Author: Michael Johnson
Date: June, 2024
Text: PDF, Substack, (https://doi.org/10.53975/i2e7-1t5x)
How can we create a container for knowledge about AI consciousness? This work introduces a new framework based on physicalism, decoherence, and symmetry. Major arguments include (1) atoms are a more sturdy ontology for grounding consciousness than bits, (2) Wolfram’s ‘branchial space’ is where an object’s true shape lives, (3) electromagnetism is a good proxy for branchial shape, (4) brains and computers have significantly different shapes in branchial space, (5) symmetry considerations will strongly inform a future science of consciousness, and (6) computational efficiency considerations may broadly hedge against “s-risk”.