Quantum Mechanical consequences for AI

[Sithdarth]

I will preface this by saying that this is not about how quantum mechanics might someday allow us to make an AI. This is about the consequences that might arise from an AI making observations.

To start with we must rehash Schroedinger's Cat. We probably all know about the cat in the box with the poison in a supposition of released and not released making the cat alive and dead. Now Schroedinger himself sidestepped the paradox by saying the cat as a conscious being was perfectly capable of collapsing the wave function for the entire universe. The cat in effect determined its own reality and was never in a supposition. That is to say there is something about a "conscious" mind that directly impacts reality in a way that anyone else can clearly see.

The Quantum Eraser Experiment and The Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser Experiment show us that even an observation by a non-conscious observation will also collapse the wave function but if that information is removed the wave function goes back to normal. In fact it can even retroactively return to normal. That is the effect propagates backward in time.

The combination of these two things is the real problem. If a conscious observer looks at the path information before it gets erased then that information now exists in their head. That information can then not be erased unless it is also erased from the observer's memories and the wave function remains collapsed.

Now we have two real possibilities from here. The first is that it is just hard to erase the information from a mind but once done the wave function would return to normal. One potential way this could work has to do with entropy changes included in the production and storage of information. This of course means there is nothing special about conscious observation beyond the way in which the information is stored. There is a certain attractiveness to this in that it removes all life from any place of importance. It does still allow for a definition of consciousness as any system in which there is a certain level of difficulty in erasing information to the point of reverting a wave function. Anything with a difficulty level above a certain threshold is conscious and anything below is not. Finding that threshold might be hard and might exclude or include somethings that are problematic. Like plants might be able to collapse a wave function to the point were reversing it is hard enough to be called conscious. If it is related to entropy changes we could actually have a mathematical formula to predict the exact point where the entropic changes do to information flow in a system produce consciousness.

The second is that there is something inherently different about "consciousness". Which I personally dislike in that it sounds a little hooky and it seems to me to violate Occam's Razor. It's something that cannot be measured and makes no predictions. Like the first one it allows for a both a definition of consciousness and a surefire test to determine consciousness. Of course you could still end up with things that you are uncomfortable with being defined as conscious. Also, if there is something special about consciousness the question becomes is it intrinsic to biology or could computers actually become conscious. If they can't then its intrinsic to biology which makes it an even stranger metaphysical concept. If they can it poses the opposite question. That is if consciousness is special but both machines and living things of sufficient complexity can have it then what the heck is it and how was it imbued in the machine if we accept that consciousness would arise gradually with increased complexity. (That is as it did with life.)

In either case instead of subjecting an AI to a Turing test you could instead incorporate it into a delayed choice quantum eraser experiment and then delete all its memory before anyone looks at it or the experimental data. If the interference reappears your AI is not conscious if it doesn't then it is conscious. You have used quantum mechanics to prove the existence of another mind and effectively countered solipsism. Of course if machines can't become conscious there are interesting implications. Like say machines can't be conscious but you can still transfer an entire mind into one. Then what becomes of the mind even if it can still pass a Turing test. Worse yet if the universe evolves to the point where only this artificial life remains what happens to causality when any collapsed wave function can revert if everyone that saw it or the consequences of it forgets about it? Alternatively, if machines can't be conscious you might not be able to transfer a mind into them. It also raises questions about maybe the universe evolved in specifically the right ways to create conscious observers or maybe the first life to evolve retroactively fixed the history of the universe the instant it attained consciousness.

In short something really weird seems to be going on here and I'm sure there is a great Scifi story hidden in their somewhere.