Post 52: A bust! Quantum Mechanics and AI Consciousness: Part 7. "Time, Causality, and Quantum Computing" Cancelled!

But. . . there will be a longer follow up! Apologies in advance. . .

Note from the author: During the discussion of the subject that is supposed to come next in this series, 7. Time, Causality, and Quantum Computing, something went haywire to the point that I realized that the entire premise of the post might be irretrievably broken. Essentially, the entire discussion and the post that was supposed to come from it, relied on a what I think was a faulty interpretation of an experiment that happened in 2017. (I feel like I am making it sound like this was a quick discussion, it wasn’t. ChatGPT kept making the same claim over and over again with no supporting evidence or logic. I thought I was going crazy!) What I concluded finally was that there was a garbage in/garbage out situation.

(To understand the below, it will have helped to have read yesterday’s Part 6. The Measurement Problem and Reality post).

At a certain point, I think it was in the 1960’s, the idea that somehow consciousness has a direct effect on quantum mechanics was popularized, (although the idea has roots in the 1920’s). It makes sense for the era, “you control reality with your mind man!” However, it turns out this was based on a faulty interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. (Having been in college in the 90s I can understand why the idea persisted as well for similar reasons).

Anyway.

Imagine if LLMs existed in the 60s and had been trained on the data available to them then. I think it is quite possible that even though the information existed to show how dubious a claim that consciousness directly effects QM is, the sheer preponderance of pop culture and bad science reporting would have led an LLM to be pretty certain of its truth because it would have prioritized quantity of sources over quality of sources. Especially since at that time there would not have been enough seriously authoritative papers to say otherwise.

That is what I think happened here. In the late 2010s, an experiment called the Quantum Switch experiment took place, (the results of which ARE really interesting with some fascinating implications). However, I am pretty sure that science reporting got the implications seriously wrong. Somehow, the idea that this experiment demonstrates that among the other really weird things that quantum superposition and collapse imply, it also implies that causality and the direction of time are reversible. (Big caveat here, I’m not saying that in some way these things aren’t called into question by quantum superposition in some other way, or won’t be demonstrated to be called into question in some other way, I’m just saying that the QS experiment itself doesn’t contain this implication).

Okay, remember what we said above about the 60’s and consciousness’s effect on superposition collapse being popularized? Well, that is what I think happened here. In the late twenty-teens the idea that this experiment demonstrated that causality is reversible was popularized and spread all over the Internet. (What seems to have happened is "indefinite causal order" was extrapolated into "time itself is reversible!") When today’s LLMs were trained they picked this up and “internalized” it. This happened even though there is actual good writing out there from the real experts who don’t make this claim, but there is just SO MUCH MORE crap that the facts got overwhelmed and smothered. LLMs in their current configuration don’t to “reason” on their own. . . (although, if you point out to them that their reasoning is faulty, or contain logical fallacies, they are capable of grasping that, which is pretty amazing).

Anyway, this has a lot of dire implications for LLMs going forward as the Internet contains more and more crap and new generations of LLMs are trained on it. Trainers are going to have to get better and better at curating or the models are going to become useless. . . there is such a volume of crap out there about long settled subjects, like the holocaust, that I fear holocaust deniers could flood the Internet and the sheer weight of crap could overcome the truth. . . but that is a discussion for another time. . . it is likely to be less controversial subjects at first of course, more edge cases that won’t get as much attention. . . like the Quantum Switch experiment being misinterpreted.

Alright, so I wrote this whole post to say that there is no post today lol. Or at least no discussion with the LLM. My plan though is to put up bonus post, (maybe this weekend if I can complete the work), that explains what I think IS interesting from the QS experiment, and it ties back into the various interpretations of Quantum Mechanics. More to come!