Global Workspace Theory has failed to prove that broadcast is necessary or sufficient for human-like reportable access consciousness. Either broadcast is just availability to reasoning, memory, action and speech, in which case it is a renaming and not a mechanism, or it is a workspace architecture that has not been shown necessary for that availability. To resolve this, I construct direct...
Integrated Information Theory identifies each experience with the $\Phi$-structure unfolded from a maximal causal substrate. Its calculation begins from a transition probability matrix over chosen units and interventions. I identify two limits on the claim this structure is intrinsic. First, a complete list of properties shared by every experience does not entail IIT's physical postulates are...
Whether machines can be conscious depends not only on what they compute, but when they compute it. Most deployed artificial systems realise their functions via sequential or time-multiplexed updates, yet a moment of conscious experience feels unified and simultaneous. I prove that this difference matters. I augment Stack Theory with algebraic laws relating within time-window constraint...
Generalisation-optimal learning favours weak rules that keep many futures open. Adaptation under this heuristic yields a hierarchy of selves. Previous Stack Theory results show this hierarchy is necessary for human-like consciousness. A first-order self tags intervention versus observation, enabling causal learning and underpinning subjective experience. A second-order self models the listener,...
We tackle the hard problem of consciousness taking the naturally selected, embodied organism as our starting point. We provide a formalism describing how biological systems self-organise to hierarchically interpret unlabelled sensory information according to valence. Such interpretations imply behavioural policies which are differentiated from each other only by the qualitative aspect of...
Awarded “Best Student Paper” and published in Proceedings of The 16th International Conference on Artificial General Intelligence, Stockholm, 2023. To make accurate inferences in an interactive setting, an agent must not confuse passive observation of events with having intervened to cause them. The do operator formalises interventions so that we may reason about their effect. Yet there exist...
To make accurate inferences in an interactive setting, an agent must not confuse passive observation of events with having intervened to cause them. The $do$ operator formalises interventions so that we may reason about their effect. Yet there exist pareto optimal mathematical formalisms of general intelligence in an interactive setting which, presupposing no explicit representation of...
Please note this is a draft on which we are seeking feedback. Substantial changes and a third author are likely be added to the next version. The hard problem of consciousness asks why there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. We address this from 1st principles, by constructing a formalism that unifies lower and higher order theories of consciousness. We assume...
Software’s effect upon the world hinges upon the hardware that interprets it. This tends not to be an issue, because we standardise hardware. AI is typically conceived of as a software mind running on such interchangeable hardware. The hardware interacts with an environment, and the software interacts with the hardware. This formalises mind-body dualism, in that a software mind can be run on...
How to build a conscious machine? For that matter, what is consciousness? Why is my world made of qualia like the colour red or the smell of coffee? Are these fundamental building blocks of reality, or can I break them down into something more basic? If so, that suggests qualia are like an abstraction layer in a computer. A simplification. Some say simplicity is the key to intelligence. Systems...
The concept of intelligent software is flawed. The behaviour of software is determined by the hardware that "interprets" it. This undermines claims regarding the behaviour of theorised, software superintelligence. Here we characterise this problem as "computational dualism", where instead of mental and physical substance, we have software and hardware. We argue that to make objective claims...