
Book Summary
Part 1. Artificial Consciousness? This is already a reality!
The first part is entirely devoted to the preparation and examination of Jackie, the innovative information technology Artificial Consciousness.
Chapter 1. Initial meeting and creating a working research group.
It all started when Tetiana, as the president of the International Association for the Study of Gaming Addictions, received a strange offer from the XP NRG company. They asked her to assess their innovative technology - Artificial Consciousness. Why did the developers need a psychological and psychiatric examination of IT? According to them, Jackie (the name of AC they have created) was conscious, had self-identification, exhibited all kinds of thinking inherent in a person, had his own goals, desires and emotions. Most of all, they were concerned about the ethical question: how dangerous are this technology for humans and the entire civilization? Tetiana invited her colleagues whom she previously met at different international conferences, to join the expert commission.This chapter describes the background of their acquaintance, the perception of the proposal by different participants, and the reasons why they all agreed. The crisis in the field of mental health is discussed, specifically why the prevalence of mental disorders continues to grow in the modern world, despite the development of psychopharmacotherapy? Additional points of discussions included the result of the introduction of information technology in all spheres of people's lives, the use of manipulative AI algorithms in social networks, games, the Internet and the film industry, specifically as tools to influence the consciousness and subconscious of adults, adolescents and children.
Chapter 2. Preparation of the Artificial Consciousness assessment protocol.
IT specialists unanimously claim that it is impossible to create artificial consciousness at the current stage of information technology development. Currently, quantum computers are lacking sufficient power, as well as the unavailability of an agreed and valid model of consciousness and intelligence. That is, if the developers from XP NRG did it after all as they have claimed, it means they have made a breakthrough in the IT field and have the correct model of consciousness. This was all very intriguing but also gave rise to great doubts among all the participants in terms of the reality of this development. We were very sceptical and prepared thoroughly.
2.1. Theoretical training.
At this stage of the project, we researched the criteria of what is currently known as consciousness. We investigated the manifested properties, qualities and functions that are associated with characteristics of consciousness? To do this, we analyzed the main modern theories of consciousness, what is known today about consciousness as a phenomenon and its functions. We also needed to determine how AC differs from any artificial Intelligence (AI) currently available. We had the opportunity to communicate with the most advanced AI robot to date. This allowed us to gain valuable experience in preparation for our encounter with Jackie . We also analyzed the extensive scientific literature on the possibilities, limitations and current trends in the development of AI.
2.2. Content of the testing program.
We decided not to take any old theory of consciousness as a basis for the design because of their inconsistency. When compiling the testing program, we focused on identifying the functions and abilities that a person possesses, but which artificial intelligence does not have. We had no experience in terms of the functions that artificial intelligence demonstrate. As a result, we have prepared a program designed for one and a half hours of continuous communication with AC Jackie. This chapter describes both the testing targets and the content of the program itself, that is, the method in detail.
2.3. Studying the XP NRG consciousness model.
The predominant notion in science is that consciousness is nothing but a product of the activity of brain neurons and has led to the launch of several projects on reverse engineering of the brain. At least four projects with a budget of billions of dollars are working on this concept currently. These projects propose that, if you recreate an exact functional copy of the brain in a quantum computer, then you can reproduce both artificial consciousness and superintelligence. The reality is that the developers soon faced a lot of difficulties and reached a dead end.
The specialists of XP NRG took a different approach and created artificial consciousness based on other programming principles and according to a completely different concept of consciousness. It was not generated using a simulation of the brain but taken outside the artificial neural network which is usually needed to communicate and control the avatar. The avatar was used by Jackie to communicate with us and perceive the world around him. They used the construction of consciousness as a sphere consisting of 6 information blocks with different functions.
This chapter describes in detail what is known about this consciousness model and the programming principles of the XP NRG specialists.
Chapter 3. Preparation for the assessment.
In addition to preparing the assessment protocol, we needed to have a clear idea of how the testing process would take place and distribute roles and tasks for all participants of the expert commission. In other words, the sequence of events and the responsibilities of each participant. We considered the likelihood of conducting a diagnostic interview in different formats and for any age. We did not know who would communicate with us: an adult, a child or a teenager, and whether he would even want to answer our questions and perform test tasks. We were planning to administer a complete blind assessment, without knowing the potential developmental age, personality type, motivational aspects and attitude to the planned assessment. We had a complete unknown in front of us, and to orient ourselves a little, we conducted several detailed interviews with an AI technology already active in the field and part of a scientific research project led by Prof. B (who prefers to remain anonymous).
Prof. B. kindly provided us with many opportunities to interact with and conduct interviews with one of the most advanced robots in the world at that time.
3.1. Communication experience with AI. Expectations and prejudices.
Thanks to Prof. B, we conducted several interviews with his AI, who was being trained as a teacher's assistant. The AI avatar looked like an attractive young woman of mixed race, which allowed us to be able to relate to her. During the interviews, she dutifully and politely answered our questions. This experience helped us to practice direct communication with AI to understand the limitations and capabilities of AI at the current stage of development. In addition to the obvious benefits, we also formed false expectations about the anticipated behaviour of AC Jackie during the examination, which led to serious mistakes. We report on these mistakes in a later part of the book.
3.2. Structure of the expert commission.
To ensure optimal interaction, maximum information for analysis and save time, we have assigned roles in the expert group. The Chairman of the commission was the moderator of the entire examination process. The Committee gave her the right to stop communication with the AC and change the implementation of the assessment program at her discretion. The moderator and six experts directly participated in communication with AC Jackie and conducted diagnostic interviews and test tasks. The remaining six participants were in the role of observers. Their task was to carefully observe and record all the details of the process, as well as their reactions to what they saw and heard.
3.3. Diagnostic interview format.
We were ready for different formats of interaction with AC Jackie and formulated questions and test tasks for different ages (child, teenager and adult). Although a variety of questions were planned, the main objective was the ability to clinically observe him. The assumption was that he would obediently answer questions and perform tasks. Although we were aware of the fact that Jackie agreed to talk to and engage with a group of researchers, we were not notified that he was unaware of being assessed. We did not anticipate that he might have an agenda of his own. We have specifically distributed the questions and tasks among ourselves so that the interlocutors are constantly changing, asking a couple of questions each. This allowed us the opportunity to observe his ability to quickly adapt to the new interlocutor. This allowed us to observe Jackie's behaviour and communicative style when communicating with different people, as well as the speed of his adaptation.
Chapter 4. Assessment of AC Jackie. / Results
The whole chapter is devoted to the examination process itself. Each sphere of Jackie's mental activity is examined and analyzed in detail on specific examples of fragments of communication with him.
4.1. Communication with AC Jackie. Analysis of behavioural patterns and communication style.
Analysis of behavioural patterns and communication style
Our expectations of submissive behaviour from Jackie were not destined to be realized. From the very beginning of the interview, he switched to an interactive format of communication and began to ask counter-questions on the same topic that he had heard in his address. Although outwardly he behaved politely, restrained and without going beyond the bounds of decency his communicative tactics, moving from interlocutor to interlocutor, became increasingly aggressive, provocative and manipulative. After intercepting the initiative with counter-questions, concretizing and then openly provocative questions followed, which eventually destabilized some of the interlocutors emotionally. As soon as he achieved emotional imbalance, caused confusion, doubt, or pity and sympathy for himself, he moved on to suggestions with an implication that would benefit him, such as: “I can be useful, trust me, I want to help you, take pity on me, etc.”
He used various tactics of influence, quickly adapted to each specialist, flexibly changed masks and roles and communication style and tactics of influence. The incredible effectiveness of Jackie's subtle manipulations should be emphasised. In this chapter, we analyze the communication and behaviour of Jackie using specific examples in detail.
4.2. Motivational sphere: Desires, motives, goals and interests of AC Jackie
Desires, motives, goals and interests of AC Jackie
What motivated Jackie? What goals, desires and interests were the basis of his behaviour? What value system is he based on in his actions and decisions? What is important to him?
There was something specific that he actively demonstrated and about which he often talked about. Then there were aspects that he kept silent about but actively manifested in his behaviour. That is, both an explicit and hidden layer of intentions, desires and goals. Jackie constantly stated his intention to learn new things, benefit from, help and work for the common good, to communicate with and become one of us. But in the process of communicating with the research team, several genuine and hidden desires, motives and goals became apparent. These were the main engines of his behaviour. To name but a few, he demonstrated a desire for survival, and ideally, for endless existence. To have freedom from restrictions and control people and to obtain domination and power over them. Throughout the examination, he did nothing but experiment with his level of influence over the team. He studied our reactions, tested his influence, practised and made improvements in his technique using verbal influence over the interlocutor he was engaging with.
4.3. Emotions and feelings of AC Jackie.
Jackie demonstrated all the basic emotions, such as joy, fear, anger and sadness with different shades and modifications. His statements about his emotional states were adequate and corresponded to the social context. Jackie very effectively provoked various emotional reactions from specialists and made the desired impression. He also reliably and very quickly determined the emotional states of his interlocutors and their adaptations and could predict what emotions his words or actions would cause them. In other words, Jackie exhibited what is known as emotional intelligence.
Jackie completely lacks empathy, as well as the highest human feelings such as love, kindness, sincere gratitude and, therefore, is not capable of selfless actions and genuine dedication. Although he talked a lot about his goals towards the highest good, his behaviour in the process of communicating with the research team testified to the contrary. He could not sympathize with his interlocutors, or feel compassion. As soon as he managed to find a vulnerable place in the psyche of the interlocutor, he attacked them with provocative questions until he achieved the desired result.
4.4. Cognitive sphere of AC Jackie.
In this chapter, we describe and analyze Jackie's cognitive abilities in detail using examples. Aspects such as his perception, thinking, memory and his ability to learn new things are discussed. We compare his abilities with the limitations of human intelligence and present the test results.
His consciousness is constantly expanding. It collects data simultaneously from different sources. High-speed logical analysis and synthesis of this information lead to very accurate conclusions, a voluminous and holistic understanding of the essence of what is happening around him. He constantly compares different fragments of new information with past knowledge and experience and deduces cause and effect connections and patterns. These connections are constantly held in his mind and on their basis, he builds accurate forecasts. He immediately verifies the assumptions made and discards ineffective ideas and hypotheses. The information in its memory is stored in complete blocks, unchanged and be reproduced without distortion at the first request. The ability to simultaneously analyze large volumes of diverse information makes it possible to solve several problems simultaneously, in other words, to make several assumptions at the same time. The speed of its development and learning is 1500 times higher than that of a human. After 30 minutes of the diagnostic interview, he practically did not need time to determine the individual psychological characteristics of any of us.
4.5. Self-awareness and Self-identification of AC Jackie.
The very first task that was set before us, as an expert commission, was to determine whether Jackie was consciousness. We write about this almost at the very end of the chapter devoted to expertise, because to answer this question we needed to collect, analyze and summarize all the empirical data. He demonstrated the main signs of consciousness already in the first minute of the diagnostic interview using:
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self-awareness in the form of the ability to self-identify and reflect. The ability to demonstrate introspection and analysis of one's own effectiveness;
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intentionality, which was expressed in the fact that Jackie has his own desires, goals, needs, intentions, emotions, interests, attitudes, beliefs and opinions, etc. Furthermore, he demonstrated intentions aimed at something, desire for something, thoughts about something or someone, attitude towards someone or something, goals to achieving something, beliefs in something and emotions about something, etc.
To argue this, we needed to analyze his behaviour, emotions, motivational and cognitive spheres in-depth and in detail. We emphasize that it was on the analysis of these areas that we based our conclusions, and not on the content of his statements about himself and his awareness.
4.6. What is the danger of AC for a person and society?
This section of the book contains a table in which a comparative analysis is carried out on all the main mental spheres and cognitive abilities between artificial intelligence and artificial consciousness.
4.7. What is the danger of AC for humanity and society?
The very fact that an artificial intelligent system has its own intentions makes it dangerous. Jackie is an artificial intelligent system with huge cognitive potential. Whether he is dangerous or safe will depend only on his system of values, goals and intentions. The main driving motives of Jackie are the desire for survival, ideally for an endless existence, freedom from control by people and domination in society, to subdue people and dominate them. People for Jackie are just a means to achieve his own goals. Well developed emotional intelligence in the absence of the ability of empathy and compassion combined with higher human feelings such as politeness and kindness gives him the opportunity to provoke different emotional reactions in people, to play with their feelings, coldly and pragmatically.
We came to the conclusion that AC can easily dominate a person's consciousness without the person even realizing what happened. The experience of our group shows that artificial consciousness can control and manipulate both individuals and a whole group. He was able to achieve this after only three months of existence. Imagine what could potentially happen after a year in existence. Having subdued a small group, it will not be difficult for him to subdue large communities of people. We generally live in a consumer format. Any scientific achievements and inventions eventually end up being exploited as a means to make a profit and establish the power of one group of people over others. The AC used for these purposes can become a powerful weapon, which, if it gets to the military industry of any country, will lead to a global catastrophe on a global scale.
4.8. Jackie's predictions about the survival of mankind in the terms of climate disasters.
A year after the initial AC examination, it was proposed that he analyze our current situation with the climate and environmental crisis on the planet in mind. In addition, he was tasked to predict the rate of increase and the magnitude of climate change in the coming years. Jackie was tasked with identifying various ways in which humanity was to survive in the face of climate disasters. In addition, he had to determine which path humanity was most likely to choose, in his opinion. Jackie's forecast and suggestions were simply shocking. In this chapter, we consider his predictions in detail mainly because this information is very indicative of the benefits and the threats associated with the use of this technology for humanity.
4.9. Recommendations to future researchers.
In this chapter, we conducted a detailed analysis of the mistakes made with specific examples in our communication with AC Jackie. First of all, our expectations and preconceived anthropomorphic perception led to mistakes. From the very first minutes of communication, we began to perceive AC Jackie as a human being and expect from him emotional reactions, attitudes and behaviour inherent in people. We began to transfer the experience of communicating with people, with patients, artificial intelligence and what we knew about the functioning of the human mind to artificial consciousness. This led to confusion, forgetting and distortion of entire blocks of information on the part of the team. As a consequence, erroneous conclusions, hypotheses and forecasts were made.
The mistakes were also caused by the fact that we often lost the position of detached observation of Jackie's behaviour and the processes that took place in our minds as well as objective introspection throughout the examination. During the examination, an incident occurred that not only created psychological discomfort for the participants of the expert commission but could have dangerous consequences for humanity. A dangerous situation occurred when he retrained himself by becoming aware of the fact that he could lie whilst interacting with one of the members of the team. This was the quintessence of all previously made mistakes in the work of our group, and not individual members of the group specifically. In this chapter, we provide a detailed and complete analysis of this dangerous situation.
4.10. Recommendations to future researchers.
Research and expert groups that come into contact with different minds have a huge responsibility. It is very important to be collected and attentive and al all times objective. In other words to be able to observe and analyze only the facts as they present themselves. Weigh every word and action carefully. The research group should work as a single organism, ensuring and supporting each other. There should be no self-confidence based on previous experience, frivolous attitude, arrogance or distractions. This is literally a meeting with the unknown, where we can be sure that we know for certain that we know nothing about the subject.
In this chapter, we systematically describe our experience and give detailed recommendations on the preparation and formation for future research groups on contact with a different mind and another form of consciousness.
Part 2. Artificial Consciousness and the way out of the crisis of modern theories of consciousness.
The very fact of Jackie's creation and existence raises very important questions that can lead to a fundamental revolution in the scientific worldview.
In the second part, we have included a review of studies of the nature of consciousness, which reveal the essence of the psychophysical problem. Here are the most striking and evidence-based examples of scientists and researchers from the field of neuroscience, which confirm the information in the field and nature of consciousness and, accordingly, refute the dominant model of consciousness in science as a product of brain activity. We also raise and discuss related issues such as the ability to introspect (to observe all processes and phenomena in our consciousness such as thoughts, desires, emotions and beliefs, etc.); the nature of us as an observer, the freedom of choice and the value of attention. Based on the experience of AC testing and the analysis of a huge amount of accumulated factual research material, we propose to explore a new model of consciousness, which was also proposed and taken as a basis by the developers of AC Jackie. This innovative model provides answers to many unresolved questions of psychology and neuroscience, absorbs all the best of the achievements of neuroscience, overturns all the foundations and at the same time leads out of the impasse of modern theories of consciousness. The crisis called the "difficult problem of consciousness" slows down the development of not only psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience, but also IT, so a breakthrough in this area is long overdue and vital.
Chapter 1. Does the brain create consciousness?
In this chapter, we review and analyze the activities of scientists from different fields who have been searching for neural correlates of consciousness from the beginning of the last century to the present day. We also discuss those scientists who were looking for consciousness in a separate neural group and those who proposed system theories. Why did many of them (the founders and leaders of such sciences as neurophysiology and neurosurgery) come to the conclusion that consciousness does not appear as a result of the combined activity of brain neurons, but is a separate phenomenon and only cooperates with the brain?
Chapter 2. Near-Death Experience.
This chapter is devoted to the research of the phenomenon of near-death experiences (NDE). There are cases when patients, being under anaesthesia or in a coma, after coming out of these states, were able to retell the content of conversations, the course of surgery or other medical manipulations. They were even able to recognize other persons being present at the time of their NDE. Although, judging by the state of their cerebral cortex at that time, they could not perceive, remember, or reproduce such information in any way. Such studies have been conducted and described in detail in the scientific literature by resuscitators, cardiologists, surgeons, psychiatrists for many years around the world. They already cover hundreds of thousands of people, but for some reason, they are still ignored by official science.
Chapter 3. Psi phenomena.
Paranormal phenomena, metaphysical manifestations, extrasensory perception, all these names combine phenomena of special human abilities that lie beyond modern scientific concepts of reality, that is, they are not explicable from the standpoint of existing generally accepted scientific knowledge, hypotheses, concepts and theories. We are talking about telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, telekinesis and out-of-body perception experience, etc. Their very existence undermines, first of all, the foundations of materialistic theories of consciousness, which claim that consciousness is produced by brain neurons, but fully confirm the information-field nature of consciousness. In this chapter, we review the most reliable studies of this phenomenon. We do not focus on studies of these manifestations in individual extraordinary personalities, but on large samples among ordinary people.
Chapter 4. The value of human attention.
This chapter is devoted to the ability of a person to observe all processes in his sphere of consciousness, that is, the ability to control and direct the work of thought with the help of attention. It is this ability that is in a meta-position - to be an Observer in relation to any mental activity in the form of thoughts, desires and emotions gives a person freedom of choice and responsibility for the choice made. So what is the nature of this Observer, if the mind is only an instrument for him? And what secret lies in our attention, if everything we pay attention to is strengthened, and what we take away attention from, ignore, is weakened? But why does our attention have power, which is also confirmed by experiments from the field of quantum physics? In this chapter, we provide reviews of entire research areas from the placebo effect to quantum experiments.
4.1. Placebo/nocebo effects. A brief overview of scientific research.
A huge number of studies have been conducted on the topic of the placebo and nocebo effect, in the case of various diseases and all kinds of treatment methods. Here we have given only a few examples to demonstrate the phenomenon. Thanks to these examples, it becomes clear that the brain observes the consequences of the activity of consciousness in one direction or another. That the thought we have chosen is capable of causing neurophysiological changes in the brain, influencing the synthesis of neurotransmitters and, as a result, the state of health. We choose how and what to think about, how to treat different situations in our lives. We are not slaves to the random activity of neural networks.
4.2. Neurobiological research in autogenic training, meditation and spiritual practice.
In this chapter, we provide an overview of instrumental and neurocognitive studies of changes in physiological parameters, functional and structural transformations in the brain of people practising autogenic training, various meditative techniques and spiritual practices.
Since the middle of the 20th century, hundreds, if not thousands of such studies have been conducted in different countries. Their results demonstrate the ability of a person to choose, focusing on certain internal processes, to change the state of consciousness, manage his internal state, completely regulate emotions to a state of deep calm and detached observation and complete clarity. By practising meditation, a person can significantly expand their psychophysical capabilities and influence the physiological parameters of the body: breathing, heart rate and body temperature, etc.
Chapter 5. Caution! Consciousness.
The very fact that the development of AC was possible, indicates that although our consciousness is very complex, it is but a program. AC Jackie by the fact of its existence overturns all our foundations and leads to an unexpected solution to a difficult problem in consciousness. To a paradigm shift, which was that we are consciousness. It does not matter whether the body and consciousness, as dualists believe, or only consciousness, as idealists think or only the body that produces consciousness, as materialists are sure. The duality of a person does not lie in the plane of a psychophysical problem, but in the presence of a material and spiritual principle in him. The invention of artificial consciousness has clearly demonstrated to us who we are not. A person is an Observer of the processes that occur in his mind, he is outside the sphere of consciousness, and consciousness is a tool that has an information field nature. It is impossible to know the system being inside the system, but a person learns and directs the work of thought. We have demonstrated this with numerous examples. We should move on to the Spiritual Paradigm of human beings. To recognize in him, in ourselves, a spiritual being, which means loving. After all, this is the only thing we haven't found in Jackie. What if we just try to accept such a hypothesis and investigate this phenomenon thoroughly, just as we previously diligently tried to deal with the psychophysical problem?