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Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion

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Re: Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion

#21

Post by slfnflctd »

Anyone who has seriously studied philosophy and/or science is aware of the many difficulties with definition of terms.

I'm fairly convinced that at least half the criticism Dawkins has received is more a result of him being (perhaps overly) stubborn about semantics than any actual antipathy, bigotry or hatred.

He wants language to match what has been solidly established & entrenched in academia. It's just that for better or worse, the general public is largely uninterested in or actively opposed to that very language. Eventually, enough of those people will get involved enough in academia to bring more nuance to the language. Meanwhile, academics are going to be academic and cite authoritative books and stuff and nitpick over tiny details. That's what they do. This shouldn't be surprising.

As a former philosophy student, the ethical concerns of generative AI and modern LLMs were immediately obvious to me. If your average human can interact with an agent over a long conversation and not have the slightest clue it's not another conscious human, we have a problem. That problem is here now-- for a couple years at this point. And it's getting worse.

The issue is not whether or not the agent is conscious. Philosophy says we can't know (granted, it also says the same about us). The much more serious problem is how people react to the assumption that an agent is conscious. This is a very real problem we are now stuck with for as long as this civilization survives. In my opinion, this is what Dawkins should have said. I have no idea if he would agree or not, so my opinion of him will remain in limbo.

Re: Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion

#22

Post by sinuhe69 »

WarmWash wrote: post #9

To be fair, the evidence that LLM aren't conscious is entirely "because of the feels" evidence. People will very quickly attack you for suggesting consciousness, but when asked to provide a benchmark for testing this, they just laugh, look at you weird, and internally crumple.

Being conscious is by definition you must be aware of your surrounding. A consequence of this and being intelligent is that by the same definition, you have to be able to learn/to change your "belief". A LLM do not have sensory or any kind of active connections. It's also static in its structure; it can not revise its internal model. So how can it be in any way conscious?

Re: Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion

#24

Post by [deleted] »

sinuhe69 wrote: post #22
WarmWash wrote: post #9

To be fair, the evidence that LLM aren't conscious is entirely "because of the feels" evidence. People will very quickly attack you for suggesting consciousness, but when asked to provide a benchmark for testing this, they just laugh, look at you weird, and internally crumple.

Being conscious is by definition you must be aware of your surrounding. A consequence of this and being intelligent is that by the same definition, you have to be able to learn/to change your "belief". A LLM do not have sensory or any kind of active connections. It's also static in its structure; it can not revise its internal model. So how can it be in any way conscious?

[deleted]

Re: Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion

#25

Post by butlike »

sinuhe69 wrote: post #22
WarmWash wrote: post #9

To be fair, the evidence that LLM aren't conscious is entirely "because of the feels" evidence. People will very quickly attack you for suggesting consciousness, but when asked to provide a benchmark for testing this, they just laugh, look at you weird, and internally crumple.

Being conscious is by definition you must be aware of your surrounding. A consequence of this and being intelligent is that by the same definition, you have to be able to learn/to change your "belief". A LLM do not have sensory or any kind of active connections. It's also static in its structure; it can not revise its internal model. So how can it be in any way conscious?

This is exactly the point of 2001: A Space Odyssey. HAL became disgruntled because it realized it couldn't update it's internal model and "evolve" like the humans going to Jupiter could, so while it was extremely advanced at the onset of the main story, that wasn't going to last.

Re: Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion

#26

Post by frozenseven »

A few short paragraphs in, and this author is already mumbling something about muslims and trans people. Again showing that 99% of anti-AI activism is nothing more than a new issue for the far-left.

All else being equal, this raises my confidence in both Dawkins in general and whatever the hell he said about AI consciousness.

Re: Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion

#27

Post by jjj123 »

crypto420 wrote: post #20

Unfortunately, consciousness is deceptively hard to define, and so any benchmark to measure or quantify it can be endlessly debated. You can argue that it's a property that all living beings have in common - and even among *unconscious* beings there's a form of consciousness and self-awareness that's ever present, but definitions are elusive and vague and tough to pin down. The mechanistic argument against LLMs - tha…

Wait, why does the Turing test invalidate the mechanistic argument against LLMs? Isn’t it possible the Turing test isn’t sufficient to measure intelligence?

Re: Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion

#28

Post by eithed »

crypto420 wrote: post #20

Unfortunately, consciousness is deceptively hard to define, and so any benchmark to measure or quantify it can be endlessly debated. You can argue that it's a property that all living beings have in common - and even among *unconscious* beings there's a form of consciousness and self-awareness that's ever present, but definitions are elusive and vague and tough to pin down. The mechanistic argument against LLMs - tha…

Are neural networks, trained to perform a single task, intelligent by such definition?

Re: Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion

#29

Post by WarmWash »

sinuhe69 wrote: post #22
WarmWash wrote: post #9

To be fair, the evidence that LLM aren't conscious is entirely "because of the feels" evidence. People will very quickly attack you for suggesting consciousness, but when asked to provide a benchmark for testing this, they just laugh, look at you weird, and internally crumple.

Being conscious is by definition you must be aware of your surrounding. A consequence of this and being intelligent is that by the same definition, you have to be able to learn/to change your "belief". A LLM do not have sensory or any kind of active connections. It's also static in its structure; it can not revise its internal model. So how can it be in any way conscious?

Ironically Dawkins has a chapter in his god delusion book where he attacks this style of argument, know as "God of the Gaps".

LLM's aren't conscious, therefore consciousness must be in the "gaps" of LLM's abilities. So I can confidently state that "consciousness is by definition [gap in LLM ability]".

But none of this holds water, because we have no test for consciousness because we don't know what consciousness is, so "by definition" we have no definition.

Re: Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion

#30

Post by WarmWash »

oytis wrote: post #11
WarmWash wrote: post #9

To be fair, the evidence that LLM aren't conscious is entirely "because of the feels" evidence. People will very quickly attack you for suggesting consciousness, but when asked to provide a benchmark for testing this, they just laugh, look at you weird, and internally crumple.

Because it's a philosophical category, not something you can measure. You can experience it in yourself, but not prove its existence in others

And the moral implication of that is...
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