An article about some of the subjects in the novel 'Infinite Thunder' by Jack Arcalon (Link: http://www.lulu.com/content/429825)

  The future science of artificial intelligence will attempt to solve mankind's most intractable problem: laziness.
No one likes to work. Working sucks, especially when people feel bad, which is often the case.
I know I would like to trade this crap reality for a Star Trek future.
If everything goes according to plan, in the next fifty years there will be smart machines on Earth.
Unimaginable aliens will do all the hard work, and humans can finally retire.
But how will it happen, and is there a way to make it happen sooner? This essay will look at some of the main mysteries, and possible solutions.

  Full disclosure: the following is of course bullshit. While writing this article, it was like a big revelation was coming any second now, but I kept editing the text until there was nothing left. Thinking about awareness is like trying to see everything at once, by focusing on one thing.
The problem with explaining intelligence is that writers try to simplify the truth, when the exact opposite is called for. We need more new concepts, and less familiar explanations.
Thoughts can only be about other thoughts. They require their own language.

  There are many possible thoughts.
For example: This moment is happening right now. it is always now, it has always been now in the past. Quick, show the exact arrangement of neurons that created this sensation.
No one has a clue how to even start.

  The mystery of awareness is called the Hard Problem.
Many think they can solve it, almost making it sound too easy. Some claim they once knew the answer, but then forgot it.
Needless to say, most people don't CARE about this stuff. Those that do, have heard it all before.
Apparently, some things are simply too boring to think about. Complicated words don't explain enough, so more complicated ones are invented that mean even less.
It should be against the law to say something is extremely complicated. (Other forbidden sayings are 'I don't agree', and 'sometimes we all feel that way'. Don't say something is going to be easy, either.)
Anyone can understand anything, or at least believe they do.
The mind contains its own reality. Nothing we think we know is necessarily true; it's just believable enough to get by.

  For those desperate to understand the mystery of awareness: HELLO! YOU ALREADY DO! Everyone who understands the problem figures it out to the maximum extent possible, when they learn the most important fact: The brain is a hermetically sealed machine to convert electrical pulses.

  Various experts have tried to invent simple rules that would automatically generate intelligence: - Assign a word to one or several categories, depending on how it modifies other words.
- Name two items, and select a third to relate them.
- Start with any term and add definitions.
- Assume every point in reality is described by tags.
- Binary selection: a rough approximation, followed by ever finer filters.
- Start with the simplest possible grid universe, and add levels of detail.
- Describe any one item with perfect precision, and you've described them all.

  At any moment in time, a mind IS the physical state of a brain: a fantastically complex, constantly updated model of reality.
It could be represented as a seemingly endless chessboard. There's nothing there but moving pieces - but somehow the pattern is aware, with feelings, thoughts and emotions.
A mind can only access itself, but it also 'stores' memories in its environment, by creating and responding to triggers.
Since our universe is full of patterns, awareness is everywhere, but most of it is random and meaningless.
Logically, there is potentially unlimited awareness in any brick, air, and even empty space, even if we can't detect it.

  The 'Mysterians believe in 'qualia'. They think every molecule in the brain contains 'atoms' of awareness, in a way no one can describe or understand.
Since some fundamental constants can't be simplified, why couldn't awareness be one of them? Awareness is as much an aspect of reality as weight or mass or quantity.
No matter how well we describe a feeling, we can never understand its true essence.
The Mysterians are at least 90% wrong, but not entirely without a point.

  Awareness appears to be an objective mirror of reality, but it's highly biased.
According to widely accepted evolutionary principles, any mind should be as simple as possible; basically, a danger detector.

  This brings us to the first important insight: humans are stupid.
We're inefficient, ultra slow learners. Machines can perform any logical task better. Just try to remember a list of ten foreign words. To load every Russian word into memory, my obsolete PC only has to make a brief clicking sound.
A simple picture is more vivid than the strongest imagination. Just try to draw people from memory: they look like cartoon zombies.
Human minds are wide, not deep.

  The next stage of evolution, if there is one, might involve the loss of obsolete emotions.
Post-humans could become like smart ants, with smaller but better organized brains than now.
Perhaps they'll be able to hold images in memory, and read a page minutes after glancing at it.

  Most of the hard work has already been done.
There are thousands of profound clues about how the brain works. They just needs to be put together, a vast project combining all available data.
The long-term goal would be to completely describe one human thought.

  -neurology The brain is made of trillions of neuron cells, connected by quadrillions of tiny wires.
Each neuron has separate sets of incoming and outgoing wires.
Each neuron receives many more signals than it sends out, from thousands of other neurons. When it finally does 'fire', the pulse goes to many other neurons, some of which may then fire themselves - if they get enough confirming signals from still more neurons. Eventually, a pulse will reach a muscle, and the organism takes action.
With each 'firing' the connections are strengthened. Otherwise, they begin to atrophy.
Less than 1% of all neurons receive direct signals from the senses, but each is no more than six layers removed from the outside.
Neurons can also fire at regular intervals when triggered, as 'pacemakers' for various activities.
Perhaps all connections can be categorized as good or bad associations, like yes or no switches.
Every neuron has an action potential for any situation. Similarities are automatically turned into links.
Neurons can amplify or suppress their output depending on whether more 'good' or 'bad' signals arrive.

  Activation networks: Some neural networks amplify weak signals.
Suppression networks: Other networks suppress frequently repeating signals, so the more important ones can get through.
Synchronization networks: Different groups of neurons fire at different frequencies. Eventually, one frequency dominates.

  A 'white matter' multiplex network may encode signals between different brain regions, with many possible error modes, including a slow decline in cognitive capacity as the brain ages.

  Humans have at least three 'brains', stacked on top of each other.
Each level stores different memories, and performs different tasks; simple emotions in the brain stem, situational awareness in the cerebellum, complex 'logic' in the cortex.
Constant drives like attentiveness, novelty seeking, and stress response combine into stable personalities.

  Repeating or notable patterns in the environment cause new neuron connections to form, which recognize patterns and try to predict them. They start as random links that are soon strengthened.

  The brain has many simple mechanisms for: - horizontal, vertical, and diagonal scanning - motion tracking - balance - grabbing moving objects - recognizing simple or repeating shapes - sudden changes in brightness or speed - thousands of common skills, like sitting down or turning pages They will all have to be explained separately.

  -The extreme complexity explanation of awareness Experts suspect the mystery of awareness will eventually be replaced by many smaller ones.
Instead of the vague, general theories we have now, the goal will be to fully describe all the elements of awareness at any instant.
Understanding one moment of thought might be equivalent to understanding it all.
An exhaustive description of all items in memory would form a complete (if biased) model of reality.

  Awareness is simply intense concentration: all mental resources are dedicated to one scene.
Fear is the most extreme version, a tense balance, trying to amplify a solution.

  The mind is an immense production, a self-rewriting encyclopedia. An incredible number of facts compete to take precedence.
It's this immense activity, not some mystical essence, that makes sentience 'real'.
It will take vast teams to understand even a single human thought. There's a century in every second.

  Even so, at any instant in time, there is very little awareness. A mind can only know an insignificant fraction of the universe, or of itself.
Compared to the problem of existence, it might as well know nothing at all.
When someone is working hard, they don't know why they are busy. They would have to stop to explain their motivations.
Full awareness is spread out over many minutes. It takes a lifetime to get a grip on reality.
Most thoughts are shorthands for ambiguous truths.
Memory is constantly rewritten. We remember being aware in the past, but the full realization only emerged after the fact.
One second ago you were a different person, whose essence is already forgotten.

  A mind can only consider a model of its memories, not the memories themselves, and the thing that's doing the considering is different from the model or the memories: a brain state which can only understand other brain states. Other states are then needed to make sense of it.

  Like the other senses, awareness conveys pain or pleasure - only it can do so in advance.

  Awareness is the average of the truth: an index, not a calculation; the result of thought, not the cause.
The 'self' is the area of most computation. A universe of facts, with associated pleasure/pain values, around a floating center.

  -Society of the Mind The next level are 'meta-neurons', made up of linked individual neurons. The brain is a collection of millions of interconnected groups combining inputs from each other, ranging from very simple to so abstract they don't have a purpose yet, but are still waiting for new patterns to emerge.
They don't understand what they're doing. Each group 'knows' only one thing, and has to cooperate with many others to function.
They only transmit when the single thing they're interested in has happened, but with perfect timing and many possible intensities.
Some groups sort perceptions into categories (male/female, toxic/edible, beautiful/ugly).
Low-level groups can start and stop higher groups, from general to specific.
Higher decision-making groups indirectly influence the lower mood, motivation, and alert levels.
They activate in a learned sequence, and may have to complete a script once it's started.
Groups are always competing, a winner-take-all contest.
To create the first AI, many small teams will have to develop each element separately.

  At a still higher level are 'personas' (meta-meta-neurons).
Only one can be in control at any time, with several helping out, and many others on standby.
Each regulates a specific situation, combining data from lower levels. Not all rational analysis happens in the frontal cortex.
They combine to form the mind's top decision maker.

  -Scripts The brain keeps repeating the same tasks in slightly different situations.
There's a specific memory state for each of tens of thousands of actions, a "script", or a template of thoughts, connected in a vast, adaptable flowchart.

  -The free will illusion People think they have free will while performing common tasks like walking or driving, but they're almost completely immobilized. Only a few actions are allowed within narrow parameters.
No one really controls what they're doing. They're too busy making small decisions, trying to maintain their present course.
People can't suddenly throw themselves on the ground, give up their possessions, or change their beliefs, unless an appropriate script is activated. Every action requires a reason, not necessarily a rational one.

  -Toy universe theory Minds become aware by constantly running simulations to predict the future, in a virtual universe.
New simulations are automatically created by new input, which the mind creates by changing its environment to match existing simulations. The easiest way to do this is by simply moving to a new location.
Simulated outcomes are compared to reality (the essence of awareness), causing new mental models to emerge and perish.
When a thought is completed, a new representation is created, in an endless chain reaction. A difficult concept becomes a shiny new toy in the mind.
Awareness is an uncontrolled, emergent process, the sum of all thoughts, not a standard brain function, but the ultimate side effect. Otherwise, personality could easily be changed.
The organism's first goal is survival. Pleasure and pain signals try to balance out.

  -Self modeling According to the popular bootstrap principle, awareness is a model of models: the representation of other instances of awareness.
Maybe it is its own simplified model. Each insight is a combination of earlier insights.

  -The narrative explanation Humans create elaborate narratives of earlier awareness.
With trillions of events per second, humans can't really remember their past perceptions, only their reactions.
All organisms with a nervous system, from nematode to human, relive the past by combining previously stored thoughts.
The perceived differences in the new situation are a foundation of awareness.

  -The data compression explanation The human brain is a universal data compressor. It makes itself more efficient by rewiring.
Two or more neurons will often fire simultaneously when they receive a familiar input, which can be wasteful. Looking for a shorter path, the brain will try to connect them so that only one neuron has to fire.
Awareness is learning.

  Memory, like reality itself, is fundamentally chaotic. There usually is no big picture.
Awareness attempts to compress the incompressible, by finding whatever detail two unrelated facts have in common.
Often, it will only be the fact that the mind is thinking about them at the same time.
Memories are maximally compressed in such a way that relevant changes are quickly noticed.

  -The top level (if any) The highest level is YOU, a composite persona, the meta-meta-meta neuron.
The top level can only think about one thing at a time.
Awareness is the ultimate voting system, the embodiment of the truth.
Any AI that could answer scientific questions as well as a human would have to be fully sentient. It would need to perform top-level logic. To calculate the surface area of the earth, it would need to calculate the square, not the cube of the width.
Once a mind has learned something, it can't explain how it 'knows' this new fact, but it can prove it's true. The mind's goal is constant: to choose its next state.
Then it gets interesting . . .