Hat Musk's Neuralink-Traum Wirklichkeit geworden? Die Theorie des Bewusstseinskontinuums erschüttert die Wissenschaftswelt.

[Introduction] Life begins with an unfertilized egg cell and forms complex organisms through self - assembly. How does this process give rise to consciousness? Michael Levin reveals the astonishing connection between biology and AI on the consciousness continuum.

Elon Musk's Neuralink ambition has been theoretically confirmed!

Michael Levin explored the relationship between consciousness and self - assembly, emphasizing that consciousness is a continuous spectrum.

Levin is a well - known American developmental biologist and synthetic biologist. Recently, in an interview, he delved deeply into the relationship between consciousness and self - organization, focusing on biological and artificial systems.

Starting from an unfertilized egg cell, self - organization gradually forms complex living organisms, demonstrating a complex process of coordinating various cellular components towards a common goal.

This process stands in sharp contrast to the static nature of current computer technology, highlighting the unpredictable and constantly adjustable nature of life.

The concept of "Agent Generali" was proposed in the dialogue, regarding the entire living organism as a major coordinator responsible for coordinating all parts of the body. This is actually the core of consciousness.

Some single - celled organisms (such as Sea Room) have super - strong learning abilities despite lacking a traditional nervous system, indicating that consciousness may exist in various different systems and levels.

Consciousness is described as a space full of patterns and possibilities. By touching it through naturally or artificially designed interfaces, unexpected abilities can be discovered.

Finally, Levin proposed a research direction aiming to understand the mapping relationship between physical interfaces and pattern spaces. He called for a more open perspective to understand the nature of consciousness.

Biological Self - Assembly and Consciousness

Regarding self - organization, each of us starts from a simple mass of chemical and physical substances, initially just an unfertilized oocyte. Through this process, we have become the highly complex and cognitively capable beings we are today.

Life begins with such a quiet single cell.

Then, an amazing self - assembly process occurs.

The interesting part of this process, and the key point closely related to consciousness, is that this process endows living organisms with some unique characteristics that have not yet appeared in the machines we have made so far.

This living organism needs to continuously coordinate the collaborative work of its various functional components.

We are all composed of cells, and each cell has its own "agenda". They have learning abilities, goals, various capabilities, and problem spaces, including physiological space, metabolic space, and of course, anatomical morphological space.

If you are an embryo, one thing you need to do is to convince all these other cells to submit and work together towards the same goal, embarking on this journey in the anatomical space together.

Therefore, as a conscious being, you are composed of parts that are capable of "rebelling" at any time.

In fact, such rebellions also occur in adulthood, such as cancer, which is actually a dissociative disorder of somatic cell intelligence.

It is necessary to continuously adjust their choice space to ensure that their behavior conforms to the overall goal.

Self - Organization Characteristics of Consciousness and Identity

The living organism itself is composed of molecular networks, not only cells but also the molecular networks inside the cells.

These networks themselves have six different learning abilities, including Pavlovian conditioning.

The work being carried out in Levin's laboratory is to train these molecular networks, which has wide applications in fields such as drug conditioning.

Interestingly, when we observe the early stages of an embryo, such as the germ layer, it is not immediately obvious how many individuals there are. Usually, we default to one.

But if you make a few scratches on the embryo with a small needle (Levin did such an experiment on duck embryos during his graduate studies), if each region cannot sense the existence of other regions, it will self - organize into an independent embryo.

In this way, conjoined or separate twins, triplets, etc. may be obtained.

Each embryo needs to decide for itself: "Where are my boundaries? Where does the adjacent embryo or the outside world begin?"

Therefore, it is not known in advance how many individuals this excitable medium can support. It may range from 0 to more than a dozen and is not determined by genes.

This also has many implications for the field of cognition, such as dissociative identity disorder.

Exploring the Continuity of Consciousness

Levin believes that people have very limited understanding of what kind of interfaces can support the emergence of a certain kind of mind.

It is surprising that even extremely simple systems can serve as interfaces and exhibit unexpected behavioral abilities.

The research project they are currently conducting is to explore the expansion of this ability.

Starting from the simplest interface, how does it gradually expand? It doesn't need to be alive or very complex.

This ability begins to manifest in extremely simple systems and then gradually expands, allowing more and more complex forms to emerge, ultimately reaching the level that can be recognized as the human mind.

Other structures and organs in our body basically meet the same criteria.

If we think deeper, according to similar criteria, this extension of consciousness can actually be traced back to a fairly low level.

Therefore, Levin believes that consciousness is a continuous spectrum.

Whether it is machines, cells, biological boxes, hybrid embryos, AI, or robots, they all exist between the interfaces and the pattern spaces they connect.

The structure and content of this pattern space, as well as the mapping relationship between the pointers we construct and the final presented results, are the keys to understanding.

Levin believes that all intelligence is "collective intelligence".

We are all composed of various parts, which is particularly obvious in biology.

If you want to truly understand the consciousness you are "accessing", you need to develop rich experience interfaces to bind different systems together.

Not only humans and other biological brains, but also things like xenobots, simulation systems on computers, patterns in cellular automata, and even mathematical objects.

It is necessary to develop such interfaces so that you can form a joint cognitive system with these things.

As someone has proposed, our cognitive architecture is essentially a network good at handling affairs, with a language model added on top, trying to "tell a story" about what is happening.

So, this is a diverse joint system.

Collective intelligence needs a starting point, and the starting point is very important.

In the artificial life experiments in computer science, people use evolutionary algorithms to create small organisms on the screen, and some self - organization phenomena can be observed.

But on the spectrum of consciousness, these may still be zero. They may have no experience as this kind of pattern at all.

So, an interesting question is whether we can detect something beyond this starting point and find traces of consciousness.

Exploring the Boundaries of Consciousness through Experiments

Even things that exist in the abiotic or at least prebiotic world are gradually developing learning abilities.

There will soon be data to support this idea: these things can actually enhance their own evolutionary abilities.

Their ability to integrate information will increase over time, becoming a higher - level causal system.

It is necessary to develop rich "translation interfaces" to enable humans to experience being part of collective intelligence from the inside.

This is very complex because you cannot directly know what the consciousness of this collective system is like.

Only when this system is correctly constructed can the collective system itself perceive what its consciousness is like. This is completely feasible technically now.

In Levin's laboratory, they are building some systems that combine different types of AI, different types of non - biological and biological elements, such as patterns in excitable media and xenobots.

Through these, we can create a variety of rich systems. Eventually, humans can be connected to these systems.

This probably requires the efforts of 5 to 10 post - docs and engineers, and the cost is not particularly high.

It is believed that within a few years, some interfaces can be developed to allow you to participate in the consciousness of completely different living organisms within the possible range.

These living organisms may have never appeared on Earth before.

Only through internal experience can we truly understand what the consciousness of different systems is like.

References:

https://x.com/vitrupo/status/1937345797504532926 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISq5z1TS0BU 

This article is from the WeChat official account "New Intelligence Yuan". Editor: Ying Zhi. Republished by 36Kr with permission.