911–920 of 1001 posts
This entire essay basically boils down to one simple contention: LLMs can’t be conscious because only humans can be conscious and LLMs are not human. What an unimaginative argument: essentially ruling out the possibility of the title by definition. And the author fails to touch on the really interesting question posed by the article’s title: what if human consciousness is more like the working of LLMs than we think?
My background is in cognitive science and psycholinguistics. I spent more than ten years talking to first year psychology undergraduates about whether AIs could be conscious; also did some research on (extremely tiny) AIs in modelling language behaviours. There is a great deal of good thinking on Chiang's topic by professional philosophers, and there's much to be said for reading them. I won't rehearse their ideas he…
> I won't rehearse their ideas here Is there an accessible way for a layman such as myself to read about some of these ideas (Really I mean philosophical discussion in general) without having to read entire books? Is there an active HN-equivalent or wiki or something?
I’ll mention some more sources in my reply above.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I dare you to objectively prove to me that you're conscious.
My background is in cognitive science and psycholinguistics. I spent more than ten years talking to first year psychology undergraduates about whether AIs could be conscious; also did some research on (extremely tiny) AIs in modelling language behaviours. There is a great deal of good thinking on Chiang's topic by professional philosophers, and there's much to be said for reading them. I won't rehearse their ideas he…
I have a similar long term interest in this field. It has been quite frustrating encountering arguments that have been extensively debated for years be presented as if they were new revelations. In all my debates with people in the last few years I have primarily taken the position of trying to explain the problems with claims of certainty, and that lack of certainty permits possibility of the opposite. We should act…
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…
Imagine a device that you put on your head and press "record". After 5 minutes, you press "stop" and then I put it on my head and press "play". I then experience those 5 minutes as you experienced them. You could also replay your own 5 minutes and confirm the recording is accurate.
That device doesn't exist today -- it's sci-fi -- but there's no known law of physics that forbids it. If it is built it would be a lot of progress towards, perhaps even a solution for, the hard problem.
The only realistic way we either build that device or prove that it can't be built is science (probably neuroscience). So, my opinion is that, to a large degree, when we opine about "subjective nature of experience" we're bloviating a bit. Our experience is subjective now but there's no law of physics that says that must always be true.
My background is in cognitive science and psycholinguistics. I spent more than ten years talking to first year psychology undergraduates about whether AIs could be conscious; also did some research on (extremely tiny) AIs in modelling language behaviours. There is a great deal of good thinking on Chiang's topic by professional philosophers, and there's much to be said for reading them. I won't rehearse their ideas he…
> I won't rehearse their ideas here Is there an accessible way for a layman such as myself to read about some of these ideas (Really I mean philosophical discussion in general) without having to read entire books? Is there an active HN-equivalent or wiki or something?
They're not exactly casually absorbed, as in a wiki or forum. But you can read some books that begin to introduce these ideas. On the topic of consciousness, less academic and more slated towards general audience: Reality+ by David Chalmers and Mind and Cosmos by Thomas Nagel and Galileo's Error by Phillip Goff will give you and interesting gamut of ideas.
The thing about arguments in philosophy is that they span from a very old web of thought that has been refined into very sharp positions over a long time. So you will find yourself ever recursively going back to understand ideas and framing with more precision.
This is why it's difficult to casually get into these topics IMO. There's just been so much said and discussed, to understand the current meta (as the gaming folks might say), you have to understand how we arrived at the current meta. And that's a long journey that's never complete!
This entire essay basically boils down to one simple contention: LLMs can’t be conscious because only humans can be conscious and LLMs are not human. What an unimaginative argument: essentially ruling out the possibility of the title by definition. And the author fails to touch on the really interesting question posed by the article’s title: what if human consciousness is more like the working of LLMs than we think?
why not publish a paper stating - 'the radio is not conscious just because it can speak words'. or "the phone is not conscious because it can speak and listen".