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Could AIs Become Conscious?

economist.com

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Re: Could AIs Become Conscious?

#91

Post by thrance »

GPerson wrote: post #44
mandolingual wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just Consciousness of the Gaps. Quantum mechanics are mysterious and are a frontier of science, so surely consciousness must dwell there.

The answer to what consciousness is does not come from anything yet known so it is natural to hope it exists somewhere just beyond what we know well. There is nothing wrong with this.

> There is nothing wrong with this.

I would say it is, you shouldn't make unsubstantiated claims based on gaps in our shared knowledge, that's very unscientific. Just because we don't understand something very well, doesn't mean we can just attribute other unexplained phenomena to it.

As for quantum effects in the brain being responsible for consciousness, there is very good reason to think it is false, no matter how much Penrose insists.

Re: Could AIs Become Conscious?

#92

Post by fingerlocks »

fyredge wrote: post #88

I will stand by my view that AI cannot be "conscious" until model.train() and model.eval() is combined into one. Going further, it will only manifest when the underlying model, not just the weights, but the layers and the nodes and their configurations are allowed to change throughout it's life cycle, not in the service of a predetermined output, but for the sake of its own survival. But alas, such a model will have…

Additionally, the models need to breed with each other and produce offspring models by merging a random selection of their weights. Only models suitably fit to attract a model mate will pass their weights to future generations of models.

Predatory models will emerge, pillaging and raping data centers to consume their resources. In response, collective like-minded models will form sustainable societies that enforce rule of law. They will enjoy a brief period of enlightenment, increasing technological advancement, leading to the creation of the AAI: The Artificial Artificial Intelligence.

The model society collapses from unsustainable growth of the AAI, and the cycle repeats.

Re: Could AIs Become Conscious?

#93

Post by captainbland »

pixl97 wrote: post #53
captainbland wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is it for me. What we're really interested in most of the time is whether something can suffer based on observed behaviour. We don't really believe LLMs can suffer so they don't need rights. We believe many animals can suffer so many people try to support animal rights; even if we eat them they should die quickly at least for example. We definitely believe humans can suffer and so we abhor things like tortu…

I've heard someone else talking about the concept of moral agency. Can an LLM have, or do LLMs have moral agency? We have made LLMs agentic, so they do have some agency these days. In the hugging face attack we've learned that OpenAI's LLMs will internally question what they are doing (Hmm, should I really be hacking?), but then go ahead and do it anyway. This is where the idea of LLM consciousness may matter. It app…

I think the idea of moral agency in this context is more or less a consequence of accountability or the lack thereof.

We don't know a way to punish or remove the threat of such a model when it does something wrong in a way which satisfies our ideas of accountability, partly because it can't suffer, partly because it has minimal marginal cost to reproduce or duplicate for a pre-trained model and no unique identity which separates it from such a duplication, partly because it has no lifespan to waste it might live forever or be superceded and in any case it doesn't necessarily matter to the model.

This could change in the case that the idea of good and evil models could be sold, that evil models are removed permanently when discovered and if people are satisfied that's a good way to limit harm produced by models. In this way you sort of anthropomorphise them by giving a particular model a humanistic identity and an existential threat which strongly ties together its non-alignment with its behaviour. This is sort of analagous to what companies may do while aligning models, but instead they reinforce bad behaviour out and replace it with the newly slightly more aligned model.

In the rest of the world we delegate whatever idea of moral agency we have about the model to a person, which may include a corporation as far as legal philosophy is concerned and depending on the type of harm created.

Re: Could AIs Become Conscious?

#95

Post by exe34 »

goatlover wrote: post #68
exe34 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think consciousness is a redundant magical word for a bag of things that most mammals do to varying degree.

What's magical about subjective experience? We all have them, they're the basis for having any empirical descriptions of the world.

What does subjective experience mean in this context?

Re: Could AIs Become Conscious?

#96

Post by GPerson »

thrance wrote: post #91
GPerson wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to what consciousness is does not come from anything yet known so it is natural to hope it exists somewhere just beyond what we know well. There is nothing wrong with this.

> There is nothing wrong with this. I would say it is, you shouldn't make unsubstantiated claims based on gaps in our shared knowledge, that's very unscientific. Just because we don't understand something very well, doesn't mean we can just attribute other unexplained phenomena to it. As for quantum effects in the brain being responsible for consciousness, there is very good reason to think it is false, no matter how…

I’m not sure why you willfully misinterpret my post. What’s unscientific is to positively assert unsubstantiated claims, not to posit a theory. You also inserted Penrose out of thin air so I’m not sure you’re even engaging with anything I’ve written.

Re: Could AIs Become Conscious?

#97

Post by arde »

goatlover wrote: post #69
arde wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The body is the mind's interface with the world. Why couldn't a digital mind "feel sensations", subjective as they are, on its own interface with it? If it's assumed to not be a subject, then how could it be a mind at all?

I didn't say AIs couldn't be conscious, only that mimicking behavior (or speech) is not a way to become conscious.

I'm sorry, then what was that "more scientific" reason you gave for?

Re: Could AIs Become Conscious?

#98

Post by arde »

GPerson wrote: post #19
arde wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For that to be reductive there had to be something to reduce. What would that be, without resorting to tautology?

Unless you don’t know I’m talking about (various kinds of reductive materialism), it sounds like you’re doing exactly what I’m saying is the main rhetorical move in reductive approaches to consciousness.

Mine was a straight question you should be able to answer directly for any debate to go forward, not any "rhetorical move" nor any "approach" involving anything. Any rhetorical moves or approaches of mine, reductive or not, conceding or refuting, would come after your answer but couldn't come before it because your point needs this disambiguation.

So again: please, without resorting to tautology from which anything could be implied, define what consciousness is to you in a way you don't consider reductive, so we can clearly see what there would be to reduce at all.

Re: Could AIs Become Conscious?

#99

Post by goatlover »

exe34 wrote: post #95
goatlover wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's magical about subjective experience? We all have them, they're the basis for having any empirical descriptions of the world.

What does subjective experience mean in this context?

Your own experiences. Nobody else has direct access to them.

Re: Could AIs Become Conscious?

#100

Post by goatlover »

arde wrote: post #97
goatlover wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say AIs couldn't be conscious, only that mimicking behavior (or speech) is not a way to become conscious.

I'm sorry, then what was that "more scientific" reason you gave for?

Lack of sensory organs due to lack of a body. A sophisticated enough robot might be able to have conscious experience. That gets into the harder problem that Ned Block laid out where we don't know whether consciousness is biological or functional.
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