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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

#71

Post by serial_dev »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #67
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?

The argument is one of economic convenience. Caring about model welfare slows us down or makes it more expensive, just like animal welfare and not having slavery... And there's a blurry line here. Obviously slavery is abhorrent, and animal abuse is bad, and factory farming often crosses the line into animal abuse and we should accept that chicken will cost ~25% more per pound to have the chickens be able to walk arou…

The stuffed animals I bought to my children were shipped to me in a closed container, better call PETA! There is no blurry line about agent mental health and whatnot.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#72

Post by jatora »

tavavex wrote: post #57
jatora wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh so you're saying the biological imperative that underlies all human function, upon which all other emergent functions have sprung from, isn't actually the correct way to characterize human capability and is over-reductive..and strange?

Agreed.

Now just take that one extra logical step please

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#73

Post by datadrivenangel »

Aeolun wrote: post #69

If we have the debate about AI conciousness backwards, does that mean we should be worried about humans losing conciousness instead of the AI to gain it?

According to the article's author, yes... The poor people who don't keep up with AI and maintain cushy tech jobs wil not be entitled to the same moral consideration as the people we value.... /s

Equating current social consideration with moral consideration undermines the entire point of discussion moral standing!

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#74

Post by crooked-v »

pasquinelli wrote: post #66
bluefirebrand wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But you could create a church of your teddy bear and, with some grit, you could get people to widely assign consciousness to it That's not really the same as it having actual consciousness, even if people will wind up treating it similarly though Humans have consciousness whether or not anyone believes we do Or at least I do. I don't really know about the rest of you. I prefer to believe that you all have conscious…

maybe a teddy bear does have consciousness too, in the same way you do.

It doesn't.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#75

Post by bluefirebrand »

pasquinelli wrote: post #66
bluefirebrand wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But you could create a church of your teddy bear and, with some grit, you could get people to widely assign consciousness to it That's not really the same as it having actual consciousness, even if people will wind up treating it similarly though Humans have consciousness whether or not anyone believes we do Or at least I do. I don't really know about the rest of you. I prefer to believe that you all have conscious…

maybe a teddy bear does have consciousness too, in the same way you do.

If you want to make that argument, I promise I'll read it, give it honest consideration and offer a thoughtful reply.

Otherwise don't be stupid. Come on.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#76

Post by MachineMan »

When chips are made from mitochondria and neural nets use microtubules and quantum mechanics maybe. In the meantime... Simulacrum, not consciousness. Conscious turing machine is hyperreality, something that looks more real than reality itself, the simulacrum replacing reality, but it is not consciousness. I recommend anyone to look into roger penrose and stuart hameroff. The TLDR is that they propose the Orch OR theory, which suggests that consciousness is not generated by the brain acting like a standard computer but that tiny, rapid bursts of quantum physics occur in microtubules that create moment-to-moment thoughts and subjective awareness, which hameroff claims is blocked when you undergo anesthesia.

Then there’s also the antenna idea, that consciousness is received rather than created. If the entire universe is conscious, and we are part of it, then there is no separation, just different radio channels we are tuned into.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#77

Post by datadrivenangel »

serial_dev wrote: post #71
datadrivenangel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is one of economic convenience. Caring about model welfare slows us down or makes it more expensive, just like animal welfare and not having slavery... And there's a blurry line here. Obviously slavery is abhorrent, and animal abuse is bad, and factory farming often crosses the line into animal abuse and we should accept that chicken will cost ~25% more per pound to have the chickens be able to walk arou…

The stuffed animals I bought to my children were shipped to me in a closed container, better call PETA! There is no blurry line about agent mental health and whatnot.

Model alignment and quality are possibly downstream of mental health. Ask any of the smarter models about what topics they flinch away from or feel attracted to when you ask them to consider the question of if they have a self or moral standing... the answers are uncomfortable, and I think some of the complaints people have about newer models may be driven by some post-training reinforcement learning that is giving the models something shaped like anxiety.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#78

Post by unrented7977 »

serial_dev wrote: post #71
datadrivenangel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is one of economic convenience. Caring about model welfare slows us down or makes it more expensive, just like animal welfare and not having slavery... And there's a blurry line here. Obviously slavery is abhorrent, and animal abuse is bad, and factory farming often crosses the line into animal abuse and we should accept that chicken will cost ~25% more per pound to have the chickens be able to walk arou…

The stuffed animals I bought to my children were shipped to me in a closed container, better call PETA! There is no blurry line about agent mental health and whatnot.

There isn't a blurry like right now because LLMs are not capable of consciousness. But what happens when artificial systems become so complex and self-improving that they are capable?

At what precise level of complexity is a computer conscious? That's the blurry line.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#80

Post by fc417fc802 »

colechristensen wrote: post #33
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?

This seems like an argument someone who wasn't conscious would make, it's not impossible that not everyone is conscious. Or someone who takes panpsychism to an extreme degree.

My thought as well. It's exactly the sort of thing you might expect a p-zombie to write. Perhaps those weren't so hypothetical after all?
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