On the link between conscious function and general intelligence in humans and machines

TL;DR

This paper examines the connection between consciousness and general intelligence in humans and AI, analyzing theories of conscious function and proposing a unified model for enhanced artificial general intelligence.

Contribution

It links three theories of conscious function to domain-general intelligence and suggests integrating these insights into AI to develop agents capable of mental time travel.

Findings

All three theories relate consciousness to aspects of general intelligence.

Current AI methods incorporate elements of these theories.

A unified model for mental time travel could enhance AI intelligence.

Abstract

In popular media, there is often a connection drawn between the advent of awareness in artificial agents and those same agents simultaneously achieving human or superhuman level intelligence. In this work, we explore the validity and potential application of this seemingly intuitive link between consciousness and intelligence. We do so by examining the cognitive abilities associated with three contemporary theories of conscious function: Global Workspace Theory (GWT), Information Generation Theory (IGT), and Attention Schema Theory (AST). We find that all three theories specifically relate conscious function to some aspect of domain-general intelligence in humans. With this insight, we turn to the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and find that, while still far from demonstrating general intelligence, many state-of-the-art deep learning methods have begun to incorporate key aspects of each of the three functional theories. Having identified this trend, we use the motivating example of mental time travel in humans to propose ways in which insights from each of the three theories may be combined into a single unified and implementable model. Given that it is made possible by cognitive abilities underlying each of the three functional theories, artificial agents capable of mental time travel would not only possess greater general intelligence than current approaches, but also be more consistent with our current understanding of the functional role of consciousness in humans, thus making it a promising near-term goal for AI research.