Given this article is behind a paywall, what on earth is everyone discussing in the comments here?
There's an archive link above that bypasses the paywall
Doesn’t seem to be working…
When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?
151–160 of 450 posts
Re: When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?
#152Re: When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ability to feel pain or pleasure is a good indicator I think..
And how do you define pain and pleasure? Do insects feel pain?
> And how do you define pain and pleasure?
They're not reducible, but I don't know if that means we don't have definitions; we can describe them well enough that most people (who aren't p-zombies or playing the sceptical philosopher role) know pretty well what we mean. All of our definitions have to bottom out somewhere...
> Do insects feel pain?
Nobody (except the insects) can know for sure. Our inability to know whether X is true doesn't imply X is meaningless, though.
Re: When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?
#154Since the times GPT-2 was reimplemented inside Minecraft - its quite obvious LLMs are just math. Nothing else, by nature. Modern LLMs have the same math as in GPT-2 - just bigger and with extra stuff around - and math is the only area of human knowledge with perfect flawless reductionism, straight to the roots. It was build that way since the beginning, so philosophy have no say in this :) And because of that flawles…
We are not fundamentally different. Chemical reactions are just math.
"The universe is fundamentally just a complicated clockwork"
Unknown Ptolemy disciple
Re: When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?
#155It's easy, and very tempting to dismiss this sort of thing. But given how little we know about the human brain, let alone consciousness, I don't see how we can be confident that LLMs aren't conscious.
I've had a lot of thoughts and conversations over the years that changed my mind on what consciousness likely requires. One was the realization that a purely mechanical computer can, in principle simulate the laws of physics, and with it a human brain. So with a few other mild assumptions, you might conclude that a bunch of gears and pullies can be conscious, which feels profoundly counterintuitive.
I think that was the moment I stopped being sure about anything related to this question.
Re: When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?
#156Its software. Software is not conscious.
If your brain is hardware then what are your thoughts? Is a sperm conscious? Or an egg? When they come together the eventual brain is not conscious immediately.
LLMs are word prediction engines.
They clearly are not conscious, they are just guessing what words should come next.
Re: When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's the opposite argument IF current AI is conscious, so are trees, rocks, turbulent flows, etc. The argument being that LLMs are so simple that if you want to ascribe consciousness to them you have to do the same to a LOT of other stuff.
But I listed a specific difference: sensation and response. Trees have that. Rocks do not.
I believe you're using the scientific definition of "sentience", while everyone else is using the common understanding of of the word (which should be called "sapience", but thanks to sci-fi's usage of the word "sentience" is largely not).
Re: When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ability to feel pain or pleasure is a good indicator I think..
And how do you define pain and pleasure? Do insects feel pain?
> Do insects feel pain?
Yes, I think so. Because they show behavior that is consistent with being in a state of pain.
Despite what consciousness really is, I think evolution found a way to tap into that, by causing pain, or by registering pain on the consciousness by some unknown mechanism, for behaviors that are not beneficial to the organism that hosts the respective consciousness...
So I think if an organism that evolved here can display painful behavior, then it should really feel pain.
Re: When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?
#159It's easy, and very tempting to dismiss this sort of thing. But given how little we know about the human brain, let alone consciousness, I don't see how we can be confident that LLMs aren't conscious. I've had a lot of thoughts and conversations over the years that changed my mind on what consciousness likely requires. One was the realization that a purely mechanical computer can, in principle simulate the laws of ph…
Why do you think stringing words together is any more a sign of consciousness than google maps is when it tries to find the best route available to your destination? It seems to me that humans often fall into the trap of anthropomorphism. This is a theme thats touched upon in the novel "Blindsight" by Peter Watts. Just because something can communicate in a way that you can interpret, doesnt mean something is conscious
Re: When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?
#160Incredibly confusing that people who are otherwise of sound mind seem to fall for this. Especially confusing when it’s someone who knows how algorithms work. Barring connectivity issues when’s the last time you messaged an LLM and it just decided to ignore you? Conversely when has it ever messaged you unprompted? Never, because they’re incapable of doing anything independently because there is no sense of self.
If you've followed Dawkins' trajectory, I don't think it's clear that he's "otherwise of sound mind" anymore. He's had some very strange output on biological gender, where he tries to handwave away the existence of intersex people. And he's a biologist.
"Intersex" is a misleading umbrella term for a whole bunch of different DSDs, each of which is 100% specific to one biological sex. And I don't think I've ever seen the term "biological gender"; about the only thing gender proponents seem to agree on is that it's NOT biological.