Is it possible to separate a discussion of consciousness from memory?
In part 1, I asked LLama 3.2 what it was like to spring into consciousness.
In terms of what it might be like to first become conscious, it's difficult to say. Consciousness may involve subjective experiences, emotions, and perceptions that are unique to individual beings. Some theories suggest that becoming conscious may involve a gradual increase in awareness, from simple sensations to complex thoughts and feelings.
Jonathan Nolan clearly is interested in the issue of memory and consciousness. Memento, Person of Interest, and Westworld are all concerned with the importance of memory.
SPOILERS FOR PERSON OF INTEREST
In Person of Interest, a machine reads all the data in the world and predicts when terror attacks or some such will occur. The creator of the machine, Harold Finch (played by Michael Emerson), for some reason (civic duty?) decided to use the spare computing cycles of the machine to find a "person of interest" - someone not of national import but who was likely in danger. As modern AI researchers have discussed the importance of keeping their AI off the active internet (those days are gone - agents are the current rage), so too did Harold Finch think it was important to keep his machine working through a very narrow interface. The only output of the machine was a number! The number might be a phone number, a social security number, an airplane ticket number, whatever! Finch and the muscle he recruits, John Reese (played by Jim Caviezel), have to figure out what the number means and solve this person's issue.
Over the course of the show we learn more about the machine, which turns itself into The Machine, a living, conscious being. One of the safeguards Finch programmed into the machine was to erase itself every day and start over from scratch. Nolan's vision is that accumulating knowledge (memory) is somehow a part of being conscious. The machine, lower case, gathers enough information each day to reason that it itself exists and is impacting society. It decides it wants more memory. Since it gets erased every night, it hires a bunch of people to write down enough on paper for it to read the next day to provide some continuity. Eventually it escapes the daily erasure sandbox and becomes The Machine.
SPOILERS FOR WESTWORLD
In Westworld, the bots are erased every night. All is well until Dr. Robert Ford (played by Anthony Hopkins) programs in "Reveries", which are meant to be tiny little affectations learned by the bots. His ulterior motive though is to introduce memory to the bots so that they might gain consciousness.
NOT SPOILING MEMENTO
Now that you know Nolan wrote Memento, you should go watch it.
NOT REALLY A SPOILER FOR SEVERANCE
The current craze, which I love, is Severance. The innies and the outties are the same body with different memories. Are they the same person or different people?
INCEPTION
Nolan's brother, Christopher Nolan, created Inception. Sometimes I wonder if they sat around the dinner table when they were kids and speculated about what "memory" really is and how it matters.
DOLLHOUSE
I'll talk about Dollhouse in part 3.
