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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

#101

Post by exe34 »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #73
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!

> wil not be entitled to the same moral consideration as the people we value....

That's literally how it works right now for rich vs poor. The laws are written so that the rich can profit off the deaths of thousands or millions, but the moment a poor person kills one of them, you get a whole media circus. We've also gone through phases of slavery where the owners were real people and the slaves were treated as if they weren't really people.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#102

Post by seethishat »

eureka7 wrote: post #96
seethishat wrote: post #86

LLMs are trained to produce outputs that humans would find reasonable. That's it. They don't do anything else. To say they have feelings and that they can think/reason is insane.

How are you making this confident of a claim? Do you have insight into how consciousness is a thing, allowing you to definitely say it doesn't exist in this case?

Because it is common sense.

This is software trained to produce outputs. It doesn't feel anything.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#103

Post by basilikum »

eureka7 wrote: post #96
seethishat wrote: post #86

LLMs are trained to produce outputs that humans would find reasonable. That's it. They don't do anything else. To say they have feelings and that they can think/reason is insane.

How are you making this confident of a claim? Do you have insight into how consciousness is a thing, allowing you to definitely say it doesn't exist in this case?

You could just as much argue that a stone has consciousness. Some people believe that. Insane describes it quite well.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#104

Post by moezd »

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

You're quoting Good Will Hunting... Is there anyone among us willing to get up on a desk and quote "O captain my captain", too? My sweet summer child, just because it maintains your 2000+ dependency filled codebase for you, it doesn't mean it can ever hope to master the mysteries of the universe.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#105

Post by cognitif »

> we believe they are conscious when and because we care about them. Crucially, that includes ourselves.

Why? Ok nevermind, fine. It could be true that someone believes someone else is conscious because they care about them. Next sentence:

> Consciousness is, in other words, a model or a belief, not an inherent property.

Wait, no, that doesn’t follow at all. A belief that someone is conscious is not the same as someone being conscious. What follows, instead, is that a belief in someone being conscious is a belief. Thanks, I learned nothing.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#106

Post by slibhb »

> I have come to believe, however, that we have this backwards. As intelligent, social entities, we decide (or, to some degree, our evolutionary history has decided for us) which other entities we regard as having inner lives and being worthy of care. We do not care for others because they are conscious. Rather, we believe they are conscious when and because we care about them.

I care about my plants and I don't think they're conscious. Hell, I care about my car.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#107

Post by mrtesthah »

montroser wrote: post #91
seethishat wrote: post #86

LLMs are trained to produce outputs that humans would find reasonable. That's it. They don't do anything else. To say they have feelings and that they can think/reason is insane.

Sorry, but they can think and reason. They can have empathy too. Meaning, you can describe a circumstance with many parties involved, with different motivations and conflicting goals -- and it will tell you how these humans would likely feel about each other and the situation at hand.

A sociopath can also pantomime empathy for their own selfish reasons simply by observing how others behave in similar situations, while feeling nothing special at all.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#108

Post by eureka7 »

seethishat wrote: post #102
eureka7 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you making this confident of a claim? Do you have insight into how consciousness is a thing, allowing you to definitely say it doesn't exist in this case?

Because it is common sense. This is software trained to produce outputs. It doesn't feel anything.

How is this "common sense"? The question of what consciousness is, what it emerges from, etc. literally have no proved answer at the moment.

Take this statement: "consciousness emerges from sufficient complexity in any system". Neither you or I can prove it right or wrong, but we can both make an assumption that if it was right, then there would be a way for an LLM to be conscious.

I'm not arguing that they are, I'm saying being this confident that they are not is the exact same as being confident that they are.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#109

Post by akersten »

fasterik wrote: post #83

It's hard to read this article and keep track of all the philosophical confusions at once. Whether or not something is conscious (has subjective experience) is independent of whether humans care about it. Whether or not something is a moral patient (an entity worthy of consideration by moral agents) is independent of both human care and consciousness. Of course, we might try to argue that consciousness implies moral…

It's just drivel from the Economist, it's not surprising that it makes all these errors. Their real goal is to shape the narrative and get people through their turnstyle. They really don't care about finer minutae like correctness and philosophy. They just chain words together until it sounds approximately agreeable. Come to think of it, do we know if The Economist is conscious?

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#110

Post by seethishat »

eureka7 wrote: post #108
seethishat wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is common sense. This is software trained to produce outputs. It doesn't feel anything.

How is this "common sense"? The question of what consciousness is, what it emerges from, etc. literally have no proved answer at the moment. Take this statement: "consciousness emerges from sufficient complexity in any system". Neither you or I can prove it right or wrong, but we can both make an assumption that if it was right, then there would be a way for an LLM to be conscious. I'm not arguing that they are, I'm…

Yes, I see your point. You could argue that humans, too, are trained to produce expected outputs (family, societal and peer pressure, etc.).
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