Quantum Consciousness

The Fleet Of Stars, 2.

Computers and robots behave like people but only because they carry out algorithms. Conscious, creative minds could not be created:

"'...till the quantum nature of consciousness was understood.'" (p. 21)

Then researchers, applying their knowledge of atoms and quanta:

scanned a nervous system molecule by molecule;

recorded the patterns corresponding to memory and personality;

mapped these patterns into a neural net that was an analogue of a brain;

thus created a download that was a copy of a mind;

gave the download sensors, a speaker and a machine body although not yet a newly grown organic body;

thus learned how to make electrophotonic hardware and software that was self-conscious without having been copied from an organic brain.

These "sophotects," linked with all computers, robots and each other, became self-programming and self-evolving. There is a single pyramidal cybercosm with everyday appliances at the base and the unimaginable Teramind at the peak and there is a similar mind at the galactic level in Poul Anderson's later Genesis which is the peak of future histories.

Clearly, a neural net is an artificial brain, not a computer.

Guthries, Computers And A Psalm

Harvest Of Stars, 44.

Two full copies of download Guthrie cooperate with each other and unite with the net. Thus, what is left of Guthrie has gone far beyond its original humanity. The hypercomputers are not aware but we are told that that will change soon. How? Computers will not become conscious by calculating more quickly. They will have to be combined with artificial neural networks like the ones into which Guthrie has been downloaded.

"To the hypercomputers, a thousand years were as a day and a day was as a thousand years..." (p. 402)

See Psalm 90: 4 and 2 Peter 3: 8.

Biblical allusions are becoming like part of the grammar.

The Beginning Of Conscious AI

Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), PART ONE, III, 2.

Christian Brannock is remotely neurally linked to the robot, Gimmick, which is exploring the Mercurian surface. Brannock's colleague, Willem Schuyten, reflects that:

"He had often heard such highly developed computers and neural nets, with their programs and databases, called 'brains.' People who worked with one, like Christian - although seldom as intimately as he did - were apt to give it a name and speak of its personal quirks, as other people might speak of a ship or a tool that had served them a long time." (pp. 15-16)

This is where a crucial transition occurs. Conscious beings use tools, including computers, but the tools are not conscious. Neurons in brains generate consciousness. If a "neural net" duplicates the functions of neurons, then it also generates consciousness. Thus, conscious artificial intelligence emerges.

The name, "Gimmick," enables us to make a comparison with the soft sf writer, CS Lewis, who writes a convincing account of a Lunar landing but displays his lack of scientific knowledge and understanding by dismissively labeling scientific instruments as "gimmicks":

"The landing was not without terror, but there were so many gimmicks to look after, so much skill to be exercised, that it did not amount to very much."
-CS Lewis, "Forms of Things Unknown" IN Lewis, The Dark Tower And Other Stories (London, 1983), pp. 124-132 AT p. 128.

In imagination, we venture to the Moon with Lewis and to Mercury with Anderson.

Christian Brannock

Modesty Blaise is good but I must return to Poul Anderson before turning in.

Christian Brannock:

worked as an astronaut;
married and settled down on Earth;
had a son who is now grown;
became a widower;
returned to space;
"...took up the new technology of human-machine linkage..." (Genesis, p. 21);
on Mercury, was linked to an AI called Gimmick;
after an accident, went onto the Mercurian surface to rescue Gimmick's neural net;
at the end of Chapter III, is offered the following option -

- his entire organism will be scanned;
the informational matrix will be transferred to a database in an advanced neural network;
sensors and effectors will be added;
the network will provide the necessary element of human judgment and will in the AI-controlled exploratory starships that will be ready soon after the end of his life expectancy.

I previously discussed artificial intelligence in Genesis here.