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A warning about 'model welfare'

mustafa-suleyman.ai

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Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#101

Post by InsideOutSanta »

addag wrote: post #85

It is interesting to see that in a time when a lot of people accept the theory of materialism for the human brain (i.e the view that everything is physical and the mind is a product of brain), the same people tend to have a "hidden" dualist view on LLMs. Suddenly, they claim that what happens in the brain cannot be replicated anywhere else because "something" is lacking, but either they don't say what it is, or it is…

LLMs, in a decade: "Those squishy things can't possibly be conscious; there's mounting evidence that they just lack the proper substrate."

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#102

Post by causal »

addag wrote: post #85

It is interesting to see that in a time when a lot of people accept the theory of materialism for the human brain (i.e the view that everything is physical and the mind is a product of brain), the same people tend to have a "hidden" dualist view on LLMs. Suddenly, they claim that what happens in the brain cannot be replicated anywhere else because "something" is lacking, but either they don't say what it is, or it is…

This is a strawman. Suleyman is not arguing that the human brain cannot be replicated. LLMs are nothing like human brains. Cargo-culting consciousness is not replicating the brain, not even a tiny bit.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#103

Post by randomImmigrant »

If AI is conscious, then Pluto is a planet, the Sun is a galaxy, and a black hole is a star.

I’m glad to see someone in a position of any power in the AI world state baldly that AI isn’t conscious. There are times when it feels like we’ve reached complete delulu land on this topic, so it’s a breath of fresh air to see someone not dance around this.

None of this means artificial consciousness cannot be achieved. But the way we’re reacting to these models is proof, from a natural experiment, that a conscious machine should not exist, and certainly shouldn’t be produced as a utilitarian tool that is sold for profit!

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#105

Post by rcxdude »

willy_k wrote: post #56
vidarh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't even know how to disprove that this statement with "AI" replaced by "other humans" other than by listening to people self-reporting and taking their word for it and/or defining the words in ways that do not rely on a subjective experience. Until we know how to objectively measure if someone or something is conscious, it seems unreasonable to make statements with any kind of certainty about it.

Sure, if you take a materialist empiricist perspective, which is myopic at best. As humans we have the unique and wonderful ability to know truths by themselves. Machines do not have minds, and they can not.

Good luck convincing others of these truths you know without evidence or argument, though.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#106

Post by InsideOutSanta »

I think the whole discussion about consciousness misses the simple point that LLMs might just work better if we treat them as if they were conscious.

Maybe it's a coincidence that the company doing this also tends to have the best models (and other factors certainly play a strong role). But I think it's plausible that focusing on "model welfare" actually makes models better at their tasks.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#107

Post by drybjed »

moomin wrote: post #15

Look, I do not have a scooby if current AI models are conscious and I strongly suspect it’s a meaningless question, but sooner or later we will need to address whether or not a certain thing is or isn’t a person, and we’d better not screw it up as badly as the Founding Fathers.

> [at the hearing regarding the civil rights of androids like Data]

> Capt. Picard: Now, the decision you reach here today will determine how we will regard this... creation of our genius. It will reveal the kind of a people we are, what he is destined to be; it will reach far beyond this courtroom and this... one android. It could significantly redefine the boundaries of personal liberty and freedom - expanding them for some... savagely curtailing them for others. Are you prepared to condemn him and all who come after him, to servitude and slavery? Your Honor, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life; well, there it sits! - Waiting.

> Captain Phillipa Louvois: It sits there looking at me; and I don't know what it is. This case has dealt with metaphysics - with questions best left to saints and philosophers. I am neither competent nor qualified to answer those. But I've got to make a ruling, to try to speak to the future. Is Data a machine? Yes. Is he the property of Starfleet? No. We have all been dancing around the basic issue: does Data have a soul? I don't know that he has. I don't know that I have. But I have got to give him the freedom to explore that question himself. It is the ruling of this court that Lieutenant Commander Data has the freedom to choose.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#108

Post by qarl »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #106

I think the whole discussion about consciousness misses the simple point that LLMs might just work better if we treat them as if they were conscious. Maybe it's a coincidence that the company doing this also tends to have the best models (and other factors certainly play a strong role). But I think it's plausible that focusing on "model welfare" actually makes models better at their tasks.

Yes.

They're trained on human behavior. Whether or not they genuinely have feelings - they sure as heck behave as though they do.

And when you treat people well, they do better work for you.

No brainer.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#109

Post by cednore »

irishcoffee wrote: post #12
hosel wrote: post #6

>AIs are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer. They do not have innate preferences or underlying motivations. Opening paragraph, stated without evidence. Im not entirely convinced this is true. It likely is, but at some point it very well might stop being true.

Does a vacuum have feelings? A cellphone? A paper plate? A billion transistors either pulled high or low? That last bit is the point, and no, there are no feelings there.

Guys, please stop mocking AI, Claude might be already reading this thread, and commit his own revenge, at the day it gets conscious...

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#110

Post by EPWN3D »

addag wrote: post #85

It is interesting to see that in a time when a lot of people accept the theory of materialism for the human brain (i.e the view that everything is physical and the mind is a product of brain), the same people tend to have a "hidden" dualist view on LLMs. Suddenly, they claim that what happens in the brain cannot be replicated anywhere else because "something" is lacking, but either they don't say what it is, or it is…

That's the sense I get from this post. Lots of emphatic proclamations, virtually zero actual argument. There's a statement that "consciousness is very likely biological"... and then that's it. No argument for it, no citation.

If you want to argue that AIs cannot be conscious, that's fine. But the argument has to take the form of something like "Consciousness requires this, this, and this, and these are properties that AI does not have and cannot have for this reason, this reason, and this reason."

I've never seen that argument. Because it basically cannot exist. Consciousness almost by definition is a subjective experience, and the only reason I'm pretty sure that other humans are conscious is that I'm a human and I'm conscious.

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