L’informatique quantique est la clé de la conscience | Tim Palmer

Avec le développement rapide des chatbots et d’autres systèmes d’IA, la question de savoir s’ils obtiendront un jour une véritable compréhension, deviendront conscients ou même développeront une agence de sentiments est devenue plus pressante. Lorsqu’il s’agit de donner un sens à ces qualités chez les humains, notre capacité de réflexion contrefactuelle est essentielle. L’existence de mondes alternatifs où les choses se passent différemment, cependant, n’est pas seulement un exercice d’imagination, c’est une prédiction clé de la mécanique quantique. Peut-être que nos cerveaux sont capables de réfléchir à la façon dont les choses auraient pu se passer parce qu’il s’agit essentiellement d’ordinateurs quantiques, accédant à des informations provenant de mondes alternatifs, affirme Tim Palmer.

Demandez à un chatbot Combien y a-t-il de nombres premiers ? »[i] et il vous dira sûrement qu’il y en a un nombre infini. Demandez au chatbot Comment savons-nous? et il répondra qu’il y a bien des manières de le montrer, l’original remontant au mathématicien Euclide de la Grèce antique. Demandez au chatbot de décrire la preuve d’Euclide et il répondra correctement [ii]. [ii

Of course, the chatbot has got all this information from the internet. Additional software in the computer can check that each of the steps in Euclids proof is valid and hence can confirm that the proof is a good one. But the computer doesnt understand the proof. Understanding is a kind of Aha! moment, when you see why the proof works, and why it wouldnt work if a minor element in it was different (for example the proof in the footnotes doesnt work if any number but 1 is added when creating the number Q). Chatbots dont have Aha! moments, but we do. Why?

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Lack of understanding is not the only thing we think separates us from computers. Most of us feel rather viscerally that whatever we do, we could have done otherwise. Even for those of us who believe that the laws of physics are ultimately deterministic, and hence that it makes no sense to say that we could actually have done otherwise, its simply impossible to avoid thinking about counterfactual worlds from time to time.

If only I had answered the interview question differently, I would now have my dream job. If only I hadnt rushed my golf swing, I wouldnt have hit the ball out of bounds. We just wouldnt be human if we didnt have such thoughts. But from where do they originate? Perhaps I have a memory of occasions where I didnt rush my swing and didnt hit the ball out of bounds. If that is all there is to our cognitive awareness of counterfactual worlds, then could a computer with sufficient memory of its past actions also have the feeling of free will? It doesnt seem so memory is not all it takes to have a sense of free will. Like the Aha! moment, we seem to be missing something.

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Making sense of these three human qualities – understanding, free will, consciousness – involves appealing to counterfactual worlds.

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And of course, we all feel we are conscious beings. What is consciousness? In my opinion, it describes a visceral belief that, although we interact with the rest of the universe, we nevertheless retain some inherent independence from the world around us. For example, right now I feel quite strongly that I am independent of the books on my bookshelf. Why? Perhaps this perception simply arises from a memory of past occasions where I was in a different location in my office relative to the bookcase. But then Marvin the robot can have the same awareness if it walks around my office and remembers its past. Does that mean it too is conscious? Most of us would feel not. But why? Is there something else that gives us this acute feeling of having some independence from our environment?

Making sense of these three human qualities – understanding, free will, consciousness – involves appealing to counterfactual worlds. In the case of Euclids Theorem, its a hypothetical counterfactual world where Euclid added the number 2 to the product of primes (see footnotes for details) and perhaps tore his hair out in frustration because the proof didnt work. In the case of free will, its a counterfactual world where I didnt rush my swing and the ball didnt go out of bounds. In the case of consciousness, its a counterfactual world where I have a different relationship to my books to the one I have right now. Possible sources of information for creating such counterfactual worlds are libraries, the internet, or simply memories of our past interactions with the real world.

But is this enough? If it is, then perhaps there is no reason why chatbots wont ultimately be able to understand, and computers cant feel as if they are conscious and have free will. However, there is reason to believe that there is another way we get information, one that a conventional computer cannot access. Perhaps this could, after all, explain why we feel intuitively that we are fundamentally different to computers.

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The quantum computers processing power comes from an outsourcing of work in which calculations take place in other universes.

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One of the extraordinary applications of quantum mechanics, our theory of physics on small scales, is quantum computing in which certain computations, such as factoring composite numbers into primes, can be performed exponentially faster on a quantum computer than a classical computer. From where does the extra processing power come? One could say the extra power is simply encoded in the mathematics of quantum mechanics. But that merely begs the question: What is the underlying physics encoded in the mathematics of quantum mechanics that gives quantum computers their power? One answer to this question, the answer favoured by one of the pioneers of quantum computing, David Deutsch, is quantum parallelism. David is a believer in the so-called Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, proposed by Hugh Everett in the 1950s. The key idea in the Many Worlds interpretation is that when we make a measurement of a quantum system, the universe somehow branches into multiple copies, corresponding to each of the possible outcomes of the measurement. According to Deutsch a quantum computer allows useful tasks to be performed in collaboration between these copies of the universe [iv].

La puissance de traitement des ordinateurs quantiques provient d’une externalisation du travail dans laquelle les calculs ont lieu dans d’autres univers. Les particules quantiques intriquées fonctionnent comme des voies de communication entre différents univers, partageant des informations et rassemblant les résultats.

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Ça a l’air dingue ? Eh bien, laissez-moi jouer cartes sur table. Je pense que Deutsch a tout à fait raison de dire que la ressource qui explique la puissance du calcul quantique réside dans ces mondes parallèles. Cependant, personnellement, je n’achète pas l’interprétation d’Everetts Many Worlds au niveau technique. Elle pose un certain nombre de problèmes, notamment comment attacher des probabilités à chacun des mondes qui se ramifient après une mesure. À mon avis, la solution à ce problème n’est pas d’abandonner le parallélisme quantique, mais d’abandonner une hypothèse clé de l’interprétation d’Everett, à savoir que l’équation de Schrdinger en mécanique quantique est littéralement vraie et pas seulement une bonne approximation d’un plus profond. théorie de la physique quantique.

[ivI have my own model of quantum physics, called Invariant Set Theory, described in my book The Primacy of Doubt Somewhat like the Everettian interpretation, the quantum wavefunction represents an ensemble of parallel worlds each world lying close to the others [iv]. Mais lorsque nous effectuons une mesure, les mondes ne se ramifient pas ou ne se divisent pas. Au lieu de cela, ils divergent simplement les uns des autres, comme la divergence des trajectoires d’état-espace dans les systèmes chaotiques (comme décrit dans La primauté du doute). En effet, dans le livre je propose que l’univers soit lui-même un système déterministe évoluant sur un attracteur fractal cosmologique.

Attracteur fractal d’un système chaotique

[v] J’ai décrit ce modèle dans un article précédent de l’IAI, car je pense qu’il fournit une nouvelle façon de comprendre certains des problèmes conceptuels les plus difficiles de la physique quantique (comme l’incertitude et l’action effrayante à distance) [v]. Ici, l’équation de Schrdinger n’est qu’une approximation des lois physiques sous-jacentes plus profondes.

Dans la théorie des ensembles invariants, les mondes contrefactuels proches qui reposent sur l’attracteur fractal cosmologique contribuent au parallélisme quantique nécessaire pour tenir compte de la vitesse des ordinateurs quantiques. En revanche, les mondes contrefactuels hypothétiques qui se trouvent dans des lacunes fractales de l’attracteur ne contribuent pas à ce parallélisme. Cette distinction entre deux types de contrefactuels, l’un cohérent avec les axiomes du modèle et l’autre non, est cruciale pour analyser comment le modèle viole l’inégalité de Bell (le sujet du prix Nobel de physique de l’année dernière). Cette distinction certains contrefactuels conformes aux lois de la physique, d’autres non ne se voit pas dans les modèles déterministes à variables cachées plus conventionnels de la physique quantique. Pour cette raison, la théorie des ensembles invariants peut violer l’inégalité de Bell sans contredire une propriété putative des théories de la physique à laquelle Einstein croyait très fermement – ce que l’on appelle le réalisme local.

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Je veux suggérer que nos cerveaux sont des ordinateurs quantiques dans le sens où ils ont une conscience cognitive des mondes contrefactuels proches sur l’attracteur fractal cosmologique.

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Comme discuté dans La primauté du doute, le concept d’attracteur fractal cosmologique est très holistique. C’est autant du haut vers le bas que du bas vers le haut. Il existe des résultats mathématiques techniques qui montrent qu’un attracteur fractal est un exemple de ce que l’on appelle une géométrie non computationnelle, une géométrie qui ne peut pas être décrite complètement à l’aide d’algorithmes. [vii].

[vFor example, there is no algorithm for determining reliably whether a putative counterfactual world lies on the fractal attractor of the universe or in a gap . This is relevant here because the Nobel Lureate Roger Penrose has argued strongly that human understanding.

I want to suggest that our brains are quantum computers in the sense of having a cognitive awareness of nearby counterfactual worlds on the cosmological fractal attractor. But hang on, you may complain, I have a hard enough job factoring the number 30 into primes, never mind some humungous number that a quantum computer might one day factor to break an encryption code. Well, I never said that your quantum brain could factor large numbers. That wont be possible not least because the warm noisy environment of the brain would prevent entangled quantum superpositions lasting long enough to do serious quantum computational calculations (indeed I believe this same noise is a necessary element in accounting for human creativity [ix]). Mais cela ne signifie pas qu’il n’y a pas de vestiges de parallélisme quantique dans nos capacités cognitives. [

But why should our brains ever make use of quantum physics in the first place? Here I believe the primal answer is energy efficiency. Energy is a precious resource. A classical computer squanders this energy, needing megawatts of power to process petabytes of data. The brain does the same with six orders of magnitude less power. How could this be? I believe it is by taking advantage of quantum physics. For example, there is good evidence that pumping ions through channels in the walls of axon membranes, needed to amplify spike signals as they propagate along the 80 billion axons in the brain, could not be achieved with 20W of power if the pumping was done using classical physics [x]. Avec la physique quantique, cela peut être fait dans le budget énergétique très limité du cerveau.[

Could it be that the extra information needed to really understand something, or to give us the very visceral feelings of free will and consciousness, ultimately arises from a weak cognition of nearby counterfactual worlds on the cosmological fractal attractor, arising from manifestations of quantum parallelism in the brain? An analogy with what I have in mind is when someone shows you photos on their smart phone, and one of the static photos is unexpectedly preceded by a very short movie sequence. Even though the movie lasts for a fraction of a second, it seems to add an extra layer of reality to the photo. It can induce a kind of Wow! moment. If a conventional computer could perceive quantum parallel worlds, even if only very briefly indeed, perhaps it might get a similar Wow! moment. But it cant, so it doesnt [xi]. Nous, les humains, pouvons, et c’est peut-être ce que nous entendons par le phénomène de[consciousness; it still wows us.

Moreover, I suspect that quantum parallelism is the missing ingredient that makes many of us feel connected holistically to the world around us. Perhaps it is the physical component that leads to deep spiritual feelings about our place in the universe, and the sense that both artists and mathematicians have, that they are not creators, but merely discoverers of pre-existing knowledge and information (something many conventional scientists dismiss as new-age mumbo-jumbo).

As mentioned, there are technical mathematical results showing that fractal attractors cannot be described algorithmically. Hence if quantum parallelism taps into the geometry of the cosmological fractal attractor, and our cognition makes use of quantum parallelism, then our brains are tapping into the non-computability of the fractal attractor, consistent with Penroses claim that we humans do not think algorithmically.

Does this mean that quantum computers are going to be capable of understanding, and have free will and be conscious? Well, I dont suppose that present-day quantum computers really have any of these attributes, though conceivably they have some precursors of these attributes. However, I do think that quantum technology is a necessary ingredient if we are to one day create an artificial intelligence on a par with us humans. I dont suppose creating such an AI will be an easy task, or that we are anywhere close to achieving this goal, should we indeed desire such a goal (be careful what you ask for). But if we do, it will be achieved by a judicious hybrid of classical and quantum computing elements, making constructive use of low-energy noise where appropriate.

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This is such a speculative idea that it is hard to call it scientific at this stage. It is a pre-scientific postulate looking for potential experiments to test it and further theory to develop it: something I call ascientific [xii]. [xi][xii

We need to probe the world of quantum biology further to understand whether these ideas really make sense. In addition, we need to better understand the notion of quantum parallelism and what it means for our fundamental theories of physics [xiii]. Si les lois de la physique étaient en effet plus holistiques que nous ne le croyons actuellement, il y aurait de grandes implications sur la façon dont nous allons trouver une théorie de la physique qui combine le grand et le petit (ce qui semble nous échapper).

Mais toutes les idées doivent commencer quelque part. Et à l’heure actuelle, essayer de comprendre pourquoi exactement les chatbots ne comprennent pas les choses comme nous les comprenons nous laisse plutôt perplexe.