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10 - Visual Consciousness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2021

Gabriel Kreiman
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
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Summary

As discussed in the last two chapters, there has been significant progress in computer vision. Machines are becoming quite proficient at a wide variety of visual tasks. Teenagers are not surprised by a phone that can recognize their faces. Self-driving cars are a matter of daily real-world discussions. Having cameras in the house that can detect a person’s mood is probably not too far off. Now imagine a world where we have machines that can visually interpret the world the way we do. To be more precise, imagine a world where we have machines that can flexibly answer a seemingly infinite number of questions on a given image. Let us assume that we cannot distinguish the answers given by the machine from the answers that a human would give; that is, assume that machines can pass the Turing test for vision, as defined in Section 9.1. Would we claim that such a machine can see? Would such a machine have visual consciousness?

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Chapter
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Further Reading

Chalmers, D. (1996). The conscious mind: in search of a fundamental theory. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Crick, F. (1994). The astonishing hypothesis. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Koch, C. (2005). The quest for consciousness, 1st ed. Los Angeles: Roberts & Company Publishers.Google Scholar
Leopold, D. A., and Logothetis, N. K. (1999). Multistable phenomena: changing views in perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 3:254264.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tononi, G. (2005). Consciousness, information integration, and the brain. Prog Brain Res 150:109126.Google Scholar

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  • Visual Consciousness
  • Gabriel Kreiman, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book: Biological and Computer Vision
  • Online publication: 05 February 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108649995.011
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  • Visual Consciousness
  • Gabriel Kreiman, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book: Biological and Computer Vision
  • Online publication: 05 February 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108649995.011
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Visual Consciousness
  • Gabriel Kreiman, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book: Biological and Computer Vision
  • Online publication: 05 February 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108649995.011
Available formats
×