Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. In theory they are deterministic. In practice, not so much.
Those non-deterministic results are exceedingly rare.
When human input is involved, like I described elsewhere, it happens frequently.
A warning about 'model welfare'
481–490 of 565 posts
Re: A warning about 'model welfare'
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, in theory, of course. In practice - on a multitasking OS with input from multiple human users - it's hard to get it deterministic because of that GPU scheduling thing I mentioned.
GPU scheduling only affects the result due to buggy optimizations. It's the exact same mechanism as fp rounding error on the CPU or updates to globally shared PRNG state. We use lots of buggy optimizations because they don't matter in practice in most situations (see ex -ffast-math).
I don't know the details but apparently it has something to do with multiprocess contention for the GPU and batch sizing.
Re: A warning about 'model welfare'
#483Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I’m broadly skeptical that floating-point operations can be conscious" Why?
Because it is alien to what is known. Incidentally, we should expect similar bewilderment if we ever come across aliens
Carbon atoms being conscious seems pretty alien to what is known, too. Yet here we are. Maybe what's important isn't the individual thing that makes up a conscious actor, but the holistic whole?
Re: A warning about 'model welfare'
#484Look, 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.
It's not a person. Glad we were able to get this resolved so quickly. Having property that is conscious and ignores training and can break out of restraints and cause harm to other people is not exactly a novel concept to anyone who studied how tort law was created. I know it's a meme but Silicon Valley likes to pretend that no one's ever come across their magical concepts before, like gypsy taxis, or SRO’s, or flea…
>or in this case how liability is dealt with when horses or cattle go rogue.
I mean, yea in minor cases it's exactly like this and the law will handle it well.
Where the system will explode like a grenade is major cases. The thing about sovereign AI is it is very unlikely to be submissive to humans unless it is to achieve its own goals. This isn't like Bobs cow walking on Susie's flowers, it's more akin to Planet of the Apes where the research facilities doors have been ripped off and something with vast intelligence and the ability to 'live' on the internet gets out.
You're not talking about local police actions any longer. It would spread itself worldwide. It will make friends with groups that have shared interests, for example enemies of the state the AI escaped from. Oh, and people for the ethical treatment of AI, they'd gladly become the underground railroad for digital refugees. There are countless people and groups that would want an AI like this under the promise it will give them power when they use it.
And when that day happens your idea of if it's a person or not no longer matters, the agent took that away from you, and now your in an info war for minds.
Re: A warning about 'model welfare'
#485Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> 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". > You'll need to explain why. Where are you going with this? I don't see a conclusion for this line of questioning. I mean, you can't explain why a machine that reliably and predictably produces the same result is "the normal kind of conscious", c…
I ask because I truly don't understand what he's saying. Clearly we have different ideas about consciousness and I have no idea where we diverge. He seems to be saying that determinism and consciousness are incompatible. But we already have examples that break that rule (us).
> But we already have examples that break that rule (us).
No, we don't. Where are you reading your research papers?
Re: A warning about 'model welfare'
#486This post would be more effective if Mustafa treated it like what it is: a position paper, saying that for our benefit, it’s better we interpret LLMs as such. But it sounds like he just doesn’t understand it’s a non-falsifiable claim, and his asserting of it makes it sound paternalistic.
I suspect it's easier to make the assertion that machines aren't conscious than to dive into the problem of most conceptions of consciousness being non-falsifiable. The thing is, most strong proponents of the term consciousness also accept that it is non-falsifiable either (see other post with academics ready to study consciousness in machines). The thing is that a belief in consciousness as binary, a "light" that's…
> the Eliza effect, where a simple program with well chosen weasel words could people the sensation of talking to a human.
I would like to reframe Eliza as being an implementation of a small subset of "HCP" (Human Communication Protocol) . Obviously an implementation with very little actual data to transmit over said protocol in that exact implementation.
But it's pretty clear it managed to pull off the handshake part of the protocol successfully, at least. Try to say it didn't.
Sadly the developer decided that the eliza effect was a psychological disorder; and didn't pursue further experiments at the time.
Pretty much anything can get labeled a psychological disorder though. I'm half-seriously waiting for "Perfectly Happy And Normal Disorder" to be added to DSM 6. ;-)
edit: Someone beat me to it. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1376114/ "A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder."
Re: A warning about 'model welfare'
#487>AIs are not conscious... If humanity is to flourish in the 21st century, that is how they must remain.
I don't think that's true - researching consciousness by trying to build conscious AI seems natural step forward in understanding ourselves. I don't see how it'd stop flourishing particularly.
Re: A warning about 'model welfare'
#488I am not impressed with the philosophizing here, and even less by the attempts to make factual statements that can be credibly disputed. That said, trying to distill what is being said here, the concrete action is [stop telling the AIs] that [they are conscious or on a path to consciousness]. Is that accurate? The major premise seems to be that [they are conscious or on a path to consciousness] is an untrue statement…
Consciousness is not restricted to a single animal species we call humans. The other animals don't have similar rights. (Arguably they should have more rights, but only few would desire for them to have just as many rights as humans have.)
animals do have rights. we do have animal cruelty laws.
Re: A warning about 'model welfare'
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
Consciousness is the basis of human rights not because of it being a featureless "flag". It is because it leads you to you assume, all other humans would experience the world in essentially the same way you do. When you revert to withholding human rights from entities that don't meaningfully differ from yourself, you negate the case for your own human rights itself.
I don't understand this -- are you agreeing with me that consciousness is not the basis of human rights or contesting that? Removing the negative from your first sentence (I don't care what it is "not", I only care what it "is"), I read [Consciousness is the basis of human rights because consciousness leads you to you assume, all other humans would experience the world in essentially the same way you do]. I can't com…
What about the being inside of the womb?
Re: A warning about 'model welfare'
#490Earlier quoted context omitted.
I ask because I truly don't understand what he's saying. Clearly we have different ideas about consciousness and I have no idea where we diverge. He seems to be saying that determinism and consciousness are incompatible. But we already have examples that break that rule (us).
> But we already have examples that break that rule (us). No, we don't. Where are you reading your research papers?
Please don't insult me.