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Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea
131–140 of 310 posts
Re: Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
is solipsism wrong, or is it just me?
I am really curious to know why? And don't invoke "what about your kids, mothers, fathers?". "Solipsism" (first time I have heard of this, so thank you) does not make me feel any less worse when something happens to them.
The parent was making a joke, but one way to answer your question might be:
You feel bad because you assume they - like you - feel something when you mistreat them, and you assume this at a very deep level that might not, itself, feel like anything to you.
Re: Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea
#133> We think we’re intelligent, know we’re conscious, and so assume the two go together. Excuse me, I know _I_ am conscious. There is literally nothing you can do to proof that there's anything outside of what I am conscious of. The world could be a very stable illusion, a dream, a simulation and it would all be the same. I don't understand why people think that it matters whether AI is conscious or not. We can't even…
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Re: Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea
#134> Although precise definitions are hard to come by, intuitively we all know what consciousness is. This is the key problem. To me it looks like most of this article is conflicted about what the definition exactly is: - basic conscious experiences such as pleasure and pain might not require much species-level intelligence at all - [there will come] a point at which they also become aware—at which the inner lights come…
It's a muddy word. We all know what 'unconscious' means: unaware of our environment. Taking the converse of that, every living thing is conscious most of the time.
What does it mean to be aware of our environment? LLMs can produce knowledge about themselves and the environment. Would placing a LLM in a body that has sensors which convert the current environment into a text stream make LLMs concious?
Re: Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea
#135> We think we’re intelligent, know we’re conscious, and so assume the two go together. Excuse me, I know _I_ am conscious. There is literally nothing you can do to proof that there's anything outside of what I am conscious of. The world could be a very stable illusion, a dream, a simulation and it would all be the same. I don't understand why people think that it matters whether AI is conscious or not. We can't even…
The fact that other humans are so similar to me (all humans are similar in virtue of being human organisms) allows for an analogical inference: You guys are similar to me, I am conscious, therefore you are probably also conscious.
And whether or not something is conscious matters a lot ethically. If something is conscious, it may suffer. Conscious and unconscious objects have to be treated in a completely different way. We assume rocks aren't conscious and don't suffer from being broken apart, but we assume animals are conscious. That's why we treat them differently.
We can't know for certain whether something is or isn't conscious, but we have to try to make a best guess.
Re: Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea
#136I have a thought experiment that has helped me think more carefully about consciousness (sentience) vs intelligence.
Imagine an all-powerful genie appears and gives you a magic wand. But, the genie says, the magic wand only does one thing:
If you flick the magic wand at something, you get to fully experience what it's like to BE that something for 90 seconds. When the 90 seconds are up, you return to your own body but can remember exactly what your experience was like - even if that experience was so alien that it was utterly unlike anything you (or any other human) has experienced before.
"How wonderful," you think, "I can't wait to try it!"
But, replies the genie, there's a catch:
If you "flick" this wand at something that has no consciousness, you will die.
Now... what - if anything - would you flick the wand at?
Re: Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea
#137> My own view is that consciousness is intimately tied to our nature as living flesh-and-blood creatures
Already appeared to be a very flawed summarisation of the situation, but I had to stop reading after that sentence.
Re: Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea
#138> The dawn of conscious machines will introduce vast new potential for suffering in the world, suffering we might not even be able to recognize, and which might flicker into existence in innumerable server farms at the click of a mouse.
May as well say the same of human reproduction, or animal husbandry (especially of the industrialized/factory kind.) We already assume these powers for ourselves, collectively, at the scale of billions, what difference does it make if it's consciousness in silicon instead of flesh?
Civilization, society, progress, all of it is fueled by the suffering of living things -- human and not.
Re: Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea
#139> We think we’re intelligent, know we’re conscious, and so assume the two go together. Excuse me, I know _I_ am conscious. There is literally nothing you can do to proof that there's anything outside of what I am conscious of. The world could be a very stable illusion, a dream, a simulation and it would all be the same. I don't understand why people think that it matters whether AI is conscious or not. We can't even…
The fact that other humans are so similar to me (all humans are similar in virtue of being human organisms) allows for an analogical inference: You guys are similar to me, I am conscious, therefore you are probably also conscious. And whether or not something is conscious matters a lot ethically. If something is conscious, it may suffer. Conscious and unconscious objects have to be treated in a completely different w…
While assuming that other human-looking things are conscious is a reasonable starting point, it certainly isn’t a given.
There seems to be a wide variety of thinking processes. Some folks don’t have internal monologues. Some folks can’t visualize images at all, and the ones that do, do it will varying amount of detail.
Isn’t it also reasonable that other humans have different degrees of consciousness, including perhaps not having one?
Re: Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea
#140A lot of people have wrote about the ethical considerations and to me they make no sense. Since when did our generally accepted ethics say that imposing suffering onto a conscious being is bad, but non-conscious beings is fine? This is the completely wrong correspondence because there's counter-arguments for both sides. You wouldn't harm a puppy, even though it's (probably?) not conscious, and I personally wouldn't c…
I see what happened there: sneaking that word 'being' to imply value and consciousness and then contradict that. You can reach any conclusion when the argument includes a contradiction?
What are you talking about? I'm not trying to pull an underhanded argument, I'm genuinely confused about others' views.