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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

#211

Post by joshheitzman »

gqgs wrote: post #186
basilikum wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't know a lot of things. That does not make it sensible to just make up unfounded claims about them. I don't know what you ate today. It would be insane for me to confidently claim that you ate two bananas and a pizza today. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim. That's the basis of empirical research.

Who exactly are these people confidently claiming that stones possess consciousness you are talking about? I've read a number of panpsychist publications, yet I have yet to encounter an author who asserts with certainty that stones are conscious exactly in the same way human beings are. The more common panpsychist interpretation, that everything exists on a spectrum of consciousness, with stones at the low end and hu…

What's the difference between a computer and a stone?

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#212

Post by AndrewKemendo »

basilikum wrote: post #103
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?

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

All you’re doing is shutting down any inquiry because you’ve decided it’s not worth discussing

So why keep discussing?

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#213

Post by kulahan »

Animats wrote: post #148
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 another round of "humans must be special, right?" The author comes close to admitting this: "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." Then he works backwards from that towards a definition of consciousness that makes humans special. AI forces us to confront an issue…

Why wouldn't we assume humans are special? We are, by so many metrics. We've become essentially a force of nature, rather than a simple occupying species. I find it much weirder that we're so dedicated to pretending we're normal. Just a normal animal, on a normal planet, in a normal solar system, in a normal galaxy, in a normal universe.

I get we have to do that for science to be good, but I don't get why it carries over to the general populace. We're so sure of so many things science is wary of, this incredibly low self-esteem blows my mind.

Anyways, back on topic, I don't believe any nation is resigned to this fate until I see extreme measures fail. I think I saw that Singapore is giving parents like $55,000 over the lifetime of their child.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#214

Post by svachalek »

basilikum wrote: post #156
jampekka wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it insane? We have no idea how or where consciousness arises, or even if it's a coherent concept.

We don't know a lot of things. That does not make it sensible to just make up unfounded claims about them. I don't know what you ate today. It would be insane for me to confidently claim that you ate two bananas and a pizza today. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim. That's the basis of empirical research.

Well those that claim humans are conscious need to come up with a test to demonstrate it empirically. Then we can have LLMs take the same test.

As it is, it would be insane for me to confidently claim you are conscious or even that you're human, as an LLM could have written the same message.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#215

Post by slopinthebag »

feoren wrote: post #210
slopinthebag wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person who memorized the book doesn’t understand Chinese. In fact they don’t even understand that Chinese isn’t a language. Searle’s response stands.

So you could put this person in a room with a bunch of native Chinese speakers, and he could hold conversations fluently with all of them. Yet you claim he doesn't understand Chinese? How can you possibly defend that? This is very close to "zombie theory" -- everyone else is an automaton except you. Nobody else has real thoughts. That obviously fluent Chinese speaker doesn't really understand Chinese.

If the person was told in Chinese to jump in the air, would they be able to follow that instruction? If they actually understood Chinese they would. But since they don’t and they’re just mechanically translating symbols without actually understanding the language conceptually they would not know to jump.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#216

Post by ryanSrich »

lnenad wrote: post #163
fasterik wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It claims that there is no objective fact about whether something is conscious. From the second paragraph: >Consciousness is, in other words, a model or a belief, not an inherent property. It is a belief about what kinds of entities have beliefs, experiences, feelings, intentions and agency.

But there isn't? What does it factually mean to be conscious? How can we claim other living beings aren't are conscious?

Consciousness can factually exist even though another being’s subjective experience is not directly observable. we can measure its behavioral and neural correlates and infer consciousness from them but we cannot directly observe the experience itself or conclusively prove its absence in another being. I don't think we'll ever get to a point where subjective experience in another is directly observable. But I don't think we need that to happen to prove consciousness factually exists.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#217

Post by ryanSrich »

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.

Not a great argument. You're describing what LLMs are trained to do, not necessarily every capability or property produced by that training. We do not know what conditions are sufficient for consciousness. Any statements saying it's not possible for consciousness to emerge (or that it hasn't already) in such a system is no more established than claiming that it has

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#218

Post by applicative »

fasterik wrote: post #140
jampekka wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article doesn't claim anything about what is and what is not conscious. It's about what we may think is conscious, and why.

It claims that there is no objective fact about whether something is conscious. From the second paragraph: >Consciousness is, in other words, a model or a belief, not an inherent property. It is a belief about what kinds of entities have beliefs, experiences, feelings, intentions and agency.

The two quoted sentences are inept but in the way ‘red is an idea in us not an inherent property of things; red is a sensation of things etc etc’ is inept. There are a million better formulations that will fall short of writing red into the laws of physics.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#219

Post by esafak »

dist-epoch wrote: post #134
alecst wrote: post #31

I’m can’t track what the point of this essay is. Suppose we replaced “AI” with “animal.” How would this essay be different? What am I supposed to take away? My concern with AI consciousness is about to what extent these machines can have an experience comparable to mine, which this essay doesn’t touch on at all.

That's exactly the point the article makes - we care about dogs and cats, so we believe they "suffer". We don't care about pigs, so we say they don't mind being factory farmed.

I don't see what that has to do with consciousness. Suffering is one thing, consciousness is another.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#220

Post by applicative »

ryanSrich wrote: post #216
lnenad wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there isn't? What does it factually mean to be conscious? How can we claim other living beings aren't are conscious?

Consciousness can factually exist even though another being’s subjective experience is not directly observable. we can measure its behavioral and neural correlates and infer consciousness from them but we cannot directly observe the experience itself or conclusively prove its absence in another being. I don't think we'll ever get to a point where subjective experience in another is directly observable. But I don't th…

That a thing is /red/ is directly observable (by people with good eyesight etc) but what the OP was ineptly driving at presumably holds of redness.
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