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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

#311

Post by orbital-decay »

skirmish wrote: post #170
D-Machine wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether AI is conscious or not is independent of the social acceptance of the idea, unless you believe in thoroughly discredited and quite radical forms of social constructionism. In fact, if you stop talking about consciousness, and go through all the various aspects of consciousness, the whole debate gets very interesting. There are various ways in which AI is very clearly conscious or exhibits / involves phenomena…

> Whether AI is conscious or not is independent of the social acceptance of the idea, unless you believe in thoroughly discredited and quite radical forms of social constructionism. Yet all science is social, until you convince other people to take your ideas seriously, you are just another crank/loony. How is social constructionism thoroughly discredited? Wikipedia shows some people poking with nits that don't look…

Science has little to do with consciousness. If it can't even be defined without using immeasurable concepts like "intentionality" then it's subject to arbitrary interpretation.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#312

Post by randomImmigrant »

This is so so wrong I don’t even know where to begin. There may be no objective definition or measure of consciousness. But it is not a property arising from mutual care. That argument is like one of the many “just so” evolutionary psychology “theories”.

Why or how would you care about another, or even distinguish yourself from another, if you weren’t conscious and had a felt boundary between yourself and the other world?

Only in the last paragraph did it become clear to me what was going on: a Google VP is proclaiming the thing he cares about is conscious, and so of course this is why everyone else must be assigning consciousness! Not convenient at all, no siree. Pure rational science and personal desire and economic incentives just happened to align here.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#313

Post by bluefirebrand »

pasquinelli wrote: post #236
bluefirebrand wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

if you're interested it's called panpsychism, the idea that consciousness is a fundemental trait of the universe. it's an idea a little like solipsism, in that people have a reflex against it, but it's pretty hard to make a case against it any stronger than "come on man don't be stupid."

I read a bit about it. I'm not convinced

I think Occam's razor is sufficient to reject this as a concept. Panpsychism would introduce a lot of complexity into our understanding of the world without really increasing our ability to explain any of it

I don't feel the need to make a stronger case than that because frankly it strikes me as more like mysticism woo than any sort of real serious philosophy

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#314

Post by orbital-decay »

D-Machine wrote: post #208
skirmish wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whether AI is conscious or not is independent of the social acceptance of the idea, unless you believe in thoroughly discredited and quite radical forms of social constructionism. Yet all science is social, until you convince other people to take your ideas seriously, you are just another crank/loony. How is social constructionism thoroughly discredited? Wikipedia shows some people poking with nits that don't look…

Radical or hard or global social constructionism [1] (or perhaps more accurately radical/hard/global relativism about truth [2]) are discredited because both are manifestly incoherent and prevent any serious thought from being possible, since they amount to a total denial of the existence of any kind of observer- or society-independent reality, i.e. they devolve to a solipsism of some form. Solipsism is not a coheren…

I'm starting to think that your condescending "go ask a chatbot" is not intended as an insult to imaginary annoying AI bros unable to comprehend High Matters That Have Been Definitely Solved Once And For All By Those Smart People In A Self-Evident Manner but is sincere in that you believe an LLM can say something new in this discussion.

The statement that consciousness is subjective and should and will be interpreted does not lead to hardcore social constructionism nor does it lead to solipsism, sorry this doesn't make any sense. It looks way more probable that it contradicts your hard beliefs that don't need proof. If you believe consciousness is objective and exists independently of your beliefs then you can give a rigorous definition of it that doesn't rely on arbitrarily chosen vague concepts like "dynamic flow" and "intentionality", and a way to measure it. It doesn't have to be binary, I don't think anyone here has any problem dealing with multidimensional concept closeness mathematically.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#315

Post by ElProlactin »

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…

"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons."

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#316

Post by D-Machine »

orbital-decay wrote: post #314
D-Machine wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Radical or hard or global social constructionism [1] (or perhaps more accurately radical/hard/global relativism about truth [2]) are discredited because both are manifestly incoherent and prevent any serious thought from being possible, since they amount to a total denial of the existence of any kind of observer- or society-independent reality, i.e. they devolve to a solipsism of some form. Solipsism is not a coheren…

I'm starting to think that your condescending "go ask a chatbot" is not intended as an insult to imaginary annoying AI bros unable to comprehend High Matters That Have Been Definitely Solved Once And For All By Those Smart People In A Self-Evident Manner but is sincere in that you believe an LLM can say something new in this discussion. The statement that consciousness is subjective and should and will be interpreted…

I am telling you to ask a chatbot because you are saying things so hilariously philosophically incompetent and ignorant that even a retarded LLM will improve your thinking.

You obviously don't care about thinking coherently though, or can't even recognize what coherent thought looks like (mainly because you seem to think something along the lines of "my few minutes of armchair reflections prove all philosophy is vague and retarded"), so this is clearly a waste of time. I will not be engaging further.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#317

Post by hackernud3s »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #309
hackernud3s wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if overinterpreted were true, it's silly to claim that consciousness is driving. You don't "decide" to think thoughts. They come to you. They are driving.

One's subconscious drives much of your thoughts, yes. But important decisions are conscious mediated if only because consciousness has veto power. A lack of veto is a tacit endorsement of the action. That is control.

Either that or consciousness pops out afterwards as a by-product of the physical process. A less fun to believe idea I know, but the data supports it.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#318

Post by calf »

scoofy wrote: post #293
calf wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate ad hominems leveled (especially against me), but the information about the Economist and this author is relevant. It suggests bad faith (to readers who have noticed a pattern by those sources). Which is not necessarily an ad hominem. Specifically it turns out I already read a problematic piece by this author last year, so the heads up saves me time, attention, and energy.

>The Economist pontificating about morality is like a vampire complaining blood tastes funny This statement is no where close to a statement that matches your concerns. It implies “we all know the Economist is an inherently unserious rag… which it is obviously not.

The statement, written by someone else, matches what I happen to generally believe about the Economist.

Do not presume to understand other people's concerns based on one or two sentences. I don't know how to explain that in an online conversation, this is more a learn to interact with real life people kind of thing. I would assume older generations still behave that way, because they are more authoritarian.

I could talk about why the 'implication' is not necessarily problem and about why what is 'obvious' to yourself should not be taken for granted when talking through disagreements with other people. But that would take more time and I think a well-rounded college education is supposed teach people these basic humanities skills, not something that can be sorted out online especially these days.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#319

Post by scoofy »

calf wrote: post #318
scoofy wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The Economist pontificating about morality is like a vampire complaining blood tastes funny This statement is no where close to a statement that matches your concerns. It implies “we all know the Economist is an inherently unserious rag… which it is obviously not.

The statement, written by someone else, matches what I happen to generally believe about the Economist. Do not presume to understand other people's concerns based on one or two sentences. I don't know how to explain that in an online conversation, this is more a learn to interact with real life people kind of thing. I would assume older generations still behave that way, because they are more authoritarian. I could t…

>Do not presume to understand other people's concerns based on one or two sentences.

Expecting to be taken seriously in a good-faith conversation while walking in throwing entirely unargued bombs like OP's comment is asinine. The idea that you should be able to skip the "arguing" part of an intellectual discussion because "I mean come on..." is the sentiment you hold is sophomoric bullshit. It doesn't care about truth, much less considering the person such a claim might actually be wrong.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#320

Post by [deleted] »

fasterik wrote: post #268
scoofy wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The cogito argument is about thinking, not qualia. I generally agree with the thrust of your argument -- the article is a mess and borderline unintelligible to this former philosophy postgraduate -- but I might nitpick this. Two points: (1) I do not think there is a substantial difference between whether the cogito is about thinking or perceiving. And (2) I'm not entirely sure the sensation that is thinking is indep…

The cogito argument is about cognitive processes (doubt, deception) which in my view don't depend on phenomenal consciousness. You may be right that the distinction isn't that important, since there's a parallel argument that goes "I experience, I am". It just felt like the article was name-dropping Descartes to support an argument about qualia that had little to do with what Descartes was talking about. I don't thin…

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