[ChaitanyaSai]

Very interesting! "The general hypothesis of the project is: Consciousness, or something resembling consciousness, emerges not from the capability of a single task model like GPT or Stable Diffusion, but from the oscillations between the inputs and outputs of different instances of different models performing different tasks."

Your metaphors of self-oscillation and multiple oscillations are very much in line with the consciousness model that is built on the top of Adaptive Resonance Theory. I believe this is the most computationally robust model for consciousness. You might want to read/skim this https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089360801...

That can be a forbidding read because it packs so much (65 years of work!)

You can also read Journey of the Mind (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58085266-journey-of-the-... I'm the co-author) which, among other things, covers Grossberg's work and his model of consciousness built on the idea of resonance. Here resonance goes beyond the metaphorical idea and has a specific meaning.

edit: https://saigaddam.medium.com/understanding-consciousness-is-... (here's a super brief description of Adaptive Resonance Theory )

[com2kid]

> "The general hypothesis of the project is: Consciousness, or something resembling consciousness, emerges not from the capability of a single task model like GPT or Stable Diffusion, but from the oscillations between the inputs and outputs of different instances of different models performing different tasks."

This is the underlying theory of classical liberal education, stemming back thousands of years.

We learn different ways of thinking, different lens through which we view the world, and we can apply those lens as needed to solve different problems.

Indeed when conversing with someone who has over-indexed on just one type of learning, we take notice, we say that person's worldview is limited. (For example, an engineer trying to sell a new product, but who doesn't understand that people aren't willing to toss away all their old skills for what is an incremental improvement in workflow, they should take a few courses in psychology! :) )

Take any famous work of architecture. An engineer can appreciate it for the eloquence of its construction, an artist can appreciate its beauty, the shapes, the shading, colors, textures. A historian can appreciate how it incorporates elements of the region's history and cultures.

Someone trained in all three (as anyone who graduated from a good university should have been, to at least some extent) will be to switch between modalities of thought at will, and also integrate those modalities together, and thus hopefully, derive more pleasure from their experiences of the world.

Of course AIs will need to have multiple models!

[q1w2]

This becomes a semantic debate if we do not define the boundaries between models. If models are "integrated" to an extreme, then they are really just the same model. ...the tradeoff of having one model vs two models is often driven by resources used to hold and serve content from a model, but there are also mathematical constraints as, for example, the size of the model grows in proportion to the quadratic of input data, which means that separate models which can communicate with one another are more efficient.

...but the trick is defining that inter-model communication and establishing a "controller" model with appropriate training data.

[Mizza]

Thanks for sharing these links. I actually was part of a computational neuroscience program in university, but I never liked the "wet" side of things and all of the "AI" at the time was focused on kNN and SVM, so I'm well behind on what's cutting-edge in CNS. This seems like a good starting point to catch up again.

EDIT: I'm so dumb, the people behind ART were professors in my department! I know it seemed familiar. The whole thing left me jaded.

[ChaitanyaSai]

Stephen Grossberg or Gail Carpenter, or one of their students? You weren't at BU CNS were you?

[Mizza]

I was, doing a joint BA/MA program during undergrad. This was a decade ago though.

[ChaitanyaSai]

so we overlapped :) wrapped up my PhD there a decade and some years ago.

[Mizza]

Small world! I wonder how departments like that have adapted to the post-"Deep" world.

[ChaitanyaSai]

Was always more of a neuro department with application work being secondary...

[dr_dshiv]

That last link is great! Very compelling. I’ve bought the book…

[ChaitanyaSai]

Thanks!