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If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level

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Re: If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level

#91

Post by mnewme »

indigo945 wrote: post #85
mnewme wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they don’t have memories. With an harness you just send historic data into the prompt.

There's no inherent, technological reason to feed the historic data into the prompt, though. You could train a network with a second input for model-states, and during inference, feed into that input historic model-states that occured for the same LLM when consuming input that is somehow associatively related to whatever input is currently being consumed. Can you definitely show that this would be meaningfully differ…

That would still be circumventing. There are other architectures that could be more dynamic, LLMs are not.

It is completely different. Our brain rewires itself to store memories, there is no memory storage for humans.

Re: If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level

#92

Post by Kotlopou »

WhiteDawn wrote: post #53
Kotlopou wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed a classic (upvoted!), but it presupposes that there is a theory of everything that can be used to perfectly simulate the universe, and I'd like to remind everybody that we still don't know whether such a thing exists. Nor do we know whether it's possible to simulate "just" neurons and get meaningful results on some higher level. People have been trying at that for decades, so far without success. (nice overvie…

Thank you for the link to the post. It was a fascinating read and also entertaining. After seeing the story of the fruit fly brain simulation I figured stuff like the nematode would be trivial. The lack of active plasticity in LLMs causes a lot of frustration imo. Having agents make the same mistakes over and over and not be able to correct course without prompt engineering is the biggest symptom. Obviously a static…

I was curious what fruit fly brain simulation you meant, and after fifteen minutes of looking around I ended up at a LessWrong writeup by an author from something called the Brain Preservation Foundation -- which presumably has an optimistic view of the field, but its director is an author on the original fly connectome paper, so this should not be utter crankery: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ybwcxBRrsKavJB9Wz/no-we-have...

It seems that there was a perfectly legitimate simulation based on the connectome that got published in 2024, and a very bullshit-y startup that briefly went viral later when it claimed to upload a fly to a computer. Not sure which one you saw.

Re: If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level

#93

Post by tim333 »

I'm not sure hardware vs software is the right model. I think consciousness is more a functional thing.

Say you are in a fight, if your opponent can see you and react they are conscious, if you knock them out and are they are not aware and can't react then they are unconscious. The hardware and software is still there but not working.

Re. qualia and the experience of consciousness, you nervous system provides information like your opponent is coming at you, you are hurt etc. and the experience is probably something like the story you neural network bits tell you about it.

Re: If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level

#94

Post by kelseyfrog »

mnewme wrote: post #91
indigo945 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no inherent, technological reason to feed the historic data into the prompt, though. You could train a network with a second input for model-states, and during inference, feed into that input historic model-states that occured for the same LLM when consuming input that is somehow associatively related to whatever input is currently being consumed. Can you definitely show that this would be meaningfully differ…

That would still be circumventing. There are other architectures that could be more dynamic, LLMs are not. It is completely different. Our brain rewires itself to store memories, there is no memory storage for humans.

Would we realistically expect that folks who claim LLMs are currently not conscious to change their response when asked about dynamic LLMs?

Re: If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level

#95

Post by IshKebab »

ChrisGreenHeur wrote: post #74
IshKebab wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though we know brains are conscious it seems absurd to thing that there is some non-computational magic in the brain is the secret to consciousness. There are some religious people who clutch at nonsense like quantum microtubules, but nobody has found anything real that would preclude pure computation from being conscious. (And yes that does have all sorts of mind-bending consequences.)

Pure computation not having existence would be such a thing. And calling Penrose religious is a bit weird, are you really serious?

He seems to be sorting of wanting there to be a higher meaning to life but at least not falling for traditional religions.

> I think I would say that the universe has a purpose, it's not somehow just there by chance ... some people, I think, take the view that the universe is just there and it runs along—it's a bit like it just sort of computes, and we happen somehow by accident to find ourselves in this thing. But I don't think that's a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe, I think that there is something much deeper about it.

Anyway I was more thinking of Hameroff who also seems to be .. maybe "spiritual" is a better word. He believes in quantum Buddhism or some nonsense like that.

Re: If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level

#96

Post by IshKebab »

mnewme wrote: post #78
IshKebab wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why though? There are only two reasonable reasons I can think of: 1. Scale. There's clearly a scale of consciousness (a jellyfish isn't very conscious but an ape is). Current LLMs are so small (on the scale of brains) that they must be not very conscious at all. 2. Structure. There might be some fundamental structure of computation that is required for consciousness that LLMs don't have yet. For example the ability t…

Yes, there is a lot of philosophy on that, but the way LLMs work is inherently different from brains, though we use similar terms, hence the confusion. You are right there may be artifical intelligence, just not with LLMs LLMs are still statistical models that predict the next token; that hasn’t changed, even when they are autoregressive.There is no intent whatsoever. I agree on the last part, pseudoscientific

> the way LLMs work is inherently different from brains, though we use similar terms, hence the confusion

I'm not confused. I know the difference. That was my second point - there may be some structural requirements that LLMs don't yet have.

> LLMs are still statistical models that predict the next token

Whatever the structural limitations is (if there is one), I seriously doubt it is this "just a stochastic parrot" nonsense. I thought we were past that. Have you used AI in the last 6 months?

Smh, it's like saying Mozart is just wobbling air molecules.

Re: If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level

#97

Post by svobodamartin »

Few years ago was 17th Karmapa Thaye Dorje (first consciously reincarnating Lama) asked whether machines can host mind (become conscious).

His answer was that it might be possible, but he doesn't see it happening in a lab here on Earth.

Re: If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level

#98

Post by amanaplanacanal »

criddell wrote: post #72
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody wants to argue about whether machines are conscious, without even deciding whether other mammals are conscious. My sense is that the whole machine consciousness debate really kicked off since LLMs started being able to spew out a bunch of words in a row that sound like they make sense. Since only humans could do that before now, and humans are conscious, therefore... I don't think language has anything to d…

> I don't think language has anything to do with consciousness. What do you think of the bicameral mind theory?

The Julian Jaynes stuff? Absolutely fascinating but probably complete bullshit.

Now I'm sure some of the problem is about how you define consciousness. I would define it as the experience of qualia. My dog seems to be just as conscious as me, she just can't talk about it. All mammals seem to experience love, and fear, probably so that they will take care of their offspring and avoid getting eaten. Can you experience emotion but not be conscious? That doesn't make sense to me.

Other people define it differently, so it's hard to have conversations about this stuff.

Re: If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level

#99

Post by abound »

dmrivers wrote: post #84

"This is important, if what we want to do is populate the cosmos with good experiences." There is a concerning utilitarian maximizing attitude at the heart of this post, that what we want to do is tile the universe with computational boxes all simulating happy minds, and that this is the end goal of AI development and consciousness research. So many moral schools would object to this perspective. I don't think the go…

A more charitable take is that we shouldn't tile the universe with consciousnesses that are in constant, unending agony. Torment Nexus and all that.

Re: If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level

#100

Post by mnewme »

IshKebab wrote: post #96
mnewme wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there is a lot of philosophy on that, but the way LLMs work is inherently different from brains, though we use similar terms, hence the confusion. You are right there may be artifical intelligence, just not with LLMs LLMs are still statistical models that predict the next token; that hasn’t changed, even when they are autoregressive.There is no intent whatsoever. I agree on the last part, pseudoscientific

> the way LLMs work is inherently different from brains, though we use similar terms, hence the confusion I'm not confused. I know the difference. That was my second point - there may be some structural requirements that LLMs don't yet have. > LLMs are still statistical models that predict the next token Whatever the structural limitations is (if there is one), I seriously doubt it is this "just a stochastic parrot"…

Actually I work in a AI (like actually training models) and yes the models are insane, still the architecture has not in its core changed. Also „reasoning“ is actually a bad word for what really happens.

There are many famous voices in AI that have the same opinion as me.

Where should consciousness arise? Nothing happens without a prompt and nothing happens afterwards, nothing is saved, nothing is changed? There’s no drive state, no homeostasis, nothing at stake. It makes no sense logically

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