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You are the scariest monster in the woods

jamie.ideasasylum.com

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Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#181

Post by BoxOfRain »

progbits wrote: post #156
slow_typist wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In short, by definition, computers are symbol manipulating devices. However complex the rules of symbol manipulation, it is still a symbol manipulating device, and therefore neither intelligent nor sentient. So AGI on computers is not possible.

Computer can simulate human brain on subatomic level (in theory). Do you agree this would be "sentient and intelligent" and not just symbol manipulating? If yes, everything else is just optimization.

Say we do have a 1:1 representation of the human brain in software. How could we know if we're talking to a conscious simulation of a human being, versus some kind of philosophical zombie which appears conscious but isn't?

Without a solid way to differentiate 'conscious' from 'not conscious' any discussion of machine sentience is unfalsifiable in my opinion.

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#183

Post by adornKey »

us-merul wrote: post #5

"Humans will do what they’ve always tried to do—gain power, enslave, kill, control, exploit, cheat, or just be lazy and avoid the hard work—but now with new abilities that we couldn’t have dreamed of." -- A pretty bleak, and also accurate, observation of humanity. I have to hope that the alternative sentence encompassing all of the good can lead to some balance.

I don't think it's that accurate. Evil people are rare - and lazy people usually don't cause problems. The most real damage comes from human stupidity - from the mass of people that just want to help and do something good. Stupid People blindly believe anything they're told. And they do a lot of really bad things not because they're evil and lazy, but because they want to help achieve even the most stupid goal. Usually even nasty propagandists leaders aren't that evil - often they're just an intellectual failure - or have some mental issues. Themselves they don't do much practical evil - the mob of nice stupid people does the dirty work, because they just want to help.

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#184

Post by omnicognate »

Chance-Device wrote: post #155
omnicognate wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure if you email him explaining how stupid he is he'll send you his Nobel prize. Less flippantly, Penrose has always been extremely clear about which things he's sure of, such as that human intelligence involves processes that algorithms cannot emulate, and which things he puts forward as speculative ideas that might help answer the questions he has raised. His ideas about quantum mechanical processes in the bra…

You realise that this isn’t even a reply so much as a series of insults dressed up in formal language? Yes, of course you do.

It wasn't intended as an insult and I apologise if it comes across as such. It's easy to say things on the internet that we wouldn't say in person.

It did come from a place of annoyance, after your middlebrow dismissal of Penrose' argument as "stupid".

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#185

Post by psychoslave »

myrmidon wrote: post #13

I struggle to understand how people can just dismiss the possibility of artificial intelligence. Human cognition was basically bruteforced by evolution-- why would it be impossible to achieve the exact same result in silicon, especially after we already demonstrated some parts of those results (e.g. use of language) that critically set us apart from other animals? I'm not buying the whole "AI has no agency" line eith…

>Human cognition was basically bruteforced by evolution-- why would it be impossible to achieve the exact same result in silicon, especially after we already demonstrated some parts of those results (e.g. use of language) that critically set us apart from other animals?

I don’t know if anything put us that much apart from other animals, especially at individual level. On collective level as a single species, indeed maybe only cyanobacteries stand an equally impressive achievement of a global change.

My 3 years old son is not particularly good at making complex sentences yet, but he already got it enough to make me understand "leave me alone, I want to play on my own, go elsewhere so I can do whatever fancy idea get through my mind with these toys".

Meanwhile LLM can produce sentences with perfect syntax and irreproachable level of orthography — far beyond my own level in my native language (but it’s French so I have a very big excuse). But they would not run without continuous multi-sector industrial complex injecting tremendous maintenance effort and resources to make it possible. And yet I still have to see any LLM that looks like it wants to discover things of the world on its own.

>As soon as profit can be made by transfering decision power into an AIs hand, some form of agency for them is just a matter of time, and we might simply not be willing to pull the plug until it is much too late.

LLM can’t make profit because it doesn’t have interest in money, and it can’t have any interest in anything, not even its own survival. But as the article mention, some people can certainly use LLM to make money because they have interest in money.

I don’t think that general AI and silicon (or any other material really) based autonomous collaborative self-replicating human-level-intelligence-or-beyond entities are impossible. I don’t think cold fusion is impossible either. It’s not completely scientifically ridiculous to keep hope in worm-hole-based breakthroughs to allow humanity explore distant planets. It doesn’t mean the technology is already there and achievable in a way that it can turned into a commodity, or even that we have a clear idea of when this is mostly going to happen.

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#186

Post by bryanlarsen »

hdseggbj wrote: post #171
bryanlarsen wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

P.S. Boston Dynamics is no longer owned by Google, it's part of Hyundai now.

Ah yes, rings a bell. Doesn't change the sentiment though. They're all crooks and cheaters who will sacrifice the greater good for their own self interest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Georgia_Hyundai_plant_imm... It's the fear of death that's killing us all.

There are tons of examples of chaebols behaving evilly in Korea. You don't have to pull out a scenario where half of Americans and most non-Americans think Hyundai are the victims, not the bad guys.

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#187

Post by theodorejb »

myrmidon wrote: post #13

I struggle to understand how people can just dismiss the possibility of artificial intelligence. Human cognition was basically bruteforced by evolution-- why would it be impossible to achieve the exact same result in silicon, especially after we already demonstrated some parts of those results (e.g. use of language) that critically set us apart from other animals? I'm not buying the whole "AI has no agency" line eith…

> Human cognition was basically bruteforced by evolution

This is an assumption, not a fact. Perhaps human cognition was created by God, and our minds have an essential spiritual component which cannot be reproduced by a purely physical machine.

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#188

Post by jncfhnb »

MountDoom wrote: post #175
jncfhnb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you could make AGI right now tbh. It’s not a function of intelligence. It’s just a function of stateful system mechanics. LLMs are just a big matrix. But what about a four line of code loop that looks like: ```while true: update_sensory_inputs() narrate_response() update_emotional_state() ``` LLMs don’t experience continuous time and they don’t have an explicit decision making framework for having any agency…

> I think you could make AGI right now tbh. Seems like you figured out a simple method. Why not go for it? It's a free Nobel prize at the very least.

Will you pay for my data center and operating costs?

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#189

Post by lif »

raldi wrote: post #167

The author comes so close to getting it, with the paragraph about how if you drop a human into an environment, they inevitably take over as the deadliest and most powerful creature. But the next step is to ask why; in the case of the Gruffalo it was obvious: fangs, claws, strength, size… In the case of humans, it’s because we’re the most intelligent creature in the forest. And for the first time in our history, we’re…

yes, and:

ruthlessness + strength + WMD =/= intelligence

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#190

Post by messe »

Aerroon wrote: post #176
myrmidon wrote: post #13

I struggle to understand how people can just dismiss the possibility of artificial intelligence. Human cognition was basically bruteforced by evolution-- why would it be impossible to achieve the exact same result in silicon, especially after we already demonstrated some parts of those results (e.g. use of language) that critically set us apart from other animals? I'm not buying the whole "AI has no agency" line eith…

> I'm not buying the whole "AI has no agency" line either; this might be true for now, but this is already being circumvented with current LLMs (by giving them web access etc). They don't have agency, because they don't have persistent state. They're like a function that you can query and get an answer. During that answer the LLM has state, but once it's done the state is gone. Humans (and other "agents") have persis…

> They don't have agency, because they don't have persistent state. They're like a function that you can query and get an answer. During that answer the LLM has state, but once it's done the state is gone.

That's solved by the simplest of agents. LLM + ability to read / write a file.

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