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Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

economist.com

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Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#51

Post by D-Machine »

orbital-decay wrote: post #50
D-Machine wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are still stuck in thinking consciousness is one unified thing, but it is about one of the clearest examples of a family-resemblance category as you can think of. Dynamicness / change is one aspect that is definitely part of what we tend to think of as being quite fundamental to consciousness, and there are a lot of ways in which LLMs can't and/or don't really change, and this strongly constrains how similar LLM…

Then I suggest you do the same for rigorous definitions that don't rely on consensus, and maybe also addressing my point about non-frozen weights directly.

LLM weights are frozen once the model is trained and a specific version is released, or this is true at least currently for almost all major models. You can ask interesting consciousness questions about LLMs, but you most definitely need to separate LLMs during training (whether this is pre-training, later fine-tuning, or general instruction tuning approaches) and after, during inference. None of this has any relevance to the core points I was making re: useful vs. useless discussions of LLMs and consciousness, because the weights point was just a minor example to illustrate a larger point about how narrowing the scope of the conversation is necessary for productive discourse.

I doubt we agree on what "rigorous definitions" means, given that you are happy to continue using a useless, vague family resemblance concept like "consciousness", but complain that pointing out dynamicness and/or change is involved is too vague.

I believe one cannot give a rigorous definition of consciousness precisely because it is a family resemblance concept, and there is no actual essence. This is why I suggest shifting to talking about aspects, since then productive insights and truths can be discovered.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#52

Post by lesostep »

beloch wrote: post #7
rmunn wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counterpoint article, which can be read at https://archive.ph/IeSZg , is also worth reading. (IMHO, the original article is completely wrongheaded and the counterpoint is far closer to correct, but I'll post my reasons for that opinion separately).

"Yet if we build systems that can suffer, and miss their sentience, we risk creating suffering on an industrial scale." -------------- Will we recognize AGI when it's finally made? Will we go from something that is not conscious to something that clearly is in one clean step, or will we murder millions of artificial lives while iteratively developing from the former to the latter? Will the tests we develop even work,…

There is nothing wrong with murdering a million lives while iteratively developing – it's how we grow and study bacteria after all. Any person that fixed their gut by sticking to a diet also did exactly that.

So if we are concerned with the AGI suffering, then we don't need to determine consciousness at all. We just need to prove that they don't have suffering capabilities. Which is a way easier question.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#54

Post by ordu »

rmunn wrote: post #48
ordu wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's just utterly and completely backwards. Yes, he says exactly that explicitly, that in his view we should look backwards. > We (at least, most people) avoid inflicting unnecessary pain on animals because they are conscious beings that can feel pain. I can agree that we say that we care because of consciousness, but still I'm not convinced, to me it looks very much like a rationalization. Some people care about…

You're definitely right that it's important to be careful how we refer to terms like "consciousness", and your response actually illustrates part of the problem. Because people use the same term to mean two (or more) completely different things, and can therefore end up talking past each other. For example: what I wrote was using the term "consciousness" as "being able to experience sensations", i.e. the most shallow…

> The only people for whom his asssertion "we believe they [that is, other living beings] are conscious when and because we care about them" is true are the kind of people who don't truly see other people as conscious beings but rather as mere tools for them to use and manipulate. Malignant narcissists or sociopaths, for example.

I don't like arguments like this, because instead of attacking the core premise they attack defenders of the idea. There are different points of view, and picking one for a sake of an argument doesn't make a sociopath from anyone.

I agree, that he misses one thing: to claim that someone/something is conscious we need to believe that they have abilities to feel, maybe to reflect, maybe something else. The exact list of abilities to have is not known for me and different people would propose different lists, but still we can't claim rock to be consciousness just because we care about it.

Still I forgive him for it, because he is talking about LLMs, not about rocks. They have some abilities, and he claims that they are enough, what is missing is us caring for LLMs enough.

> If he meant "we sometimes don't act like others are conscious", he should have written that.

No, I don't think he meant to say this. I believe he talked about how society forms social conventions who is conscious and who is not. You see, I don't know the cashier you talk about, but I believe they possess consciousness. Why? Because they are human, and our social conventions say that every (non-sleeping) human is conscious. It is a simple rule of thumb at work, no deep philosophy or psychology involved. But were those social conventions came from? Who and how decided that every human is conscious? Why? But the story didn't just end at that decision, because now people debate about consciousness of animals and LLMs. And these debates make me (and the author of the article) think that "consciousness" in these debates is a buzzword like phlogiston was in thermodynamics before thermodynamics was invented.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#55

Post by spwa4 »

chvid wrote: post #23
blatherard wrote: post #9

If I understand the central argument, which is confusingly stated, the claim is that "consciousness" is a socially-determined, subjective, descriptor for certain things that one cares about. How does this make any sense? If I care about my teddy bear enough it'll gain consciousness?

Yes - the teddy bear would become conscious. It would be fair to dismiss the argument as silly and or absurd had it not been for the credentials of the author and the publication.

... and the problem with that is that if parents "let" their kids be raised by technology, including AI, those kids will of course see those technologies as (important) conscious beings, maybe even more so than their parents and real people.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#56

Post by dd8601fn »

jatora wrote: post #22
moezd wrote: post #6

Oh come on. Objects are objects because you want to freely observe them without consciousness and privacy and taboo attached to them. Entities are entities because you want to assign credit or blame to them, so you want to believe that they have agency so that you hold them responsible. We did this with sharp volcanic rocks once, calling them evil. Did it help? No, we got idolatry and eons of bigotry until we secular…

Humans are just baby replicators. The civilizations are what's getting uncanny. It's good the 'just token predictors' crowd is starting to pivot and hedge though lol. 'It's just the harness!' uh huh. give it a couple more months and you'll be in here regurgitatin' Gordon Wood

Baby replication is one thing humans might do.

Word fragment generation is the one-and-only thing llms have ever done.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#57

Post by tavavex »

jatora wrote: post #22
moezd wrote: post #6

Oh come on. Objects are objects because you want to freely observe them without consciousness and privacy and taboo attached to them. Entities are entities because you want to assign credit or blame to them, so you want to believe that they have agency so that you hold them responsible. We did this with sharp volcanic rocks once, calling them evil. Did it help? No, we got idolatry and eons of bigotry until we secular…

Humans are just baby replicators. The civilizations are what's getting uncanny. It's good the 'just token predictors' crowd is starting to pivot and hedge though lol. 'It's just the harness!' uh huh. give it a couple more months and you'll be in here regurgitatin' Gordon Wood

Baby replication (creation, actually, I don't think anyone has ever copied a baby) is not what humans do as their only function that enables them to do anything in life.

LLMs are literally token predictors. You can debate over the "just", but we haven't moved onto some new text generation technology, we're just expanding that one. I don't understand why you'd scoff at facts.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#58

Post by semiquaver »

rmunn wrote: post #3
semiquaver wrote: post #2

https://archive.ph/uLYYU

The counterpoint article, which can be read at https://archive.ph/IeSZg , is also worth reading. (IMHO, the original article is completely wrongheaded and the counterpoint is far closer to correct, but I'll post my reasons for that opinion separately).

I considered submitting all three of the related AI articles from last week’s economist (the third was the Briefing) but there’s not really a good way to do that, or to get people to read them, but I agree. I submitted the one I did not so much because I agree but because I found it intriguing and well-written.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#59

Post by altmanaltman »

blatherard wrote: post #9

If I understand the central argument, which is confusingly stated, the claim is that "consciousness" is a socially-determined, subjective, descriptor for certain things that one cares about. How does this make any sense? If I care about my teddy bear enough it'll gain consciousness?

It is worth noting, in the same issue they make an appology for claiming that Nvidia also makes its chips and not just design them. The Economist might be a very reputed journal but their technology and especially AI related takes are absolute garbage. I say this as a regular who still finds value in their business and economics sections. But god do they talk a lot of bs about technology.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#60

Post by pixl97 »

skybrian wrote: post #14

There's the core of a reasonable argument if you forget about using the word "consciousness." Consider playing a game where some players are human and others are implemented by AIs. You might want to model your opponents' minds in a similar way? Someone playing chess or Go will need to consider what moves their opponent could make. If it's poker then you need to consider if they're bluffing. If you can make alliances…

Neuro-sama (vTuber AI) would be a good example of an AI agentic harness with memory, tools, and self-feedback. The bot has seemingly uncanny social abilities to the point that many if not most people will start considering the agent human and forget it's a bot.

At least to me that is what matters in the end. You'll probably never convince someone on HN with an autism level over 9000 they are conscious, but once the average empathetic person thinks they are it will deeply effect the general operation of our society.

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