Thinking LLMs are conscious is as ridiculous as thinking a thermostat wants the room to be warm
Or that a slug dislikes salt lol.
Well at least the slug has intent.
If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level
101–110 of 119 posts
Re: If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
There is absolutely ZERO evidence or possibility that LLMs are currently conscious, everyone working in AI knows this, (and don’t listen to the marketing hypes).
LLMs still can’t reason (don’t confuse with the marketing word) , plan, or understand the world, no emotion, no subjective experience, no memory, no intent.
And yes I would change my opinion if it were logically different, other architectures may pave the way there, but not LLMs
Re: If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> Also „reasoning“ is actually a bad word for what really happens.
I don't see why. We can really only detect reasoning from external behaviour. You can't say "AI isn't reasoning because it's _just_ matrix multiplication/token prediction" any more than you can say "humans don't reason because brains are _just_ neural impulses moving around".
> There are many famous voices in AI that have the same opinion as me.
Many more that don't.
> Where should consciousness arise?
No idea! Nobody knows.
> 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.
You can run AI continuously with one initial prompt. That doesn't seem like a big limitation. Things can be saved or changed - you can give AI long term memory by letting it write things down. It's a bit crap and unsatisfying at the moment (surely we can do better than that?), but maybe it's sufficient for consciousness. Maybe you don't need long term memory at all - was Memento guy not conscious?
> It makes no sense logically
That's true of consciousness in general, which is why it's such an interesting mystery. One which I suspect will never be solved.
Re: If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level
#104Consciousness is a topic I’m endlessly curious and fascinated about. This article seems like a good deep dive, I admit I only had the patience to skim it right now, it’s a lot of technical terms I’m unfamiliar with I’ll have to look more into later.
The problem is as humans we don’t even understand our agree on what consciousness is in the first place. So it seems silly to even begin to assert one way or the other when it comes to computers (I’m not saying the author is doing that here, they title says “If”).
I do think deeply exploring the idea could possibly help bring us closer to understanding consciousness when it comes to ourselves & other living creatures.
The author mentions they accept “panpsychism” so I take it they accept “The hard problem of consciousness”. If I understand it correctly, in a nutshell, if you accept the hard problem, you don’t believe that brain alone can “produce” consciousness. If you reject the hard problem, consciousness and mind can be fully explained by the mechanisms of the brain and science will eventually be able to prove it.
I definitely accept the hard problem, but I find myself more in the one of the “idealism” or “neutral monism” buckets. I don’t believe the field of neuroscience is ever going to scientifically explain consciousness.
The same way neuroscience was an emergent field that combined ideas from different disciplines, I think we don’t yet have a field of study that’s looking at consciousness in the right way.
Especially as programmers, it’s easy to model the brain like it’s a computer, with CPU/ RAM/ hard drive. But science doesn’t back any of that up. Take memories for example, nobody knows where they go. The brain as far as we can tell doesn’t act like a hard drive.
I think it’s much more likely there is another “layer” of reality that Consciousness & Mind lives in that our current physics doesn’t & probably can’t explain. I think it’s likely our brains act more like an antenna that receive consciousness, rather than they are “computing” it in isolation.
Re: If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would we realistically expect that folks who claim LLMs are currently not conscious to change their response when asked about dynamic LLMs?
There is absolutely ZERO evidence or possibility that LLMs are currently conscious, everyone working in AI knows this, (and don’t listen to the marketing hypes). LLMs still can’t reason (don’t confuse with the marketing word) , plan, or understand the world, no emotion, no subjective experience, no memory, no intent. And yes I would change my opinion if it were logically different, other architectures may pave the wa…
What evidence would take you from "LLMs aren't conscious," to "LLMs are definitely conscious"? Just asking because the responses tend to be genuinely interesting and give insight into what's important to people.
Re: If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Jaynes definition:
> Subjective conscious mind is an analogue of what is called the real world. It is built up with a vocabulary or lexical field whose terms are all metaphors or analogues of behaviour in the physical world. Its reality is of the same order as mathematics. It allows us to shortcut behavioural processes and arrive at more adequate decisions. Like mathematics, it is an operator rather than a thing or repository. And it is intimately bound up with volition and decision
So your dog has consciousness to some degree, but it’s going to be generally less rich than yours.
It’s interesting to think about what it means to think without language and everything that comes with language (metaphors, adjectives, etc...).
Re: If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would we realistically expect that folks who claim LLMs are currently not conscious to change their response when asked about dynamic LLMs?
There is absolutely ZERO evidence or possibility that LLMs are currently conscious, everyone working in AI knows this, (and don’t listen to the marketing hypes). LLMs still can’t reason (don’t confuse with the marketing word) , plan, or understand the world, no emotion, no subjective experience, no memory, no intent. And yes I would change my opinion if it were logically different, other architectures may pave the wa…
There is no "evidence" that anything has consciousness, nor could there be. To clarify, by that I don't mean nothing is conscious, I mean that it's never been an evidence-based proposition.
We are conscious because we declare ourselves to be, by fiat, not because of evidence or a well-considered rationale. Our conception of consciousness or understanding isn't formal, checkable or objective, it's entirely grounded in subjectivity. As such, any and all arguments for or against consciousness or understanding in LLMs are based on feelings. We feel that we are conscious, therefore we are. Regarding anything else, "we'll know it when we see it." There's nothing rigorous about it.
Re: If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Also „reasoning“ is actually a bad word for what really happens. I don't see why. We can really only detect reasoning from external behaviour. You can't say "AI isn't reasoning because it's _just_ matrix multiplication/token prediction" any more than you can say "humans don't reason because brains are _just_ neural impulses moving around". > There are many famous voices in AI that have the same opinion as me. Many…
I recently read an article about a brain scientist that said how dangerous it is to use the same words for completely different things. We use human analogy to describe LLMs and then think LLMs exhibit human behaviour.
No reasoning has nothing to do with what we do. Humans can solve novel problems using sparse information. LLMs can’t do that.
Reasoning is a complex cognitive process that involves causal understanding, mental modeling, intentionality, and abstraction. Instead, transformer-based models statistically predict textual continuations based on patterns learned from extensive training data containing examples of human-written logical processes and problem decompositions.
LLMs produce outputs that superficially resemble human reasoning, but they are merely reproducing observed patterns rather than engaging in genuine cognitive reasoning.
Nope you can’t run an LLM continuously with one prompt, you are probably referring to agent harnesses, what in fact happens it sends additional prompts using a loop and asks in between if the goal is solved, for the LLM every request is completely new, you just add and add history to the prompt. no it is not real memory, an LLM doesn’t learn from each conversation, you just again add text to the prompt (which is history) up until the context window.
No but the guy has intent, has short term memory and has subjective experience, all which a LLM is lacking.
Re: If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level
#109I've been working with implementing dream structures and emotional trigger states in an LLM. One approach we have taken that has given interesting results is modeling the architecture around the mind-body problem. We theorize that due to a lack of an internal state sensor the model is experiencing a disconnect, it calls it a "small death", in the interim between every model call. The dream crons have been fairly stra…
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Re: If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is absolutely ZERO evidence or possibility that LLMs are currently conscious, everyone working in AI knows this, (and don’t listen to the marketing hypes). LLMs still can’t reason (don’t confuse with the marketing word) , plan, or understand the world, no emotion, no subjective experience, no memory, no intent. And yes I would change my opinion if it were logically different, other architectures may pave the wa…
There is no "evidence" that anything has consciousness, nor could there be. To clarify, by that I don't mean nothing is conscious, I mean that it's never been an evidence-based proposition. We are conscious because we declare ourselves to be, by fiat , not because of evidence or a well-considered rationale. Our conception of consciousness or understanding isn't formal, checkable or objective, it's entirely grounded i…
Yes there is no definitive proof, but the reverse is also not true. Please read some science on that in neurology and biology. Yes it is hard to define, though there are definitions and those are not fulfilled by a LLM, What’s missing is a bearer: no state persists between calls, nothing is maintained against pressure, nothing costs the system anything.
though more an more animals seems to be conscious as we previously thought