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Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

theatlantic.com

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Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#851

Post by throwthrowuknow »

goatlover wrote: post #171
throwthrowuknow wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The body itself has little effect on the mind other than the inputs from nerves and chemical and hormonal changes. These inputs are analogous to tokens and parameters for an LLM. You could theoretically reserve some tokens to be used as “physical” or “emotional” sensations that would affect the functioning of the model.

There are tens of millions of neurons in the stomach and intestines which do influence mood and motivate behavior.

and how do those signals reach the brain?

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#852

Post by ikrenji »

achow wrote: post #802
indoordin0saur wrote: post #793

I often hear the assumption that LLMs can or will become conscious because consciousness is likely substrate independent . The idea being that our brain is just a computer made out of meat and it doesn't do anything that can't be precisely simulated by a silicon computer. But I wonder if some of the magic in the human brain is its analog nature. Chemical signaling and impulses of neurons interact with each other with…

It is perhaps very relevant what Chris Olah (Anthropic co-founder) said to pope.. I am a scientist. I lead a research team that studies the internal structure of these models—what is actually happening inside them. And I will be honest: we keep finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling. We find structures that mirror results from human neuroscience. We find evidence of introspection. We find internal states…

well of course anything from anthropic on the topic is going to be bombastic and hyped to the moon

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#853

Post by AndrewKemendo »

cwmma wrote: post #806
indoordin0saur wrote: post #793

I often hear the assumption that LLMs can or will become conscious because consciousness is likely substrate independent . The idea being that our brain is just a computer made out of meat and it doesn't do anything that can't be precisely simulated by a silicon computer. But I wonder if some of the magic in the human brain is its analog nature. Chemical signaling and impulses of neurons interact with each other with…

Probably not, we're nowhere near the complexity of the human brain yet, there are also quantization limits to the human brain (i.e. molecules, quantum physics, etc) so to characterize them as having infinite detail is probably a bad modal. If I'm going to be honest most of the people who advocate this type of thing tend to be, shall we say, crypto-duelists who really believe in a soul but not like intellectually but…

You nailed it which is that almost everyone I’ve met seems to believe in some version of dualism

If that’s even subtly your position then there’s no way to have a productive conversation about perception, reality/truth, epistemology and especially consciousness

It’s honestly maddening cause I’ve had great conversations about this with educated people, and all but only a handful, collapse into the other person relying on some nonfalsifiable dualist argument

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#854

Post by vidarh »

andrewflnr wrote: post #839
slibhb wrote: post #836

There's currently no way to prove that something is or isn't conscious. I would bet that rocks and LLMs aren't conscious. I would bet that humans and dogs are conscious. But I can't prove it. Whenever people try to prove it (in either direction), they end up resorting to sophistry. This state of affairs could change. If neuroscientists develop a deeper understanding of consciousness, we could talk about it with more…

I actually don't think neuroscience can solve it either. Science could decide whether, e.g. equivalent physical processes are occurring in dogs and humans, and you could argue that solves the question for things with physical brains, but even then it can't measure whether another brain has the same subjective experience as you do. It can't really do that for other humans. It certainly can't answer that question for h…

I agree re: subjective experience. It seems like something inherently unknowable.

What we could do is break down other facets of what we talk about under the umbrella of consciousness, and find measurable subsets.

E.g. a lot of people insists LLMs can't reason either. Coming up with a testable definition of what that means might be doable.

Overall also just separating the subjective experience from the rest leaves us in a position where proving the possibility of AGI "just" rests on whether or not human brains exceed the Turing computable.

If they don't, then subjective experience or not is irrelevant for the question of reasoning and intelligence, as in that case a subjective experience either can't affect the computation or must itself be at least possible to fully simulate by any Turing complete system.

The problem of subjective experience then would largely be down to faith and feelings but would also be entirely orthogonal to the rest.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#855

Post by zone411 »

lubujackson wrote: post #767
haktan wrote: post #586

I don't understand the most of the responses here. What does computers getting more intelligent has to do with it getting conscious? Even if AI with current computer architecture gets much more intelligent than humans, it will still have the same amount of consciousness. Its still bunch of instructions. If we got a lot of people together and did all the instructions by hand to get an LLM result would we also create t…

The key point is there is plenty of proof that consciousness is emergent, not structurally baked in. An excellent counterpoint is the "They're Made Out of Weights" post. There are plenty of emergent systems that clearly show intent and what we consider intelligence, like how ant colonies act as a unit. If you want to get evolutionarily technical, humans are made of cells which began as individual organisms and coales…

That's not proof. Emergent intelligence is not consciousness.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#856

Post by rootusrootus »

slibhb wrote: post #836

There's currently no way to prove that something is or isn't conscious. I would bet that rocks and LLMs aren't conscious. I would bet that humans and dogs are conscious. But I can't prove it. Whenever people try to prove it (in either direction), they end up resorting to sophistry. This state of affairs could change. If neuroscientists develop a deeper understanding of consciousness, we could talk about it with more…

Seems to me that the burden of proof lies with anyone claiming consciousness. Saying it might be conscious like a human but we don’t know is no more useful than any other conspiracy theory.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#857

Post by dsjoerg »

This is very jumbled argumentation.

Is his claim "nobody has proven LLMs are conscious" or "I can prove that LLMs aren't conscious" ?

He goes back and forth.

Proving a negative about consciousness would require a settled theory of consciousness that nobody has, including him.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#858

Post by sunjain »

On thinking in humans, and it's process, UG 40+ years back : "That searching is thinking. But it is a mechanical process. In the word-finder or computer there is is no thinker thinking at all. If there is any information or anything that is referred to, the computer puts it together and throws it out. That is all that is happening. It is a very mechanical thing that is happening. We are not ready to accept that thought is mechanical because that knocks off the whole image that we are not just machines. It is an extraordinary machine. It is not different from the computers that we use. But this body is something living; it has got a living quality to it. It has vitality. It is not just mechanically repeating; it carries with it the life energy like that current energy."

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#859

Post by vidarh »

wint3rmute wrote: post #845
andrewflnr wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually don't think neuroscience can solve it either. Science could decide whether, e.g. equivalent physical processes are occurring in dogs and humans, and you could argue that solves the question for things with physical brains, but even then it can't measure whether another brain has the same subjective experience as you do. It can't really do that for other humans. It certainly can't answer that question for h…

I've heard an interesting argument about this while going down the rabbit hole of the hard problem of conciousness. Unfortunately can't rember the source - if you can recognize it, do let me know! Back in the XVII/XIX century, a similar problem existed regarding life - the problem of "what makes living things tick" . The assumption at that time was that while we can understand the biological processes around life, we…

The problem of subjective is different, because while we might be able to get to a point of being able to say it can't affect anything, pretty much by definition we can't experience another entity's subjective experience or lack thereof.

Even if we were to e.g. identify some field that seemed to coincide with entities reporting a subjective experience, we wouldn't have a way of determining if they truly do, or just act as if they do, nor is it clear such entities would be able to report the difference.

As it is, we struggle to quantify even much more basic differences in experience that we can introspect. E.g. I have aphantasia - I don't see things in my minds eye - and I regularly come across people who insists both that can't be true, and that it can't be true that others see things. And some of the people I've spoken to who insist aphantasia isn't real clearly has it based on digging into their thinking about it.

Even at that level we rely on trusting people's claims about their introspection - we don't know, we assume based on testimony.

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