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A warning about 'model welfare'

mustafa-suleyman.ai

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Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#601

Post by mitxela »

pton_xd wrote: post #14
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.

If models had persistent memory or an evolving set of weights, you could easily construct an argument that they can experience "suffering" or other emotions which resultingly adjusts their personality. The current implementation as stateless matrix multiplication... yeah there's nothing going on there.

Model state is often called "context". You may have heard of it.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#602

Post by myaccountonhn »

addag wrote: post #38

I don't think this is the right argument to make here. Until we have a definite empirical way to measure consciousness, there is now way to say with certainty whether LLMs are or not conscious. That being said, if frontier labs actually believe models will soon have consciousness, it raises some questions about the ethic of their business model which would be using millions of conscious entities working for free for…

The issue is that the answer if LLMs are conscious or not have ramifications for society, even if we can't answer it. Similar to how god existing or not has huge ramifications for how we structure society. And when there is no empirical way to know the answer, it will be a game of story-telling, theological arguments and propaganda.

The danger is that Anthropic has a strong incentive to push their narrative, and that narrative can cause a lot of harm (for example LLM-induced psychosis and changed views on animal welfare).

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#603

Post by mitxela »

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 debunking GGP by calling out the "proving too much fallacy"

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#604

Post by mitxela »

staticman2 wrote: post #216
shawnz wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It seems silly to dismiss the patient because we know when healthy they are conscious. This doesn't really analogize to LLMs.

So you think a dementia patient might be a p-zombie during the time they have dementia?

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#605

Post by mitxela »

randomImmigrant wrote: post #161
ooloncoloophid wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I haven't read any more than the first paragraph yet (but I will, after work). The only way that 'AIs are not conscious' can be true is if we decide, with high confidence, that they are lacking some essential property that is not lacking in ourselves. There is no convincing philosophical position that supports this (convincing to me, anyway).

Hmm let me try then. AI agents do not experience real time. This is understandable given their design, but it’s also something we have good empirical evidence for. They cannot, especially over the long horizon, track how much real time has passed as they complete their tasks. And they are not off by a few minutes but often bizarrely off, even mixing across past present and future. Biology, on the other hand, is nothi…

I also don't experience real time without constantly referring to a clock.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#606

Post by mitxela »

randomImmigrant wrote: post #516
ikrenji wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean there is probably a cluster of neurons somewhere in the brain that if damaged would also prevent you from perceiving time going forward. Would it immediately strip you of consciousness? I don't think so.

Nope. Every cell is an autonomous circadian oscillator. Not just every neuron, but every cell. Red blood cells don’t have a nucleus, but they do have a metabolic clock. You and I are clusters of about 36 trillion cells that are all able to individually keep time. They synchronize and orchestrate their timekeeping, and entrain to the external environment, and there is a cluster of cells, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, t…

We don't perceive our cells though.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#607

Post by mitxela »

jplusequalt wrote: post #142
frde_me wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> these things are not alive.

Evidence?

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#608

Post by mitxela »

pixl97 wrote: post #201
frde_me wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to note how you expressed your own feeling about the subject "these things are not alive", but without pointing to anything concrete explaining the theory you have behind this And like I'm sure I'd agree depending on the definition of "alive" but then I'm also sure I would disagree depending on other definitions of "alive".

Hell, in biology alive is a hell of a topic these days. The grey space between dead and alive is much weirder than we ever expected. Really just points out how we're a persistent chemical reaction.

Someone told me yesterday there's one specific protein in your brain that modulates craving.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSB

The amount of time after experiencing a rewarding stimulus that you want more of it is how long this protein takes to decay.

Or so we currently think. I think this is pretty new science.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#609

Post by myaccountonhn »

dwaltrip wrote: post #476
JW_00000 wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chickens experience pain and suffering yet we kill 202 million of them each day. [1] [1] https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-get-slaughtered-...

And how do we stop? Must I become vegan…? I accept that may be the only meaningful step I personally could take. It’s a large one though… I do agree with the sibling comment that one terrible thing doesn’t justify another.

My sister used to have hens that ranged freely, they seemed to be happy. I don't think you need to be vegan, just don't eat factory-farmed eggs.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#610

Post by mitxela »

AbsurdCensor wrote: post #279
jplusequalt wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The solution isn't 'just don't use them' but rather how to use these things as ethically as possible. Bollocks. If you truly believe these LLMs are soon to have something resembling consciousness and agency, then what you're really saying is "how do we do slavery, but ethically".

Do you say the same thing for the shoes you wear, the clothing you wear, the device you are typing on right now? A chain of people were likely not paid well, some of them not at all, to produce those things. We don't ignore that it happens, but try to minimize it, knowing it's never going to be eliminated. Do you forsake all animal products, because they are conscious beings?

Why do you think they think those are ethical?
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