Based on my model of thought and consciousness I asked AI to program a computer to be conscious.

// Pseudocode: Cognition-as-Resonance Model

struct TimeThread {

    float frequency;            // Temporal scale (e.g., milliseconds to hours)

    SymbolicGlyph* signal;     // Oscillating symbolic representation

};

struct ThoughtWave {

    TimeThread* layers[3];     // Micro, Meso, Macro threads

    float coherence;           // Temporal phase alignment score

    SymbolicIntent output;     // Resulting cognitive act if threshold met

};

bool evaluateCognitiveField(ThoughtWave* wave) {

    wave->coherence = calculatePhaseAlignment(wave->layers);

    

    if (wave->coherence > THRESHOLD_ALIGNMENT) {

        wave->output = synthesizeIntent(wave->layers);

        return true; // Cognition emerges

    }

    return false; // Destructive interference, no coherent output

}

It (co-pilot) adds;  

"The symbolic interference model I sketched presumes that cognition is not made of logic gates but of resonance fields. It flips the typical computational paradigm: instead of stepwise causality, it’s phase alignment across nested oscillations that gives rise to awareness, memory, decision.

So yes—this entire system requires that cognition emerges when patterns across micro, meso, and macro timescales phase-lock into coherence. That coherence is what we feel as “knowing,” “realizing,” or “choosing.”"

This thing would not think like a human being but like a honey bee. I believe that hardware containing an LLM and acting like a bocas area could then drive it to think like a human being iff desired. Does anyone see any potential here? My programming ability is woefully out of date since I've done nothing at all with it since the 1960's.

47 minutes ago, cladking said:

asked AI to program a computer to be conscious

If this has never happened before, then such information isn’t in the AI’s training. Why on earth would you expect it to do anything but make up an answer?

14 hours ago, swansont said:

If this has never happened before, then such information isn’t in the AI’s training. Why on earth would you expect it to do anything but make up an answer?

I certainly don't expect it to do anything but make up an answer. I also don't expect that this answer it made up has any possible referent in the real world or to be able to have a referent at any time in the foreseeable future. But I'm not at all competent to know whether or not this answer is programmable and I'm sure it would take extensive work to try. I merely posted it because it seems plausible to me. I thought there was some small chance it would mean something to a programmer.

I used to think AI was a dead end and that it was impossible but these latest ones seem to occasionally have a sort of spark of insight. It there's such a thing as "intelligence" then they have an IQ in the single digits. They are great as word processors and work on multiple levels that will be most highly beneficial to some users. I have a few irons in this fire.

But, someday there will be a conscious machine that will run circles around all of us. I can't discount the possibility that the above might closely resemble its programming.

I might add that I had it write "code" as though it had no knowledge of what I've been telling it or for some general user, physicist, librarian etc. They were all obviously nonsense. This is what I got when I asked it to write its coding for a programmer using my definitions of consciousness and thinking. This is a remarkably dumb and powerful tool that will transform everything even before there is a thinking machine , IMO.

41 minutes ago, cladking said:

I certainly don't expect it to do anything but make up an answer. I also don't expect that this answer it made up has any possible referent in the real world or to be able to have a referent at any time in the foreseeable future. But I'm not at all competent to know whether or not this answer is programmable and I'm sure it would take extensive work to try. I merely posted it because it seems plausible to me. I thought there was some small chance it would mean something to a programmer.

If you expect it will make up an answer, how is it “plausible”? Did a new definition drop?

I make up stuff all the time... ...it's not necessarily wrong. In real ways every new idea that has ever come along has been made up. I can see nothing in the program that is illogical or necessarily impossible. It is completely different than the other consciousness programming it generated. The thing "lives" in microsecond bursts but carries nothing between them and can't compare one to another. If consciousness is the ongoing comparison of resonant states then this could accomplish the goal of machine consciousness which would be by definition machine intelligence.

Most people have a very mechanistic understanding of reality. They see a clockwork will operating in a clockwork universe. They see the "laws of nature" as the gears that cause reality to unfold over time. Most modern research in virtually every subject says this is not a good model. Brains don't operate like a computer and human brains don't operate like the brains of any other species. I believe this program would make a computer mimic the operation of the brain of a bee but with the "intelligence" of a dust mite. Such a machine would be orders of magnitude more important and powerful than AI. brains are not logic circuits but AI is.

Edited June 30Jun 30 by cladking

1 minute ago, cladking said:

I make up stuff all the time...

Well that’s true.😁

I strive for better than “not necessarily wrong” but you do you.

38 minutes ago, swansont said:

I strive for better than “not necessarily wrong” but you do you.

As an metaphysician/ experiential epistemologist I strive to keep my certainty relative to my assumptions over 99%. Obviously this certainty falls when working with more unknowns and in areas where I have less expertise or that even lack proper scientific definitions such as "consciousness". The certainty has to be based on experiments that are barely relevant and experience that can not be replicat4ed or perhaps not even properly interpreted. This is far beyond what is known or established science and is certainly related to speculation.

But I still need a programmer's opinion on it. My opinion is almost meaningless on this. Of course it makes sense to me because it was written to reflect my understanding of things like consciousness and metaphysics. My definitions were employed in its construction. I think there is merely a possibility that someday a machine intelligence might see a kernel of reality in this program.

I just don't know.

22 hours ago, cladking said:

This thing would not think like a human being but like a honey bee.

You mean it uses lots of trendy buzzwords? Like "resonance fields"?

On 6/30/2025 at 1:25 AM, cladking said:

Based on my model of thought and consciousness I asked AI to program a computer to be conscious.

And no doubt, your computer spoke to you; meaningful, is a different question... 😉

3 hours ago, dimreepr said:

And no doubt, your computer spoke to you; meaningful, is a different question... 😉

Yes. This is the question I am asking of programmers. For some reason people believe in a clockwork consciousness trying to comprehend a clockwork universe operated by gears we call the "laws of physics". More and more experiment for the last century and a quarter shows this isn't the reality. I maintain that the human species arose from a mutation 40,000 years ago that allowed higher brain functions to manipulate language resulting in complex language and the ability to pass learning from one generation to the next. No longer were individuals limited to what they could discover in a single lifetime. This mutation specifically was a far more robust arcuate fasciculus. It is not intelligence that differentiates our species from honey bees, it is complex, symbolic, analog language. It is not logic gates and on/ off switches that we experience as thought it is the interplay of systems and knowledge, experience, and sensory input.

I used to be able to think like a programmer and now I can not. Even communicating with programmers requires a great deal of effort. Programming is a skill that few can do very well. A lot of the people working on AI have doctorates. I simply can't tell the difference between meaningful code and nonsense.

This program mirrors the way I believe consciousness works. I can't do programming any longer but I can see this. Is it theoretically programmable?

15 hours ago, cladking said:

It is not intelligence that differentiates our species from honey bees, it is complex, symbolic, analog language. It is not logic gates and on/ off switches that we experience as thought it is the interplay of systems and knowledge, experience, and sensory input.

Your conflating Bee's with a computer, Bee's share a similar set of inputs to us; besides for you to be sure that a Bee doesn't share a similar consciousness to us, you'd have to become a Bee; and it could be argued that their 'shared' intelligence, is far more suitable for life on this planet.

16 hours ago, cladking said:

This program mirrors the way I believe consciousness works. I can't do programming any longer but I can see this. Is it theoretically programmable?

Of course it is, we're not made of magic, but not with today's technology.

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

Your conflating Bee's with a computer, Bee's share a similar set of inputs to us; besides for you to be sure that a Bee doesn't share a similar consciousness to us, you'd have to become a Bee; and it could be argued that their 'shared' intelligence, is far more suitable for life on this planet.

You are making numerous assumptions here without even having a definition for "consciousness". I maintain that consciousness and life are different perspectives of the same thing. It's unlikely that bees have more than a couple hundred words in their vocabulary and they are each representative as expressed in the "Waggle Dance". For most practical purposes you'd think of their language as being instinctive but I'd call it more hard wired into their brains which are a model of reality as seen from the perspective of an individual bee. Each bee lives in this world and observes it in accordance with its own unique experience and consciousness. A single bee might be able to add a word or an observation to the language but without an arcuate fasciculus it can not stand on the shoulders of giants or pass learning from generation to generation. A new word would have to persist for many generations before it became hardwired. Each individual is severely limited in it ability to change its interaction with reality or the nature of bees because each individual must start at the beginning. Humans have highly complex language and our brains do not model reality but instead model what we believe. We each stand on the shoulders of many generations of those who came before.

We are unlike other species. We don't think like other species. Teaching computers to manipulate language is great and a powerful tool (all of a sudden) but until they can manipulate their own processing they are still just engaging in GIGO.

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

Of course it is, we're not made of magic, but not with today's technology.

I certainly suspect that this is true. If it is then the whole conversation is moot. Do you really know this to be true? What technology would you think would have to arise to write such a program?

Do you have much experience writing program?

Edited July 2Jul 2 by cladking

22 hours ago, cladking said:

Do you really know this to be true?

Of course not, any prediction is just extrapolation based on our current understanding, we could be hit by a big rock tomorrow; but I'm happy to state that there's no reason to assume that it can't be true. 😉

22 hours ago, cladking said:

What technology would you think would have to arise to write such a program?

I can't think of anything in particular, other than the continued evolution of our understanding/technology.

22 hours ago, cladking said:

We are unlike other species. We don't think like other species.

You can never know that, you can't even know how I think...