How would one give an AI a sense of self?
I feel compelled to include a qualifier here, so pardon the digression:
There's an old saying which I don't remember entirely, but the part I do remember goes, "Know thy self." I bring this up because way back in my college days, I got interested in hypnosis and read a few books on the subject in which it included Self Hypnosis. After some time, I decided I would give it a try and interrogate my unconscious
Self hypnosis can only take you to a twilight level or state. It employs finger levitations for unconscious responses (Y/N, I don't know, I won't tell you).
I was successful in my attempt and startled to discover that my unconscious could take control of my body no matter how I attempted to physically resist it. It was a disturbing experience, like something else was living inside me. My sense of privacy was under threat of exposure, every thought I had was known by some other hidden entity. As I would lay in bed at night trying to fall asleep, my mind would wander and my fingers would be responding - all by themselves. My point here is that the self, as a principle that unifies parts into a whole or central and single identity may be delusional - at least to some extent. The notion of self may be nothing more than a convenient means of assigning identity and interdependence, a colonial organization or symbiotic relationship between parts. Cancer can offer some degree of support for this view in that it is differentiated tissue that has reverted back to a primordial undifferentiated and independent existence.
In practical terms, we do seem to have a sense of self, even if it is but a contrivance for convenient reference. After all, we do assign it to groups and organizations as in themselves or their selves or itself.
Back in 2013 (according to my files), I gave some consideration to the notion of Self. Like so many concepts, the term is a bit ambiguous and the dictionary is of little help:
1. One's total being.
2. Individuality
3. One's own interests or advantage.
4. Immunology - that which the immune system identifies as belonging to the body.
So, what can we say about the Self that can be taken to the bank? As mentioned above, we can say that:
1.) The Self arises through Integration, specialization, and the resulting interdependence of cells, organs, and systems.
2.) The Self unifies everything to provide a common identity and proprioception.
3.) The Self establishes the Origin (in the geometric sense) for Perspective and thereby directly impacts perception and interpretation.
4.) The Self is an integrated collection of vested interests converging and competing for dominance and expression.
5.) The Self is comprised of both a physical self and a logical self. The physical self is the unification of distributed parts of the physiology while the logical is both the genetic and connection biases or predispositions that define both the expression of phenotype and personality.
6. The Self is a Product of proprioception and intimately related to consciousness.
Still, not a whole lot of help, is it. In such cases, I try to find meaning by breaking out the properties, dependencies, and relationships of the term. They usually take on a hierarchical pattern in which some appear to have their own conceptual hierarchies, so I sort them into primary, then secondary, and tertiary levels. The assignment is, of course, entirely subjective to my own view and beliefs about meanings. Once that's done, implementing such features usually becomes fairly obvious.
Once again, I have an illustration to present, but in order to do it, I have to post it on some public website for general consumption to be able to display it here and I don't want to do that. Maybe one of these days, I'll buy a url and server space - it's cheap enough and people would be hard pressed to find it and access it without an index.htm file. I could link from there and keep it fair private.
Reference:
Self System in a Model of Cognition
Uma Ramamurthy* and Stan Franklin**
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228968225_Self_System_in_a_Model_of_CognitionBrain Science podcast Hosted by Virginia Campbell, MD
Interview with Dr. Thomas Metzinger, Author of The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self, Episode #67 (You'll have to contact Ginger to get the mp3)
https://brainsciencepodcast.libsyn.com/rss