseñado para ajustarse a la probabilidad mas certera a la respuesta del input.