Giulio Tononi
In plain wordsAn Italian-American neuroscientist who created integrated information theory, which measures consciousness by how unified a system's internal causes are, and which implies ordinary computers are not conscious.
Italian-born American neuroscientist and psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, originator of integrated information theoryintegrated information theory, n.: A scientific theory that measures consciousness by how much a system works as a single, unified whole rather than as separate parts. It implies that ordinary computers, whatever software they run, have little or no consciousness. (IIT). After working with Gerald Edelman on the neural basis of consciousness, he proposed in 2004 that consciousness is integrated information: a system is conscious to the degree that its causal structure forms a unified whole that specifies more than its parts do, quantified by a measure called Φ (phi). Later versions, developed with Christof Koch, Larissa Albantakis and others (IIT 3.0, 2014; IIT 4.0, 2023), derive requirements on physical mechanisms from axioms about experience. For AI the theory has a distinctive consequence: what matters is the causal architecture of the hardware, not the computation performed, so conventional digital computers would have almost no consciousness however intelligently they behave. IIT is a leading but contested theory; in 2023 more than a hundred researchers signed a letter calling it pseudoscience, prompting sharp replies.
Related
- integrated information theoryintegrated information theory, n.: A scientific theory that measures consciousness by how much a system works as a single, unified whole rather than as separate parts. It implies that ordinary computers, whatever software they run, have little or no consciousness.
- machine consciousnessmachine consciousness, n.: Whether a machine such as an AI system could have genuine experiences of its own — and the research field that tries to find out, or to build such a machine.
- consciousnessconsciousness, n.: Having experiences: there being something it feels like to be you, as when you see red or feel pain. Whether any AI is or could become conscious is an open and fiercely debated question.
- neural correlates of consciousnessneural correlates of consciousness, n.: The particular brain activity that reliably goes with a conscious experience — the minimum the brain must be doing for you to see, hear or feel something.
- global workspace theoryglobal workspace theory, n.: A leading scientific theory holding that we become conscious of something when the brain broadcasts it widely — as if putting it on a stage where every part of the mind can use it.
- phenomenal consciousnessphenomenal consciousness, n.: The felt, experiential side of the mind — what it is like to taste coffee or to feel sad — as opposed to simply processing or reporting information.
Sources
- Tononi, G. (2004). An information integration theory of consciousness. BMC Neuroscience 5: 42.
- Albantakis, L. et al. (2023). Integrated information theory (IIT) 4.0: Formulating the properties of phenomenal existence in physical terms. PLoS Computational Biology 19(10): e1011465.