We don't understand what the language game is.

In board games such as chess, go, and shogi, the AIs have beaten human champions. Indeed, today, nobody is in the doubt as to whether AIs have edge over humans. The battle between AIs and humans are over in these fields.

When it comes to Large Language Models, the situations is not so clear. Although people are generally under the impression that the Turing test is now probably moot, especially because you can formulate the arguments in any ways you prefer, there is no clear measure to judge whether LLMs are doing the job better than humans.

The fundamental problem is our lack of understanding of the nature of the language game. Although Ludwig Wittgenstein described it in a passing manner in his Philosophical Investigations, the description is far from adequate. To this day, we do not have a clear model of what the language game is.

We humans don't know what the language game is exactly, and yet we engage ourselves in it every day. The Large Language Models are being developed and employed without a definite idea of what cognitive function it is addressing.  

How to measure the intelligence of AGI and/or ASI/

As we go on the road to AGI and/or ASI, there is a genuine problem of how to measure intelligence. IQ is based on the assumption of a Gaussian distribution and deviation from the mean as ratio to standard deviation, so it cannot be applied to AI far removed from humans.

Assessing intelligence purely by the vastness of memory and the speed of calculation would be a part of the equation, but not the essential part. Defining AGI and ASI in terms of the tasks they could perform would be helpful, but then we humans might not be able to conceptualize all the relevant tasks.

There is also the problem of Vingean uncertainty and xAI. If ASI ever materializes, it might not be possible for us humans to understand its functionality. It would be difficult to require explainable performance because that would mean mediocrity within the range of human intelligence.

The only hope would be instrumental convergence. Here, defining AGI and ASI in terms of embodied cognition would prove robust and essential.

Formalization of numbers.

I always felt that there was something strange about the way the concept of numbers are formalized by set theory or category theory. Although the concept of numbers do have some problems, unless we deal with infinities there does not seem to be an urgent need for formalization, as far as calculations are concerned, including complex numbers.

Humans seem to have an intuitive understanding of numbers, on par with qualia. By trying to formalize numbers by set or category or other theories, something extra is added, and there are consequently some "evil questions" that shouldn't be asked, as numbers represented by these formalisms have something external to our intuitive understanding of numbers. 

I am not saying that attempts at formalization are meaningless. I just feel that numbers should be treated on the same footing as qualia. Just as attempts at formalizing qualia do not go well, formalization of numbers is bound to be unsatisfactory, because such an approach is not addressing the essential nature of numbers directly. 

An entertainment of one's own. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl by Nick Park, released from Aardman @aardman

It is so wonderful when grownups do their best to entertain children and the inner children in our hearts.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024) is such a labour of love, that when you imagine all the efforts and ingenuity that went into it you almost wanted to cry.

I saw it on Netflix in Tokyo on the release day.

The opening sequence of Heath Robinson gadgets achieving feats of waking up, body washing, changing clothes, and breakfast preparation would put a smile on everyone's face. The new invention by Wallace, a robot gnome for whom "no job is too small", invokes an alarm in the viewers' mind when the AI assisted agent goes about tidying up the garden. The contrast between a more contemporary, naturalistic gardening principles and the old school geometrical garden making enforced by the gnome is cleverly slipped into the plot.

The liberal arts hight standards of the animation is evident, for example, when the disgruntled Gromit, chased away from the usual habitat by the Wallace's-favour-winning gnome, reads none other than Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own in bed.

The beauty is that the cleverness is never imposed upon the viewer. The AI alignment problem is clearly one of the themes, where an artificial agent designed with good intentions can cause unintentional havoc. The Waluigi effect, where an AI made as Luigi (a good guy) can turn into a bad guy (Waluigi) through a slight loss of balance, is one of the hidden themes of the film. Indeed, the whole film could be considered as a statement on AI safety, but the sheer entertainment value completely wraps it up, so that you don't have to notice to enjoy the story.

Children are very sensitive and they take messages with astonishing efficiency and sincerity. The fact that a number of grownups (I presume) of the Aardman clan led by the great Nick Park has produced such a sparkle joy for kids is a glimmer of hope at this otherwise gloomy turn of quarter century.

A final spoiler alert: You should take the art of old school tea making very seriously.

Queen of Hearts. Diane Morgan in Cunk on Life.

Cunk on Life, starring Diane Morgan as the cleverly irrelevant interviewer and interrogator Philomena Cunk, is a delightful repeat of this hugely popular franchise as well as a courageous trial at things sometimes shockingly and delightfully new. 

The hallmark deadpan dialogues with experts are still there (I wonder how the interviewees can keep straight faces confronted by Diane Morgan in the set), and the scripts are masterfully written, although I suspect there must be many ad-libs. There is something profoundly interesting in the way the Cunk character succeeds in producing laughter, by exposing something vulnerable in the experts or expert knowledge. It is quite all right, because that would be the job description for the experts involved. Well done.

Cunk is almost always beside the point, but in an up-to-date, politically aware (not necessarily correct, which is unfortunately important in today's cultural climate) way. Personally, Cunk somehow reminds me of Socrates, in that the ultimate wisdom can be only expressed in terms of self-acknowledged ignorance. But then Socrates was perhaps one of the first recorded comedians, and arguably one of the best ever.

When dealing with venerable issues such as religion, classic art, and theory of evolution, Cunk nonchalantly throws modern and contemporary items such as mobile phone, AI, and her mate Paul, which may appear inappropriate for the casual observer, but ultimately prove very relevant. After all, in Cunk on Life we are in a timeless zone, where things grand and trivial, meaningful and meaningless, noble and vulgar meet. 

That's the kind of place where genuine creativity happens, and Philomena Cunk reigns as the Queen of Comedy, as well of Hearts. The warm heart was felt, for example,  when the fourth wall was broken, and the sound guys were given the credit that were due. Wonderful stuff created by wonderful staff.  

We are all in the Big Bang gang, by the way.

Cunk on Life. BBC2 and Netflix.

Ken Mogi bio, contact, and profile photos.

 

Ken Mogi is a neuroscientist, writer, and broadcaster based in Tokyo. Ken Mogi is a senior researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratories, and a visiting and project professor at the University of Tokyo. He leads the Collective Intelligence Research Laboratory (CIRL) at the Komaba campus of the University of Tokyo, together with Takashi Ikegami. He has a B.A. in Physics and Law, and Ph.D in Physics, from the University of Tokyo. He has done postdoctoral research in University of Cambridge, U.K. He has published more than 300 books in Japan covering popular science, essay, criticism, self-help, and novels. Ken Mogi published several bestsellers in Japan (with close to million copies sold). He was the first Japanese to give a talk at the TED main stage, in 2012 (Long Beach). 

As a broadcaster, Ken Mogi has hosted and is hosting many tv and radio programs, in stations including the national broadcaster NHK, and Discovery Channel Japan. He has also appeared in several international programs, such as Closer to Truth and a Bloomberg documentary hosted by Hannah Fry.

Ken Mogi has a life-long interest in understanding the origin of consciousness, with the focus on qualia (sensory qualities of phenomenal experience) and free will. Ken Mogi’s book on IKIGAI, published in 35 countries and in ~30 languages, has become a global bestseller. The German version of IKIGAI was the No.1 bestselling book in nonfiction in Germany for 38 cumulative weeks in 2024. Ken Mogi’s book with Thomas Leoncini, Ikigai in Love, was published in 2020. Ken Mogi's third book in English, The Way of Nagomi, came out in the U.K. in 2022 and in the U.S. in January 2023. Ken Mogi's fourth book, Think Like a Stoic, will come out in July 2024.

 

Contact:

e-mail:kenmogi2005qualia@gmail.com

X: @kenmogi

Instagram: @qualiaken

Ken Mogi profile photos.

You can download large files by clicking on the URL below.

Ken Mogi photos by Itaru Hirama (2021)

 

 

The self and the diversity of qualia.

The individualities of qualia are defined in the framework of the self, so in that sense, the uniqueness of qualia and the uniqueness of the self must be dual. The self is large enough to contain the diversity of qualia that we experience.

Within that diversity, self-consciousness occupies a special role. Self-consciousness itself is neutral, prior to any specific instances of qualia. However, the neutrality of self-consciousness is large enough to embrace the great diversity of qualia.