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A warning about 'model welfare'

mustafa-suleyman.ai

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Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#141

Post by shawnz »

staticman2 wrote: post #87
shawnz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if a human loses their memory and their neutral plasticity (with age for example), then they are no longer capable of experiencing suffering?

This framing is a trap. It states "Dehumanize a sick patient OR concede the AI tech bro claim about LLMs" It's also a rhetorical move I've seen several times here...

It's not a "trap", it's the real argument which makes me hesitant to dismiss consciousness of machines. Yes, it seems silly to dismiss a sick patient as having a lesser consciousness, which is exactly the point

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#142

Post by jplusequalt »

frde_me wrote: post #125
willy_k wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not just the same thing though. It’s sad that we’ve collectively forgotten that as we’ve gotten a better handle on the implementation details of the universe. That’s all science is, reverse engineering an inherent and eternal mystery.

> You’re not just the same thing though I agree we aren't the same thing, but I would be curious for you to explain how you know with certainty why we don't share enough that we can rule out thinking / feeling / ... as things a model conceptually could do.

>I agree we aren't the same thing, but I would be curious for you to explain how you know with certainty why we don't share enough that we can rule out thinking / feeling / ... with certainty.

Stop anthropomorphizing these models. I understand it, we only have simple monkey brains to reason with and we can't help ourselves but draw comparisons to other things we see in nature. But these things are not alive.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#143

Post by myrmidon »

I have a very simple benchmark for arguments on AI ethics:

Substitute black people/women/animals as subject (instead of AI).

Does that make you sound like a well-known moustache wearer?

Then your argument is bad and needs work. This clearly falls into that category.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#144

Post by addag »

EPWN3D wrote: post #110
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 tha…

About your last point, I thought so too a few years ago, but interestingly the science of consciousness is an emerging field, although empirical testing is still hard to do (see for instance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2zv4jlo2Nw ).

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#145

Post by Steve16384 »

scorxn wrote: post #33
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #4

Science Fiction has covered the AI panic in perhaps hundreds of stories. Yet we blindly recapitulate the plots as if we don't know how this will turn out.

How will it turn out?

Take your pick from the millions of options already turned into films and books.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#146

Post by anonymars »

scorxn wrote: post #33
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #4

Science Fiction has covered the AI panic in perhaps hundreds of stories. Yet we blindly recapitulate the plots as if we don't know how this will turn out.

How will it turn out?

"Move fast and break things" is probably going to break things

I remember there was a recent discussion about "how complex systems fail" and there are usually many "proto-accidents" before the catastrophe (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49411370)

I bet with hindsight the Hugging Face hack will be one of them in this arena

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#147

Post by Alifatisk »

broptimist wrote: post #100
karmakaze wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole story is a joke--Microsoft has AI? Apparently they're cooking up MAI (Microsoft AI), and I'd seen their small Phi models listed online. Calling Anthropic a competitor is hilarious.

Microsoft holds a 27% ownership stake in OpenAI

Wasn’t it 49%?

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#148

Post by JoshTriplett »

fwip wrote: post #118
JoshTriplett wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would argue that if a human has absolutely zero change, mental or physical, no atom of their being is modified, then no they did not experience suffering. Just because you don't remember the suffering doesn't mean you didn't experience it in the moment. Suffering does not suddenly become okay if your mind and body are going to forget it. "It's okay to torture someone if their mind and body both won't remember it…

Perhaps off-topic, but there's some people who believe that this can be what happens during surgery under anesthesia, if the dosage is off. From what I understand, there's 3 parts to modern anesthesia: Blocking pain signals, preventing the formation of memories, and inducing paralysis of the major muscle groups. If the former is dialed in too weakly, it's possible that the patient is feeling pain, unable to do anythi…

Relatedly, look at the concept of "twilight anesthesia".

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#149

Post by satellites »

hirvi74 wrote: post #128

Maybe true, maybe false. However, I sense Mircosoft is also jealous that their AI products are worse than useless. They'd be singing a different tune if they were in Anthropic's position.

That was my first thought as well. I wonder if they decided to pivot away from trying to compete and now are positioning themselves as the "responsible ones."

"Our AI is useless not because we're a dysfunctional corporate behemoth that slowly kills every product it touches. No, no. Our AI is useless because making useful AI is evil, and we're not evil."

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#150

Post by antx »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #136
qarl wrote: post #28

Birch, The Edge of Sentience (2024), ch. 16 - "simply no way to assess sentience in an LLM" Schwitzgebel, AI and Consciousness (2025) - "we won't know before we've already manufactured thousands or millions of disputably conscious AI". Butlin, Long et al., Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness (2023) - "no obvious technical barriers to building AI systems which satisfy t…

Well there are, today, several models (either text or image or vid) that can be run in a fully deterministic way. A conscious machine that always answer the very exact same thing, formulated the exact same way, bit for bit, to a query is, well, quite a weird kind of "consciousness". Now, I know, I know: the counter-argument is going to be "but humans have no free-will and are 100% deterministic too" . I haven't yet d…

Out of curiosity, which models are fully deterministic? I was under the impression that all LLMs were fundamentally probabilistic.
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