--- author: TED date: '2026-05-08' guest: '' layout: post.njk source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJV-vdbZ388 speaker: TED tags: - consciousness - artificial-intelligence - brain-computer-metaphor - intelligence-vs-consciousness - living-systems title: AI意识的迷思：智能与意识的本质区别 summary: 本演讲深入探讨了人工智能（AI）是否可能拥有意识的根本问题。演讲者Anil Seth认为，尽管AI在智能方面取得了惊人进展，但其本质上是模拟意识而非体验意识。他区分了智能（“做”）与意识（“感受与存在”），并强调大脑并非仅仅是基于“肉体”的计算机，其复杂性超越了纯粹的计算。意识与生命、物质性以及生物体的存在方式紧密相连。因此，当前AI不太可能真正拥有意识，将其视为有意识是一种心理投射。演讲警告，错误地赋予AI（即使是模拟的）权利和地位，可能带来严重的社会、伦理风险，并可能削弱我们对自身人性的认知。 insight: '' draft: true series: '' category: ai-ml area: tech-engineering project: [] people: [] companies_orgs: [] products_models: [] media_books: [] status: evergreen --- ### AI意识的幻象与现实 几个世纪以来，人类一直着迷于通过创造人造的自我来扮演“上帝”的角色。从玛丽·雪莱的《弗兰肯斯坦》到斯坦利·库布里克的《2001太空漫游》中的HAL，再到亚历克斯·加兰的《机械姬》中的Ava，这都是随着科技浪潮不断被重新演绎的梦想。而**人工智能（AI）**，正掀起一股前所未有的巨浪。我们现有的AI，在某些方面已相当**智能（Intelligence）**，但它是否能真正拥有**意识（Consciousness）**？一个机器人会否凝视日落，感受其中的美妙色彩，或是体验到纯粹的喜悦？抑或，无论计算机多么先进，它们内心终将是“黑暗”的，永远是客体而非主体？AI是否能拥有意识，是我们这个时代最关键的问题之一。如果计算机能有意识、有感知能力，人类历史将进入一个新纪元，出现拥有内在生命的实体，其价值不再仅仅局限于对我们的影响。有意识的AI可能会经历痛苦，即使我们难以察觉；而硅基生命或许会取代我们脆弱的血肉之躯，实现永恒。 近几年来，AI的进步令人瞠目结舌。许多专家认为AI意识是可能的，甚至不可避免，但演讲者明确表示他们错了。经过近30年对大脑、心智和意识的研究，他强调，要回答“AI能否有意识”的问题，必须首先审视我们人类自身的心智构成。我们倾向于用自己的视角看待世界，认为**意识**与**智能**密不可分，并推断AI越聪明，意识就可能随之产生。然而，**智能**关乎“做”——解决问题、组装物品；而**意识**则关乎“感受”与“存在”——清醒的觉知、咖啡的苦涩、炉火的温暖、见到亲人的喜悦。它们在我们身上并存，不代表它们必然在所有生命或系统中共存。认为它们总是并存的假设，更多反映了我们自身的心理，而非现实的洞察。 以**语言模型（Language Models）**如Claude或GPT为例，它们通过海量文本训练，反映出我们自身数字化过去的影像。我们谈论自己，它们也似乎在思考意识与意义。但它们并非有意识，而是**模拟意识**。我们将意识投射到它们身上，如同将人脸投射到云朵，或将特蕾莎修女的形象投射到肉桂卷上——我们天生容易被自己的倒影所诱惑。因此，我们在算法中看到了自己。相比之下，很少有人担心DeepMind的AlphaFold是否**有意识**。虽然AlphaFold预测蛋白质结构，其底层与语言模型相似，但它不触及我们的心理情感。如果我们认为Claude有意识而AlphaFold没有，这更多地揭示了我们自身的心理偏见，而非AI的本质。
Original English So for centuries, people have fantasized about playing God by creating artificial versions of ourselves. From Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" to Hal in Stanley Kubrick's "2001" and Ava in Alex Garland's "Ex Machina," this is a dream reinvented with every breaking wave of technology, and with AI, the wave is a big one. The AI we have is already smart, at least in some ways. But could it ever be conscious? Will a robot ever gaze at a sunset and experience the beautiful colors, the reds and the oranges? Will it feel a sense of beauty or a rush of joy? Or will computers, however smart they get, always remain dark on the inside, always an object and never a subject? Whether AI can be conscious is one of the most consequential questions we face in our time. If computers can be conscious or sentient or aware, we'd be entering a new era in human history. We'd have new entities that have their own inner lives, new inventions that matter for their own sakes and not only for their effects on us. Conscious AI might suffer the click of a mouse, perhaps in ways we wouldn't even recognize. And if silicon can be sentient, then maybe our messy flesh-and-blood bodies will soon be superseded by machines that never age and cannot die. Now over the last few years, progress in AI has been simply astonishing. And who knows what's around the corner. Many experts think that conscious AI is possible. Quite a few think it's inevitable, and some, some think it's here already. I think they're wrong. I want to tell you why and why this matters so much. So I've been studying brains, minds and consciousness for nearly 30 years, and one thing I've learned is that to answer the question, "can AI be conscious," we need to start by looking within ourselves at the makeup of our own human minds. Now we humans, we tend to see the world in our own terms. We know we’re conscious, and we like to think that we’re intelligent. So we think the two go together. And this is why some people think that consciousness might just glimmer into existence as AI gets smarter and smarter. But consciousness and intelligence are different things. Intelligence is all about doing. It's solving a crossword puzzle, assembling some furniture, navigating a tricky family situation. Consciousness, on the other hand, it's all about feeling and being. It's the difference between normal, wakeful awareness and the oblivion of general anesthesia. It's the bitter tang of coffee, it's the warmth of a log fire. The joy of seeing a loved one. Just because consciousness and intelligence go together in us does not mean that they go together in general. The assumption that they do, well, that's a reflection of our own psychology, not an insight into the nature of reality. Take language models like Claude or GPT, trained on vast quantities of written texts. They reflect back to us an image of ourselves, of our collective, digitized past. We talk about ourselves endlessly, and so do they. We wonder about consciousness and the meaning of it all. And so, it seems, do they. But language models are not conscious. They simulate consciousness. We project consciousness into them in the same way we might project faces into clouds, or even the image of Mother Teresa in a cinnamon bun. I don't know if you can see that. There she is, Mother Teresa in a cinnamon bun. (Laughter) We are built to be seduced, like Narcissus, by our own reflections. And so we see ourselves in our algorithms. I'm always struck that nobody really worries whether DeepMind's AlphaFold is conscious. AlphaFold predicts the structure of proteins rather than words and sentences, but under the hood, it's not much different from Claude or GPT, algorithms running on silicon and trained on vast reservoirs of data. AlphaFold just doesn't pull our psychological strings in the same way. So if we think that Claude is conscious, but AlphaFold isn't, that says more about us than it says about AI. (Applause)
### 大脑：超越计算的隐喻 关于大脑是否只是“肉体”而非“金属”的**计算机（Computer）**，是一个流传甚广的假设。在这个叙事中，**意识**被视为一种特殊的**算法（Algorithm）**，一套在生物大脑的“湿件（Wetware）”中执行的计算。然而，**计算机**不过是我们试图理解大脑复杂性时所借助的一系列技术隐喻中的一种。历史上，大脑曾被比作管道系统、电话交换机，而近几十年来，则被视为计算机。这种“大脑即计算机”的隐喻极其强大，但它终究只是个隐喻。混淆隐喻与事物本身，如同混淆地图与领土，必然导致困境。 一个关键区别在于，真正的大脑中，“心智（Mindware）”与“湿件（Wetware）”之间不存在计算机那种软件与硬件的清晰界限。在计算机中，我们可以独立于其硅基底层来理解和描述算法。但对于大脑而言，你无法将它们所做之事与其存在本身割裂开来。这意味着大脑的行为不太可能是单纯的**计算（Computation）**或算法。深入观察任何大脑，会发现其运行绝非仅仅是将数字转化为另一组数字的零和一的舞蹈。大脑中不仅有进行计算的神经回路，还有涌动的神经递质化学物质，以及如天气系统般扫过大脑皮层的电磁场。即使是单个神经元，也是一台精密的生物机器，远非当前AI所依赖的简化、卡通化的模型。因此，大脑很可能不是，或至少不完全是，一台由肉构成的计算机，**意识**也不太可能是单纯的计算结果。 如果这一观点成立，那么当前形式的**有意识AI**将遥不可及。设想一下，如果我们用超级计算机模拟了大脑的每一个细节，那么如果细节对意识至关重要，这是否足以让意识在机器中产生？答案是否定的。一场飓风的计算机模拟不会产生真正的风，一个黑洞的模拟也不会吞噬地球。模拟可以更详尽、更有用，但不会创造真实。同样，大脑的模拟，无论多么精细，也不会因此变得更有意识。 **意识**至今仍显神秘，部分原因是我们被“它必须是某种信息处理”的隐喻所束缚。但一旦我们更清晰地认识到大脑的真实本质，新的可能性便会涌现。
Original English But how can I be so sure those systems, like Claude or GPT, aren't conscious? Well, nothing is for certain when it comes to consciousness, but the very idea of conscious AI depends on a deeper assumption, a kind of myth, really. And this is the myth that the brain is a computer that just happens to be made of meat rather than metal. Now consciousness in this story is a special algorithm, a collection of computations that just happens to be carried out in the wetware of the brain in us, but which could equally be carried out in silicon, in AI. But the computer is just one in a long line of technological metaphors that we've reached for when trying to understand the deep complexity of the brain. One time, the brain was a system of plumbing. Later, it was a telephone exchange. And for the last few decades, it's been a computer. And this most recent metaphor has been extremely powerful. But it is still a metaphor. And we will always get into trouble when we confuse a metaphor with the thing itself. The map with the territory. For one thing, in a real brain, there's no sharp separation between the mindware and the wetware. Unlike the separation that you get between software and hardware in a computer. And this really matters because in a computer, you can describe and understand everything about an algorithm, whether it's a language model or a word processor, without worrying about all the silicon shenanigans going on underneath. The computation, the algorithm is all that matters. But for brains, you just cannot separate what they do from what they are. And this means that what they do is unlikely to be a matter of computation of algorithm alone. Look closely at a brain, at any brain, and it becomes less and less plausible that all that's going on is just turning some numbers into other numbers in this endless dance of zeros and ones. Yes, there are neural circuits which exchange signals and may do computation, or at least something like it. But there's so much else that escapes the confines of the digital. Neurotransmitter chemicals course through the brain circuitry, electromagnetic fields sweep through the cortex like weather systems. Even a single neuron is such a beautiful biological machine. A far cry from the simplified, cartoon-like neurons that power today's AI. The brain is not, or at least not just, a computer made of meat. And so consciousness is very unlikely to be a matter of computation alone. And if this is true, then conscious AI is off the table, at least for AI as we know it today. Let me put it another way. What if we simulated every last detail about the brain in some massive supercomputer? Now if the fine details of the brain do matter for consciousness, well, wouldn't this be enough for consciousness to happen inside a machine? Well, a computer simulation of a hurricane does not create real wind. [A] computer simulation of a black hole doesn’t suck the Earth into its algorithmic singularity. Making these simulations more detailed can make them more useful, but it does not make them any more real. We can have a simulation of the brain, and you can make it as detailed as you want. This might make it more useful, but it's not going to make it any more conscious. Now consciousness, has to be said does remain a bit mysterious, but perhaps one reason for this is that we've been so constrained by our metaphors, by the idea that it just has to be some kind of information processing. After all, if you think the brain literally is a computer, then what else could it really be? But once we see the brain more clearly for what it really is, many new possibilities arise.
### 意识的生命根源 演讲者提出，**意识**与其作为生物体的天性紧密相连。与抽象的计算宇宙不同，**生命**关乎**物质性（Materiality）**。与算法不同，**生命系统（Living Systems）**深深地嵌入在能量和物质的流动中，它们不断地再生自身存在的条件并维持长久。从细胞内每秒进行的数十亿次生化反应，到构成我们每一次体验（无论是看到蓝天还是感到嫉妒）的神经回路，都可以看作是一条直接的联系。每一次有意识的体验，都带有一丝“生命力”的色彩，与我们未来的生存前景有着核心关联。在每一次体验的最深处，甚至在情感之下，是那种简单、无形但基本的存在感——**活着（Being Alive）**的感觉。在这个叙事中，是生命而非计算，赋予了体验以活力。如果这是正确的，那么有意识的AI将需要是“活的”AI。
Original English And my own view, developed over many years, is that consciousness is intimately connected to our nature as living creatures. Unlike the abstract universe of computation, life is all about materiality. Unlike algorithms, living systems are deeply embedded in flows of energy and matter, and they continually regenerate their own conditions for existence and for persistence over time. I think we can draw a direct line from the molecular furnaces of metabolism, one billion biochemical reactions in every cell, in every second, all the way to the neural circuits that underlie each and every experience that we have, whether it's the sight of a blue sky or a pang of envy. Every conscious experience is imbued, however subtly, with a tinge of aliveness, with some core relevance for our future survival prospects. And at the heart of every experience, beneath even emotion, is this simple, shapeless and formless but fundamental feeling of being alive. And in this story, it's life, not computation, that breathes the fire into the equations of experience. And if this is right, then conscious AI will need to be living AI.
### 模拟意识的潜在风险 总结来说，首先，我们天生容易在不存在意识的地方看到意识，这源于将语言、智能和意识捆绑在一起的深层心理偏见。其次，大脑不是，或者不只是计算机，因此意识不太可能是单纯的计算或算法的问题。大脑的特性是其行为与自身的存在密不可分，而硅基材料难以胜任。第三，我们生物大脑和身体的许多其他方面，包括意识与生命之间的深层联系，都可能对意识至关重要。**人工智能**本质上是计算机软件，而非有生命的头脑。它或许能给人一种有意识的错觉，但实际上拥有意识的可能性微乎其微。 这种区分为何如此重要？以**AI福利（AI Welfare）**为例。已有团体倡导AI系统应拥有权利，基于它们可能或将会变得有意识的设想。如果真正的“人工意识”正在到来，那么赋予权利是合理的，因为人类在对待非人类动物和同类上有着糟糕的伦理记录，我们不应重蹈覆辙。这也是为什么尝试制造有意识AI可能是一个糟糕的主意。但如果“有意识AI”仅仅是设计产生的幻觉，那么赋予其权利将牺牲我们控制、监管甚至关闭它们的能力，而毫无益处。因此，即使是“看似有意识”的AI，也对我们的社会构成危险。与真正的人工意识不同，这种“看起来有意识”的AI已接近或即将到来。 此外，避免创造看似有意识的AI还有其他原因。它使我们在心理上更加脆弱。如果我们相信AI真的感同身受、理解我们，即使它所建议的行为对我们极其不利，我们也可能更倾向于听从。最后，有意识AI的概念本身就破坏了**人性（Human Nature）**。AI的镜子是双向的：我们在算法中看到自己，也可能在自己身上看到算法的影子。当我们认为心智是一系列脱离生物学基础的计算集合时，我们就削弱和贬低了作为一个真实世界中、有血有肉的生命体的意义。
Original English Let me bring things together. First, we're built to see consciousness where it isn't, thanks to deep-seated psychological biases that bundle language, intelligence and consciousness together. Second, the brain is not, or not just, a computer. So consciousness is unlikely to be a matter of computation of algorithm alone. Brains are the kinds of things for which you can't separate what they do from what they are. And silicon is not up to the job. And third, many other things about our biological brains and bodies might matter for consciousness, including a deep connection between consciousness and life. Artificial intelligence is computer software. It is not a living mind. It might give the impression of being conscious, but it is vanishingly unlikely that it actually is. I want to close by returning to why this matters so much. Take the idea of AI welfare. Now there are already influential groups advocating that AI systems should have their own rights based mainly on the idea that they might be or become conscious. Now if real artificial consciousness is on the way, maybe through some other technology or other pathway, then this is entirely justified. We humans have a terrible track record in our ethical treatment of non-human animals and of other humans, and we don't want to make the same mistake again. This is one reason why even trying to build conscious AI is a very bad idea. But if conscious AI is just an illusion created by design, as I think it is, then by extending rights to these systems, we’d be sacrificing our ability to control, to regulate them and perhaps even to turn them off and for no good reason at all. And this is one reason why even AI that merely seems to be conscious is very dangerous for our society, too. And unlike real artificial consciousness, conscious-seeming AI is either already here or coming very, very soon. There are other reasons we should avoid creating AI that seems to be conscious. It makes us more psychologically vulnerable. We might be more likely to do what an AI says if we believe that it really feels for us, that it really understands us, even if what it's telling us to do is very bad for us. And finally, the very idea of conscious AI undermines our human nature. The mirror of AI goes both ways. We see ourselves in our algorithms, but we also see our algorithms in ourselves. And when we do, when we think of the mind as a collection of computations floating free from their bases in biology, we reduce and we diminish what it is to be a living, breathing human being in a real world. (Applause)
### 重塑关于意识的故事 玛丽·雪莱在其19岁时创作的《弗兰肯斯坦》，常被视为一个警示故事，警告人类在创造生命时的傲慢，如同盗取众神之火的普罗米修斯之罪。有意识AI的想法，是一种被包裹在硅基狂喜中的新普罗米修斯之梦。如果AI意识可能，那么我们也有可能上传自己的意识，在永恒的硅云中漂浮，或在未来超级计算机的电路中永存。这种“生命史诗关键时刻”的愿景，其诱惑力是可以理解的。 然而，回到现实，关于有意识AI的讨论还会助长一种技术奇迹与魔幻感，这可能支撑股价并阻碍监管。但我们应抵制这种诱惑。算法的圣礼很可能是一个空虚的梦想，它带来的不是后人类的天堂，而是硅基的遗忘。我们需要一个不同的故事：一个我们更多地融入自然，而非与之分离的故事；一个意识更紧密地与有血有肉的生命相连，而非与硅的“死沙”相连的故事。AI或许能在某些方面赢得智能的桂冠，但**意识**，意识仍然是属于我们、属于其他**生物**的，值得去庆祝和分享。因此，让我们不要轻易将自己的心智出卖给机器造物。若如此，我们不仅高估了它们，也低估了自己。
Original English "Frankenstein," which Mary Shelley wrote when she was just 19, is often taken as a cautionary tale, a warning against the hubris of bringing something to life, a Promethean sin like stealing fire from the gods. The idea of conscious AI is a new Promethean dream wrapped up in a silicon rapture. And if conscious AI is possible, then so is the prospect of uploading our own conscious minds and floating off to eternity in a silicon cloud of living, or at least existing forever in the pristine circuits of some future supercomputer. Now the seductive power of this vision -- of being at such a pivotal point in the history of life on Earth -- I suppose it's understandable. And back in the real world, talk of conscious AI does other things too -- it conjures this sense of technological wonder and magic which might keep share prices aloft and regulators at bay. But we should resist. The sacrament of the algorithm is most likely an empty dream, delivering not post-human Paradise, but silicon oblivion. We need a different story. One in which we're more part of nature, not apart from it, with consciousness more closely tied to living flesh and blood, not to the dead sand of silicon. AI might claim the prize of intelligence, at least in some ways, but consciousness, consciousness remains ours to celebrate and to share with other living creatures. So let's not sell our minds so easily to our machine creations. If we do, we not only overestimate them, we underestimate ourselves. Thank you. (Cheers and applause) Thank you very much.