41–50 of 271 posts
I think this is the same ethical questions of veganism and our use/abuse of biological systems. This is an excerpt from "The Pig that Wants to be Eaten" by Julian Baggini > After forty years of vegetarianism, Max Berger was about to sit down to a feast of pork sausages, crispy bacon and pan-fried chicken breast. Max had always missed the taste of meat, but his principles were stronger than his culinary cravings. But…
is this from Baggini or Adams?
"Where do we draw the line?" There will be no line as long as there is the rush to win the capitalist game. UNTIL -> The ball of neurons begins outthinking the humans. Probably also fused with some AI augmentation. It only takes a few percentage points for a Human to outthink a Chimp. This new 'thing' will dominate the humans.
A living bundle of neurons that can grow and learn is exciting to think about.
It's also terrifying to imagine the ramifications considering how things are going with silicon based AI.
Anyone who believes AI running on silicon could in principle be conscious has to believe that biological computers are conscious, right? Why aren't those people voicing more concerns?
This does not follow. Just because biological brains can be conscious does not mean that all of them are, the same way that not every computer is running windows XP. Why would you expect more concern from people about biological computing? It's not even demonstrated feasibility yet, while LLM based "AI" is already widely used.
Still, the day we manage to run a full LLM on biological neurons, even if using conventional code under the hood, will be a very interesting day for consciousness discussions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If ai running on silicon can be conscious - does it imply that the same calculation done by a human with pen and paper is also conscious?
Your brain is a network. How does your entangled fatty tissue achieved consciousness? I think that until we can answer this question in the authoritative way ruling out non-brain based consciousness concept is not particularly well thought thought - after all plants exhibit communication and response mechanisms that are similar to those in animals - without brain. So what's your theory of consciousness and how does i…
It doesn't. Humans aren't conscious. Nor are any other organisms. They don't have souls either, but that goes without saying since it's just an archaic synonym. Mostly this occurs because humans have painted themselves into corners morally-speaking, and they need justification to eat bacon or grow their population. And apparently "because we can and we want to" isn't the correct solution.
We'll never be able to "answer the question" because it is an absurd question on its face. "Where do we find the magical brain ghosts making us special" presupposes there is something to be found, and a negative answer proves only that we haven't looked hard enough.
>after all plants exhibit communication and response mechanisms that are similar to those in animals - without brain.
Were that line of inquiry followed to its inevitable conclusion, there would be a mass vegan suicide to look forward to.
"Where do we draw the line?" There will be no line as long as there is the rush to win the capitalist game. UNTIL -> The ball of neurons begins outthinking the humans. Probably also fused with some AI augmentation. It only takes a few percentage points for a Human to outthink a Chimp. This new 'thing' will dominate the humans.
This is where I'm at as well. I don't think we'll see true AGI until we go beyond silicon. It can't grow on it's own, and we'd burn the world down trying to get it to scale. A living bundle of neurons that can grow and learn is exciting to think about. It's also terrifying to imagine the ramifications considering how things are going with silicon based AI.
They are, but those last few months of changing diapers when you just wish you could trust it to tell you it has to go to the potty are difficult.
Be careful about how you interpret that paper. It looks really impressive -- real neurons in a petri dish seem to successfully (if amateurishly) murk a few imps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRV8fSw6HaE But there's more to the setup than you might assume from a casual reading. Here's the code used for that demo: https://github.com/SeanCole02/doom-neuron So there is an entire pytorch stack wrapped around the myster…
I think this is the same ethical questions of veganism and our use/abuse of biological systems. This is an excerpt from "The Pig that Wants to be Eaten" by Julian Baggini > After forty years of vegetarianism, Max Berger was about to sit down to a feast of pork sausages, crispy bacon and pan-fried chicken breast. Max had always missed the taste of meat, but his principles were stronger than his culinary cravings. But…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel that "YouTube makes you an idiot" is a misdiagnosis. And one I hear frequently. Books can make you an idiot too- I think of "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" or "Grit" or any number of pseudo-science best seller books. These books end up capturing the public imagination in big ways too- Grit caused some government policy in the US around when it was popular. The difference, I suppose, is that YouTube works faster by having…
Why is Grit pseudoscience? I haven't read it.
Also, it can be argued the author was either playing fast and loose or knowingly misleading readers with her statistics: https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/05/25/479172868/angela-...
If you like Podcasts the "If Books Could Kill" Podcast goes into some of this story again too.
Anyone who believes AI running on silicon could in principle be conscious has to believe that biological computers are conscious, right? Why aren't those people voicing more concerns?