It should tell you how much hysteria is surrounding LLMs and VLMs right now that someone has to say this stuff. It’s almost like most humans aren’t conscious.
Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
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Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
#22Suppose one selects an arbitrary hot-button issue [X] with two opposing sides and one side has anything less than overwhelming support. And then that person writes an article titled "Side 1 of issue [X] is true". Not "maybe" or "possibly". Just a straight-up declaration by fiat.
Would you categorize this particular style of rhetoric to be persuasive or annoying? And before you say "persuasive" because you're thinking about this specific issue regarding AI consciousness, consider many things in the past that have been written as though they were absolutely definitive, and yet today we believe exactly the opposite, and for many such issues we find the prevailing viewpoint at the time reprehensible.
That's not to say that Ted is wrong at all here; I'm not commenting on that. But I find the entire style of the article grating because it seems to violate common assumptions regarding "good faith" debate, and I would find the article equally frustrating if he had titled it "Artificial intelligence is conscious" and argued the opposite side, albeit in the same tone and using the same persuasion devices.
Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
#23Consciousness is a label like fat, smart, man, grumpy, cool. Like money, property, or the idea of a week, it's something that we've loosely agreed to out of convenience, not because it's some intrinsic property of the mind. It's a useful label because it determines how we treat things - that's fine. But insisting on searching for it is like searching for cognitive aether. It's the social equivalent of phlogiston. Lik…
Do you believe in the existence of any noun words which serve as something other than a "useful label, loosely agreed to out of convenience"?
"Car" is a good example of a label that's pretty strictly agreed to. If someone tells me they've developed a new car and then shows me a motorcycle, it's easy to prove that it's not a car, even though many of its engineering principles and functional components are identical to those in cars.
With consciousness, on the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any motorcycle-equivalent. Essentially everyone I've discussed the issue with (myself included) expects that any mind which runs on similar principles to ours or has similar thoughts to our thoughts is conscious.
Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
#24> We don’t need to fully understand the nature of consciousness to definitively say that certain things are not conscious, and conversational transcripts fall in that category. Well said. I think it is obvious and it has been obvious from the start that next token predictors are not conscious. Of course the extremely predictable clapback from AI-psychosis enjoyers is typically "you're just a next token predictor too!…
Independent of what you believe, I don't think this is the right way to approach thinking about it. It's basically emotion-oriented dismissal used as way to shortcut any substantial or nuanced discussion. It's like the opposite of intellectual curiosity.
Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
#25“Counsciousness” is the ultimate moving goalpost, and historically, it’s been one of humanity’s most effective intellectual weapons. An indefinable black box we intentionally gatekeep to draw an arbitrary line between ‘us’ and ‘them’. I don’t know if AI is conscious or not, and I honestly don’t know what it even means to be conscious. historically, by claiming a monopoly on it, we’ve successfully manufactured the phi…
The only reason I care about animal welfare is because I think they're probably conscious, capable of feeling fear and pain.
Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
#26“Counsciousness” is the ultimate moving goalpost, and historically, it’s been one of humanity’s most effective intellectual weapons. An indefinable black box we intentionally gatekeep to draw an arbitrary line between ‘us’ and ‘them’. I don’t know if AI is conscious or not, and I honestly don’t know what it even means to be conscious. historically, by claiming a monopoly on it, we’ve successfully manufactured the phi…
If we understand how a system “emulates” consciousness then we declare it an emulation. If we don’t quite understand how a system exhibits consciousness then we can say it might be conscious.
Basically, we need to leave room for the universal answer (God) to fit into the definition.
If we ever scientifically figure out how consciousness arises in our brains, I think we will have a bunch of very depressed people on our hands. If the truth isn’t met with flat out hostile denial. I fear any answer that doesn’t leave room for God will be rejected.
Since we have the source code to AI, and thus a Godless understanding of how it works, AI will NEVER be deemed “conscious”.
Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
#27“Counsciousness” is the ultimate moving goalpost, and historically, it’s been one of humanity’s most effective intellectual weapons. An indefinable black box we intentionally gatekeep to draw an arbitrary line between ‘us’ and ‘them’. I don’t know if AI is conscious or not, and I honestly don’t know what it even means to be conscious. historically, by claiming a monopoly on it, we’ve successfully manufactured the phi…
> I honestly don’t know what it even means to be conscious
> subjugate other cultures (assuming you mean they're not conscious in other's minds)
Have you ever considered you might be a philosophical zombie? [0]
Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
#28“Counsciousness” is the ultimate moving goalpost, and historically, it’s been one of humanity’s most effective intellectual weapons. An indefinable black box we intentionally gatekeep to draw an arbitrary line between ‘us’ and ‘them’. I don’t know if AI is conscious or not, and I honestly don’t know what it even means to be conscious. historically, by claiming a monopoly on it, we’ve successfully manufactured the phi…
Can you give some historical examples of people moving the goalposts around consciousness? I agree, perhaps, for aspects of "intelligence" but I can't think of any examples of it with regard to consciousness proper.
Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
#29“Counsciousness” is the ultimate moving goalpost, and historically, it’s been one of humanity’s most effective intellectual weapons. An indefinable black box we intentionally gatekeep to draw an arbitrary line between ‘us’ and ‘them’. I don’t know if AI is conscious or not, and I honestly don’t know what it even means to be conscious. historically, by claiming a monopoly on it, we’ve successfully manufactured the phi…
If we understand how a system “emulates” consciousness then we declare it an emulation. If we don’t quite understand how a system exhibits consciousness then we can say it might be conscious. Basically, we need to leave room for the universal answer (God) to fit into the definition. If we ever scientifically figure out how consciousness arises in our brains, I think we will have a bunch of very depressed people on ou…
I think that Jimmy Carr has it right: AI is the fourth great humiliation.
Regardless of whether something is concious, we're not going to be (by lay definition) the smartest entity on earth.
Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
#30“Counsciousness” is the ultimate moving goalpost, and historically, it’s been one of humanity’s most effective intellectual weapons. An indefinable black box we intentionally gatekeep to draw an arbitrary line between ‘us’ and ‘them’. I don’t know if AI is conscious or not, and I honestly don’t know what it even means to be conscious. historically, by claiming a monopoly on it, we’ve successfully manufactured the phi…
The only reason I care about animal welfare is because I think they're probably conscious, capable of feeling fear and pain.
Yes, that is the definition of consciousness (you care about them).