Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea

nautil.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 310 posts

Re: Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea

#141

Post by afastow »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #92
kajaktum wrote: post #79

> 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 cogito is lazy and wrong. You don't "know you exist" just because you "appear" to think. Appearance of thought is not the same as thought. P zombies would also proudly exclaim that they think therefore they are...

I don't think you understand what it's saying. They absolutely do know they exist, because they're actively experiencing it. Non-existent beings don't have experiences.

The fact that no one can "prove" it to you or anyone else is irrelevant for their own absolute certainty.

Re: Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea

#142

Post by Geee »

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #80
Geee wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is silly. The whole history of humankind is about reducing suffering, of ourselves and those around us. That's all we do. Also, suffering is a bug (or a feature) of biological organisms. Obviously machines shouldn't be engineered to be capable of suffering.

The conundrum appears when the machine needs to suffer in order to become an agent taking decisions in our world. For example, the machine should know not to cause a fire in my house while doing the cleaning, it should be "afraid" of fire. My point is, if synthetic agents do indeed need to suffer to be agents, we will accept it just as easily we accept now that our cars take on rust. And of course, we will minimize t…

We should be able to send robots into a fire, without a second thought. The robot should not feel any kind of suffering from the fire. Whoever owns the robot should decide how the robot should act. It may calculate the expected profit / cost of the action for the owner, but the owner should make the final decision.

Programming it to avoid setting things on fire is just programming; there's no need for emotions or other complex biological rewards functions which are hard to replicate in computers.

Engineering an agentic AI or a robot, i.e. a machine with independent will, is not a good idea at all, and shouldn't be pursued.

Re: Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea

#143

Post by byyyy »

I'm curious about the AI at Google that was claimed by a person who has since been fired to be conscious.

I mean I know everyone was attacking him but in a way I suspect it's similar to a lot of the unreasonable dismissive attitudes towards chatGPT.

We really can't say anything either way until we are able to access and play with that version of AI that Google is hiding. I believe it's called lambda?

The point is that Google may already be holding something very very similar to being conscious.

Re: Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea

#144

Post by jprete »

bowsamic wrote: post #105
kajaktum wrote: post #79

> 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…

> 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. You should really read some Hegel

I'd be interested in a more direct reference if you have one.

Re: Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea

#145

Post by jrv »

jnwatson wrote: post #139
cubefox wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 perha…

I think the best argument for that might be that some people don't seem to understand what "consciousness" (in the sense that you are talking about) even means, and how it's different from something that can be explained as an emergent phenomenon of known physics. I then sometimes wonder whether those people are not actually conscious, or whether they just don't get it.

Re: Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea

#146

Post by ly3xqhl8g9 »

layer8 wrote: post #130
ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good news we taste awful. I mean we eat antibiotics-driven factory farm meats. How good can we taste?

They’ll probably feed us up with healthy organic food first, and deny us those pesky antibiotics.

Well, in that case, I guess, chef, bring the aioli.

Re: Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea

#147

Post by peoplefromibiza »

archon1410 wrote: post #81
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, because we all know that humans care so much about the suffering of others: from fellow humans dying right now pointless deaths We are provably the only living being on Earth that do care about it. > If we will be able to spawn an agent in a household humanoid robot and let them do the chores around the house, will we do it, even if it will imply killing that agent whenever it powers down? You betcha That's th…

This is demonstrably false. We know other species can empathise[1] and there are countless examples of them helping others in distress. It's astounding that anyone can even assert such a thing so confidently. [1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/not-bad-science/can-pig...

yeah, that's not a rebuttal though

I was pointing out that humans are the only species that cares about this stuff, not simply that humans can empathize

Where are pigs armies in support of the Ukranian invasion? (fellow humans dying right now pointless deaths)

Where are pigs trying to save other animal species from extinction? (the suffering of others)

what kind of advancement in thought have pigs produced regarding the conservation and well being of other living creatures? (and non leaving too like oceans or mountains or glaciers)

We are the only species who cares and debates about it at scale, as a species, we recognize we have a responsibility, as a species, not just as individuals

Re: Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea

#148

Post by stOneskull »

taneq wrote: post #123

> even if, under the hood, they are just algorithms whirring away in subjective oblivion I'm always confused by statements like this. Like, unless we're assuming Cartesian dualism or something, humans are "under the hood, just algorithms whirring away in subjective oblivion". Whatever is happening in our information processing architecture to produce subjective consciousness isn't mystical and is, at least in theory,…

the brain is the ultimate quantum memcomputer with an antenna lightyears beyond wifi.

Re: Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea

#149

Post by skybrian »

byyyy wrote: post #143

I'm curious about the AI at Google that was claimed by a person who has since been fired to be conscious. I mean I know everyone was attacking him but in a way I suspect it's similar to a lot of the unreasonable dismissive attitudes towards chatGPT. We really can't say anything either way until we are able to access and play with that version of AI that Google is hiding. I believe it's called lambda? The point is tha…

We know AI chatbots aren't conscious most of the time because no program is running. There's nothing to do any thinking. [1]

We also know that they immediately forget anything they didn't write down. A chatbot has no memory of any internal calculations. If you ask it why it wrote something, it's guessing. [2]

People sometimes believe that an AI-generated character is conscious because the writing is convincing, along with some wishful thinking. But writers and characters aren't the same thing, and there's no writer waiting for your reply when you read the character's dialog. This essentially the same thing that happens when reading fiction. [3]

[1] https://skybrian.substack.com/p/ai-chats-are-turn-based-game...

[2] https://skybrian.substack.com/p/ai-chatbots-dont-know-why-th...

[3] https://skybrian.substack.com/p/the-ai-author-illusion

Re: Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea

#150

Post by peoplefromibiza »

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #61
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point is not that in nature there are also killings, it's that we are doing it. so there is no actual point ... we are part of the nature, we are not from another planet, we haven't landed here on a spaceship and colonized the World. > Very much not true: [1] [2] and plenty more in a quick search. Are you really comparing YouTube videos that attach some human traits to a cat, with thousands of years of philosop…

You mentioned "only living being", it's actually a gradient, some animals, like cats in those videos, various breeds of dogs that are child-friendly, cows, horses, and probably more domesticated animals, can develop various feelings (maybe codependency, who knows) for their owners and have desire to protect them when in peril. Yes, me living 100 feet above ground and speaking to you from 10,000 miles through a signal…

Not as a species.

Nobody ever said: let's ask what the cat think about it

It doesn't matter if a cat thinks he's a duck and raise some ducklings, it's a cat, it will kill many other animals for fun, they don't have anything like we have as a species.

Anyway, dogs exists only because we humans created the he way they are

We selected them to be agreeable and loyal and human loving

they did not exist before we literally invented them

> Is it just that you feel you are smarter than me?

that could only be true if you think you're dumber than me, because I never said anything that can remotely resemble a comparison of our personal intelligences. Which doesn't even matter much, I could be the dumbest and kindest person in the World.

Post reply on HN