Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are not our thoughts. We are not the thinking machines in our heads. We control our thoughts, so we are more than them. These machines are merely thinking machines.
More than thoughts certainly, but don’t be so sure we control our thoughts. There is a lot of subconscious thinking machinery doing the driving. See Master and his Emissary, https://channelmcgilchrist.com/master-and-his-emissary/#:~:t...
Choose Your Weapon: Survival Strategies for Depressed AI Academics
61–70 of 195 posts
Re: Choose Your Weapon: Survival Strategies for Depressed AI Academics
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are not our thoughts. We are not the thinking machines in our heads. We control our thoughts, so we are more than them. These machines are merely thinking machines.
I believe my cat is merely a thinking machine by your definition.
No, cats have souls. But they certainly have thinking machines.
Re: Choose Your Weapon: Survival Strategies for Depressed AI Academics
#63I can imagine AI academics are in a tough spot. However what about the existential angst the rest of us - who don't even do anything AI related on a day to day basis - are feeling? I think big changes are coming and it's not gonna be pretty.
Papers will be written on how different reactions to AI emerged in all this noise. Unfortunately, I'm all in (unwillingly) for the doomers perspective. I really can't help it but I'd love to be proven wrong. Altman keeps saying intelligence will be cheap and all I hear is I'm heading to (one day, some day) become the horse and carriage of cognitive processes.
Re: Choose Your Weapon: Survival Strategies for Depressed AI Academics
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing about current AI models profoundly challenges the unknowns of what makes consciousness work in any mystery-resolving way. People who confuse plainly programmed algorithmic systems like GPT 4 or Midjourney with the still unresolved issues of sentience as we know it so far are drinking far too much of the current batch of AI punch. Sadly, it's a sentiment I see all too often on HN, a site in which i'd assume mo…
I think the mystery of why we're not just philosophical zombies was never going to have some eureka moment, given that it's quite plain it's an emergent property. Was there a creature in history that wasn't sentient that gave birth to a creature that was? Clearly not. The reason recent results are significant in this discussion is because: - Larger networks are already displaying emergent behaviours that couldn't hav…
> given that it's quite plain it's an emergent property.
This explains nothing. Stating it's an emergent phenomenon gives us just as much information as saying it's magic. Arguably even less, because it sounds like an explanation, whereas "magic" doesn't pretend to explain anything.
> displaying emergent behaviours that couldn't have been predicted beforehand.
Same problem here. You say "couldn't have been predicted". Which is only true if you explain it away with emergence. The behaviours weren't predicted, because we don't understand how these networks work. Saying they couldn't have been predicted implies that we can't understand them. Which is a very bold statement and I'm fairly certain that it's not true.
Re: Choose Your Weapon: Survival Strategies for Depressed AI Academics
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe my cat is merely a thinking machine by your definition.
No, cats have souls. But they certainly have thinking machines.
I believe your ontology is a naively inconsistent overessentialization of miraculous paradoxes that have confounded human thinkers since prehistory.
Re: Choose Your Weapon: Survival Strategies for Depressed AI Academics
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, cats have souls. But they certainly have thinking machines.
I believe your ontology is a naively inconsistent overessentialization of miraculous paradoxes that have confounded human thinkers since prehistory.
I’m trying to show you something miraculous. It simply involves understanding that you are not your thoughts.
Re: Choose Your Weapon: Survival Strategies for Depressed AI Academics
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
The burden of the proof that AI techniques of today can approach consciousness is on who believes they do, not the other way around.
Maybe there is also some burden on other side to providing a definition of terms for the other party to argue against. I agree the burden of proof is on the AI side, but there is some burden on the deniers to provide some definitions if they wish to continue denying. AI Side: look here is my proof, Deniers: NO That isn't what I meant. I'd say GPT is already by its existence proof enough to start at least discussing c…
> burden on other side to providing a definition of terms
The skeptics are really not making any claims are they? If not then there's no burden of proof on them, is there?
Whoever says or implies that ChatBots are or are "becoming" "sentient" are the ones making a claim. They should prove it if they make or imply such a claim.
Skeptics are rightly skeptical, until they see a proof with clear definitions of terms from those who are saying or implying that ChatBots are 'approaching sentience".
Re: Choose Your Weapon: Survival Strategies for Depressed AI Academics
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing about current AI models profoundly challenges the unknowns of what makes consciousness work in any mystery-resolving way. People who confuse plainly programmed algorithmic systems like GPT 4 or Midjourney with the still unresolved issues of sentience as we know it so far are drinking far too much of the current batch of AI punch. Sadly, it's a sentiment I see all too often on HN, a site in which i'd assume mo…
I think the mystery of why we're not just philosophical zombies was never going to have some eureka moment, given that it's quite plain it's an emergent property. Was there a creature in history that wasn't sentient that gave birth to a creature that was? Clearly not. The reason recent results are significant in this discussion is because: - Larger networks are already displaying emergent behaviours that couldn't hav…
it's quite plain it's an emergent property
That is not at all quite plain. Respectable philosophical views include the proposition it is at least as fundamental as space or time.
Re: Choose Your Weapon: Survival Strategies for Depressed AI Academics
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're missing the point. It's not that GPT4 is sentient, not that successor LLMs will be. It may be we never create something that's sentient, by our definition. My argument is just that: - Sentience is variable. We might regard primitive organisms as biological machines. As some of these machines have slowly evolved to become more complex, sentience/consciousness has emerged, effectively by 'redesigning' an…
There's no need to move goal posts. There's very clear definitions for sentience & sapience. The only confusion is that laypeople tend to conflate sentience & sapience. A sentient AI is not necessarily a sapient one, by definition.
Which definitions of "sentience" and "sapience" might you be referring to, in particular? This is important thanks for bringing it up.
Re: Choose Your Weapon: Survival Strategies for Depressed AI Academics
#70As a theorist in AI, the premise is funny but also really sad. And yet it is a very pervasive premise in the field. OpenAI is not doing science. They are building a big shiny thing, showing it off, keeping it closed, and making money off of it. That is not part of the scientific process. It is as if, every time SpaceX launched a rocket a little bit higher, every aerospace department ooh'd and aah'd and threw up their…
Conversely: if you’re a depressed AI researcher: come on over to science, the water’s fine! We have centuries worth of open problems that are not going to be solved by ChatGPT, and need more smart technical people than we can hire.
The problem is usually that science can't pay even a fraction of what you can make in industry right now, and meanwhile the good science jobs are often in high cost of living places.