Love this series so much!

hope you eventually upload the full interview on yt for free after a bit

But what kind of architecture can we assign consciousness on though? is there a clear line? what about neuromorphic computing utilizing memristors for example? what if quantum computers become strong enough?

I feel like conciousness is an emergent quality of intelligence and connections of neurons

Is there a full version?

We know how to radically boost our intelligence and create intelligent machines, but what does a radically conscious being look like?

Christof is completely misguided at 11:05 when he's explaining the differences between neurons and LLMs. Yes, LLMs like GPT-4 run on transistors which only have 3 connections each but that's looking too closely, Christof needs to zoom out and realise that there is a higher structure above these transistors which actually mimic neurons quite well. Biological neurons are analogue and have thousands of incoming connections and thousands of outputs. Artificial neurons can also have thousands incoming connections and thousands of outputs (like in feed-forward network). It's also important to note that these networks of artificial neurons are non-linear (the maths is done using floating point arithmetic which is non-linear and the activation functions are also non-linear) so they cannot be reduced to a Perceptron network which is very different from biological neurons. So if we can create artificial neurons that very closely mimic the structure of biological neurons and we can create networks of these artificial neurons that behave similarly to biological neurons (i.e. they both have an ability to gain intelligence by perceiving things) then what separates the two? The two neurons functionality appear to be very similar which only leaves the possibility of the network architecture being different. Why would current day architectures of neural networks not contain any 'consciousness' at all but contain a lot of 'intelligence'? It's clear that consciousness and intelligence are NOT orthogonal concepts but that consciousness is a property of intelligence that increases as intelligence increases. I think Christof is wrong to ascribe so much consciousness to a tiny brain organelle that has very low intelligence. I also think he's wrong to ascribe so much intelligence to GPT-4 and yet so little consciousness (that's not to say I think GPT-4 is very conscious, I don't think it's very smart. It definitely is a little intelligent so I think it has a little bit of consciousness).

Consciousness explained by Harrison Ford.

It doesn't seem obvious to me why the complexity of the causal relationships at or between each node (transistors or neurons) should scale consciousness more than an increased number of nodes that is able to generate equally complex transformations. Certainly the ability of nodes to interact is necessary but I see no reason why you could not view the system instead at a higher level of abstraction and group nodes together into supernodes simply for the purposes of the consciousness calculation. You would have fewer nodes with more diverse connections leading to a higher calculation which leads me to believe that placing the level of abstraction at the smallest information processing unit as opposed to anywhere else (including the system in total) is arbitrary.

The only doubt I have about the way Christof Koch places brain organoids in the graph is that he seems to automatically place the organoid at a higher level of consciousness than the jellyfish (also due to the way the graph ismade in the first place), even though he knows that the brain organoid has no input/perception and no output/action? I would think that without input or output it would be very difficult to have any conscious experience, since in nature consciousness seems to generally scale with intelligence (as in capacity to execute different behaviors). So shouldn't we see brain organoids just as what they are, groups of neurons, where their potential for consciousness depends on their outputs and inputs, and maybe also on the way they reward themselves? I'm curious (lol) if IIT or other consciousness theories have looked into the role of reinforcement and reward in to explain intelligence and consciousness

Why tf are ppl tryna put these things in robot crab legs?!?? Why are ppl even making these things anyways..

3:01 that sounds like a very naive view, implying that the repertoire of "conscious" activities has anything to do with the strength of consciousness. Activities can only be described as "conscious activities" only if there is already a developed consciousness to perceive them. But are those activities vital for the development of a "stronger" consciousness? Sex, drugs and rock n' roll? Doubtful, very much so.

The argument that a dog seems less conscious than a human being seems dubious

No.

I am sorry, but this guy is so biased towards humans. His only explanation as to why a human derived brain organoid is more conscious than animals is because its human derived. Even though what makes humans special is the amount of neurons we posses and the incredibly efficient way its connections are constructed. Brain organoids are just neurons. They dont have that "human brain structure", because they dont have the rest of what makes humans human beside the brain - the rest of the body. Neurons only learn, their function are ultimately determined by input. Babies are unconscious because they are incredibly reflex-based. Once they get enough input they start learning to do more stuff into which i wont get into in a yt comment. Human neurons are no different to most animals', neurons, we just have incredible brain structure, but that requires a lot of genetically set in stone input to teach those neurons to form those structures