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Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

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Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#271

Post by jatora »

breuleux wrote: post #100
tavavex wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think a better angle is that LLMs are "just" token predictors in the same way that we are "just" made out of atoms. A lot of people do not believe consciousness can be material; they don't believe that you could build conscious beings just out of normal matter, without an immaterial "soul". Whereas if you think that physical matter is a lot, actually, and you can build a nearly infinite variety of things out of the…

Yours is exactly the right intuition imo.

If you presuppose certain key aspects of materialism, non-dualism, functionalism, objectivism, perhaps absolute determinism... and then layer on a good general grasp of neurobiology, chemistry, cosmology, physics, computer science, evolutionary biology, and psychology... I think the conclusions you have stated are inevitable.

Humans are "just" atoms. Humans are "just" the sum of trillions of living cells going about automatic/reactionary processes, culminating in a buzzing cacophony of activity that gives rise to what we perceive as consciousness and free will.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#272

Post by j-pb »

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.

The burden if proof is on you in this case.

The philosophical zombie does not satisfy occams razor because it asserts an unmeasurable property that has no effect on the outcome.

If it acts like it has consciousness, then assuming it to have consciousness is more scientifically rigorous, than assuming for it not to have consciousness, because the former requires one less variable.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#273

Post by j-pb »

joshheitzman wrote: post #255
gqgs wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of answers to this question so it depends which layer you are talking about. Functionally,I'd say a key difference is that it's probably easier to perform general computation with a computer than to achieve the same goal using a stone.

If the computer is functional, powered, and connected to some some kind of interface allowing you to use it (e.g. network, touchscreen, desktop setup, etc.), then sure you can use it to perform general computation. But if its unpowered, is there any real difference between a stone and a computer in a debate about consciousness?

So because you eventually die, it means that you were never alive? The weights of an llm obviously don't have consciousness. It's the process that potentially has it.

Are you conscious on a nanosecond timescale?

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#274

Post by slopinthebag »

feoren wrote: post #205
drdeca wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? How does the person having all the instruction books memorized and whatnot imply that the person understands Chinese? Memorizing instructions to the point that one can mentally follow them doesn’t imply understanding why they work. If the person doesn’t understand the correspondence between the Chinese written words and things in the external world, then surely they don’t understand Chinese in the sense we gener…

The point is that Searle's entire exercise is to show that there can be execution without understanding, and he does this by creating an agent whose only purpose is blind execution of rules. Since this agent doesn't have the understanding, there must be no understanding . Critics immediately point out: yes, there clearly is still understanding, it's just in the system itself -- the program. The fact that the person d…

> How does a person's brain containing all the facts, information, and skills that it needs to have a fluent conversation in Chinese.

They don't, they have simply memorised a translation function which takes Chinese as input and returns Chinese as output. They don't have facts or information about the Chinese language - they don't even need to know what language they are speaking!

When the person reads 汉堡包, do they understand what that is?

Assuming you don't speak Mandarin, do you understand that word? If not, how could you claim to understand Mandarin? Even if you could use the translation function to speak it, you still don't understand it. Remember that the translation function is Mandarin -> Mandarin, so if you don't understand Mandarin you cannot use it to gain an understanding of the word.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#275

Post by mannykannot »

edgyquant wrote: post #259
mannykannot wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consciousness appears to be a biological phenomenon, but so too are metabolism, reproduction and evolution. Are these also metaphysical concepts?

Consciousness does not appear to be biological, that is an opinion and a highly debated one

Where does it appear outside of biology?

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#276

Post by bitwize »

kulahan wrote: post #213
Animats wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Recently I learned about Human Acceleration Regions (HARs), parts of our DNA that remained almost unchanged in our mammalian ancestors, and then diverged very rapidly in humans between 500-200kya. And it made me wonder, is this why the ancient Hebrews said humans alone are created in the "image and likeness of God"? At any rate, it establishes that we are a very different kind of animal, even from our closest relatives the chimpanzees.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#277

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

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…

>It's another round of "humans must be special, right?"

I don't believe that anyone needs to justify their "humans are special" creed. It's arbitrary, that's fine, and it's only true because we decided it was true. I see no reason to reconsider it either.

It's in all of our interests to continue to behave as if "humans are special", and those who insist otherwise are species-traitors.

>when you encounter a new kind of creature, how do you decide if they are sentient?

Why would I even care? I don't think the word "sentient" is even defined in a way that this can be determined. I'm not entirely sure humans are sentient, and it does not matter because even if we aren't sentient, humans are special without need for justification.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#278

Post by hackernud3s »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #242
slopinthebag wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone digitally modelled a nuclear reactor, would any energy be produced? No, because the simulation is actually missing an important aspect, namely the causal part that exists with the physical material but not in the simulation. It’s actually that it’s missing these components that makes it a simulation and not the real thing. But for that you need the physical material. So why would it be different for the br…

>So why would it be different for the brain? If nuclear energy can’t arise from abstract relationships, why would consciousness or anything else? Because consciousness isn't something the brain produces like a hormone or an excited particle. Consciousness isn't an output of the brain that is somehow separate from it, it is the manner in which the brain processes sensory information and makes decisions to produce outp…

You have this backwards. Thoughts and decisions precede consciousness, the sense of authorship is mostly constructed after the fact. See studies on readiness potentials in motor cortex.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#279

Post by drdeca »

feoren wrote: post #205
drdeca wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? How does the person having all the instruction books memorized and whatnot imply that the person understands Chinese? Memorizing instructions to the point that one can mentally follow them doesn’t imply understanding why they work. If the person doesn’t understand the correspondence between the Chinese written words and things in the external world, then surely they don’t understand Chinese in the sense we gener…

The point is that Searle's entire exercise is to show that there can be execution without understanding, and he does this by creating an agent whose only purpose is blind execution of rules. Since this agent doesn't have the understanding, there must be no understanding . Critics immediately point out: yes, there clearly is still understanding, it's just in the system itself -- the program. The fact that the person d…

> How does it not!?

Because they can’t use Chinese to speak about things they encounter in the world?

Like, someone asks them in Chinese whether they are hungry and want some food, and they answer based on the program, not based on whether they are actually hungry, because they don’t understand the words in a way that lets them use them as a person who understood Chinese would.

Again, I don’t mean to say that in such a situation that there is no understanding of Chinese happening in their head, only that this doesn’t constitute that person understanding Chinese.

It seems to me very strange to want to say that the person with the simulation in their head understands Chinese. They can’t do the things that understanding Chinese lets people do.

Perhaps the program the person has running in their head is even a person, a moral patient and a moral agent, and one who understands Chinese. But the person who is running (by rote) the program, doesn’t thereby understand Chinese. They may “contain understanding of Chinese”. The understanding is definitely happening in their brain. But they don’t understand Chinese.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#280

Post by bitwize »

dmz73 wrote: post #250
Animats wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Humans are special in that we have achieved more than any other species on this planet in every aspect you can experience. That does not mean that most people are smart or that they are utilizing their potential. LLMs, as they are currently marketed, are not AI as most people would define it. Without aggressive marketing no-one would refer to them as "AI". LLMs are currently still dumber than most animals or insects.…

I still appreciate the distinction the Mass Effect game series drew between AI, which was smart enough to be a person and think independently; and VI (Virtual Intelligence), which is a system smart enough to comprehend and respond to natural language and present a sort of chatbot interface. Information kiosks and automated vending machines may present VIs, for instance, with full-blown AI being a somewhat dangerous proposition (as evidenced by the geth and their struggle with the quarians). The crew of the Normandy convince their ship's AI, EDI, to pose as a simple VI in order to avoid being removed and destroyed by the authorities.

What we have built as of 2026 would, in Mass Effect terms, be considered a rudimentary VI.

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