I am a 3rd year PhD student in consciousness neuroscience. After studying 3 years in this field I tend to think that better understanding consciousness looks less important than standard EA causes areas.
Understanding consciousness is probably not very neglected. Indeed, although the field of consciousness science is relatively young and probably still small relatively to other academic fields, it is a growing academic field with established lab teams such as the Sackler center for consciousness science, the tlab, Stan Dehaene lab, Giulio Tononi and more. Consciousness is a fascinating problem that attract many intellectuals. There is an annual conference on the science of consciousness organised every year that probably gather hundreds of academics https://assc24.forms-wizard.co.il/ (unsure about the number of participants)
Although I appreciate the enthusiasm of QRI and the original ideas they discuss, I am personally concerned by the potential general lack of scientific rigor that might be induced by the structure of QRI, but I would need to engage more with QRI content. Consciousness (noted C) is a difficult problem that quite likely requires collaboration between a good amount of academics with solid norms of scientific rigor (i.e. doing better than the current replication crisis).
In terms of importance of the cause, it is plausible that there is a lot of variation in architecture and phenomenology of conscious processing and so it is unclear how easily results in current, mostly human-centric, consciousness science would transfer to other species or AIs. On the other hand this suggests that understanding consciousness in specific species might be more neglected (but maybe having reliable behavioral markers of C might already go a long way to understand moral patienthood). In any case I have a difficult time making the case for why understanding consciousness is a particularly important problem relative to other standard EA causes.
Some potential interest to further specify that could potentially make the case for studying consciousness more:
C might be necessary for general intelligence then better understanding C might help us to better understand general AI and suggest interesting new directions for AI safety.
Building conscious AI (in the form of brain emulations or other architectures) could possibly help us create a large amount of valuable artificial beings. Wildely speculative indulgence: being able to simulate humans and their descendents could be a great way to make the human species more robust to most existing existential risks (if it is easy to create artificial humans that can live in simulations then humanity could becomes much more resilient)
Overall I am quite skeptical that on the margin consciousness science is the best field for an undergrad in informatics compare to AI safety or other priority cause areas.
Building conscious AI (in the form of brain emulations or other architectures) could possibly help us create a large amount of valuable artificial beings. Wildely speculative indulgence: being able to simulate humans and their descendents could be a great way to make the human species more robust to most existing existential risks (if it is easy to create artificial humans that can live in simulations then humanity could becomes much more resilient)
That would pose a huge risk of creating astronomical suffering too. For example, if someone decides to do a conscious simulation of natural history on earth, that would be a nightmare for those who work on reducing s-risks.
Thanks, your perspective on this is really helpful! Especially the points you made about consciousness research not being very neglected. On the other hand, AI research can also not really be described as neglected anymore. Maybe the intersection of both is the way to go—as you said, C might be crucial to AGI.
I am a 3rd year PhD student in consciousness neuroscience. After studying 3 years in this field I tend to think that better understanding consciousness looks less important than standard EA causes areas.
Understanding consciousness is probably not very neglected. Indeed, although the field of consciousness science is relatively young and probably still small relatively to other academic fields, it is a growing academic field with established lab teams such as the Sackler center for consciousness science, the tlab, Stan Dehaene lab, Giulio Tononi and more. Consciousness is a fascinating problem that attract many intellectuals. There is an annual conference on the science of consciousness organised every year that probably gather hundreds of academics https://assc24.forms-wizard.co.il/ (unsure about the number of participants)
Although I appreciate the enthusiasm of QRI and the original ideas they discuss, I am personally concerned by the potential general lack of scientific rigor that might be induced by the structure of QRI, but I would need to engage more with QRI content. Consciousness (noted C) is a difficult problem that quite likely requires collaboration between a good amount of academics with solid norms of scientific rigor (i.e. doing better than the current replication crisis).
In terms of importance of the cause, it is plausible that there is a lot of variation in architecture and phenomenology of conscious processing and so it is unclear how easily results in current, mostly human-centric, consciousness science would transfer to other species or AIs. On the other hand this suggests that understanding consciousness in specific species might be more neglected (but maybe having reliable behavioral markers of C might already go a long way to understand moral patienthood). In any case I have a difficult time making the case for why understanding consciousness is a particularly important problem relative to other standard EA causes.
Some potential interest to further specify that could potentially make the case for studying consciousness more:
C might be necessary for general intelligence then better understanding C might help us to better understand general AI and suggest interesting new directions for AI safety.
Building conscious AI (in the form of brain emulations or other architectures) could possibly help us create a large amount of valuable artificial beings. Wildely speculative indulgence: being able to simulate humans and their descendents could be a great way to make the human species more robust to most existing existential risks (if it is easy to create artificial humans that can live in simulations then humanity could becomes much more resilient)
Overall I am quite skeptical that on the margin consciousness science is the best field for an undergrad in informatics compare to AI safety or other priority cause areas.
That would pose a huge risk of creating astronomical suffering too. For example, if someone decides to do a conscious simulation of natural history on earth, that would be a nightmare for those who work on reducing s-risks.
Thanks, your perspective on this is really helpful! Especially the points you made about consciousness research not being very neglected. On the other hand, AI research can also not really be described as neglected anymore. Maybe the intersection of both is the way to go—as you said, C might be crucial to AGI.
This is why I’m pursuing Cognitive Science.