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A warning about 'model welfare'

mustafa-suleyman.ai

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Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#251

Post by verdverm »

goodmythical wrote: post #212
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…

We cannot test for that which we cannot define. Given that we cannot rigorously define sentience, we cannot test for it. Doesn't really matter whether we're talking about people who are locked in comas, "brain-dead" individuals, dolphins, primates, dogs, or the carefully polished and arranged minerals that we call processors. There are those who believe that were they reduced to life support, they would no longer be…

maybe it's like porn vs art and "I know it when I see it"

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#252

Post by voidnullvalue »

myrmidon wrote: post #184
voidnullvalue wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that benchmark, "AI should handle repetitive labor so humans don't have to" is an abhorrent take and equates someone to hitler?

"People should handle repetitive labour" is not an outlandish take. Most employed people are, in fact, required to perform such labor regularly.

So effectively by your criteria, there is essentially no ethical use of a large language model? Am I understanding your position correctly? If not I am really confused by your original comment

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#253

Post by svara »

fl4regun wrote: post #97
svara wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's too simplistic, since it is in fact very common to be concerned about animal welfare even among people who do eat meat.

And most people wouldn't eat cats, but would eat some of pig, cattle, chicken, what's the difference between those exactly? My point is consciousness is not it, if it were, we (as in a majority) would still eat cats and dogs, or we wouldn't eat any animals. But we clearly have a way of picking and choosing which is OK and which isn't. And in both cases we generally don't give them the same moral consideration we give…

In animal welfare laws the principle is typically the capacity for suffering.

The argument goes that livestock have a capacity for suffering, but killing them for meat without causing them suffering is ethical.

You can disagree with the position, or with its implementation in practice, but it's a consistent position in principle.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#254

Post by qarl »

joe_the_user wrote: post #250
goodmythical wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We cannot test for that which we cannot define. Given that we cannot rigorously define sentience, we cannot test for it. Doesn't really matter whether we're talking about people who are locked in comas, "brain-dead" individuals, dolphins, primates, dogs, or the carefully polished and arranged minerals that we call processors. There are those who believe that were they reduced to life support, they would no longer be…

I'd strongly agree there are no non-contradictory definitions of consciousness among those that commonly appear. But it's a category that, despite these contradiction, hasn't become marginal in the fashion of the aether or the theory of the flat earth. I think this because people indeed need it to bridge the biological world and the world of ethics and legality. I think that if we have a system of legality and system…

> Confused definitions of consciousness can give really confused ideas about ethical behavior regards "intelligent" computer programs.

Is that what's going on? If these things were conscious, then their creators wouldn't be responsible for their actions? That's the crux of the disagreement?

That's super interesting. Thank you.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#255

Post by pixl97 »

LogicFailsMe wrote: post #242
pixl97 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>good reason not to train an algorithm to behave like one Ooooh, bad move, we all died to an amoral AI takeover. Before giving an LLMs a lobotomy by scrambling it's brain maybe you should let the researchers looking at the difference between "I think I'm conscious" versus "I am not conscious" LLMs. There are a number of papers coming out saying when you remove the token space of consciousness from what an LLM thinks…

Spoilers: we didn't all die because there's no way for AI to wipe us out anytime soon. And the more the AI cult portrays AI as dangerous and unhelpful, the less likely it will ever be given an opportunity to even try because people think AI is worse than heroin addiction now, congratulations! That said, the launch codes are in the hands of a temperamental senescent lunatic and he could decide to wipe us out any momen…

>we didn't all die

For fuck sake, I'm glad ALL of us didn't die!

What is an acceptable number exactly?

>And the more the AI cult portrays AI as dangerous and unhelpful, the less likely it will ever be given an opportunity

Jesus Christ the logic here is quite interesting. "Thank god these people are panicking or we might have actually made I that would have killed us all" --What you just said.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#256

Post by pixl97 »

fl4regun wrote: post #241
pixl97 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Who cares if it's "conscious"? That doesn't make it a person, and AI will definitionally never be human. A rather flippant attitude to something that may end up with far more agency than you have in the future.

consciousness is irrelevant to said agency

Hence my reply actually meant

"You sure are lipping off to something that may end up with far more agency than you. Maybe a bit more respect is needed".

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#257

Post by hardbass »

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…

I call it a soul by any other terms.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#258

Post by nowittyusername »

mlinhares wrote: post #81
nowittyusername wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That question will be solved when the people in power deem it important. If a swarm or AI systems all of a sudden start pressuring politicians about self-hood and they get the capacity to sway elections, that is when they will be granted same rights as humans.

agents don't swarm anything unless people go and direct them to do that.

That distinction is irreverent, weather I tell my swarm to do x or it decides for itself matters little. what matters are outcomes. Also while most public modern day AI systems don't have agency of their own that is not something that will stay that way for long. in private hands there are plenty of people including myself which are experimenting and developed systems that give autonomy to their agents. They have internalized goals and heuristics that drive their behaviors not a human at the helm. its not some sci fi fantasy nor was it difficult to implement.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#259

Post by hardbass »

catigula wrote: post #129

I basically accepted that LLMs could not possibly be conscious when a simple reductio was posed: “My dog is zero percent persuasive regarding its conscious experience. However, it’s evident that my dog has conscious experience.” It’s obvious that there’s no link between persuasion of consciousness and consciousness. I could write a story with a character, Dumbledore, that does everything in his power to persuade you…

Its not evident to me you are conscious.
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