Is consciousness the distinctive seal of life?

Is consciousness the distinctive seal of life?

By Andrea Gawrylewski

More than one billion people worldwide have downloaded complementary applications of artificial intelligence chatbot such as Xiaoice and Replika. These virtual confidants can provide empathy, support and, sometimes, deep relationships. Chatbots, of course, are not aware, only feel like that to users, who often get emotionally adhere to them. As IA becomes more fluid by imitating human empathy, language and memory, we have left to face an uncomfortable problem: if a machine can pretend that consciousness so well, what is exactly the real? It is a misleadingly simple question, one that scientists, philosophers and even neuroscientific still fight to answer: what is consciousness?

Unlike other scientific phenomena, consciousness cannot be observed directly; One can observe the behavior or brain activity, but not the subjective experience itself. If human consciousness is a “stage” in which tickets compete for our attention or unified system processing information is still in debate. In fact, our reality can come from subjective internal experiences, such as colors or tastes, which arise due to consciousness. The behavior can also feed this experience, as suggested by a mental experiment on “philosophical zombies” of pains described here.

As complicated as this mystery seems, human cognition operates at a relatively slow and fixed speed of approximately 10 bits per second for tasks such as remembering, making decisions and imagining. Sudden ideas can bubble towards the surface while unconscious operations fade. And people’s brain waves synchronize predictably as individuals interact, which is perhaps an evolutionary adaptation that helps us unite. Automatic processes suggest that our minds work without our conscious participation, but that is not the whole story.

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Much continues in the unconscious mind. It turns out that dreams can be a vote of cognitive disorder. And the famous caps like Thomas Edison have believed that they could manipulate their dream to cause creativity. Our constant surveillance era can cause cognitive changes without our knowledge. In people who are in commas, the mind can be aware but trapped.

Reality can change for people with diseases that arise from complex interactions of genetics and environment, such as schizophrenia. Scientists can now identify early biomarkers to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease, but these tools pose ethical and social concerns. A rare neurological condition called Alicia Syndrome in Wonderland seems to deform the perception of a person’s bodies and time, especially in children. And sometimes a crack develops between the world and a mind, a marked reminder that consciousness is malleable. Surprising activity in morbundos brains can temporarily restore the neuronal function.

The AI ​​will certainly continue advancing, improving the distinctive behavior of conscious beings and perhaps even one day achieving artificial general intelligence. But as the cognitive scientist Anil K. Seth tells the journalist George Musser: “Consciousness is not a matter of being intelligent. It is equally a matter of being alive.” Until now, that is an affirmation that only humans, among other creatures on earth, can do.

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