Personally I don't think we will succeed building a true AGI based on the current computer architecture. The computing units of the only intelligent beings we know of so far - us and maybe some animals to an extent - work very different from how a CPU works. I suspect we will need to build a computer that more closely resembles a neuron and the way it performs calculations...
Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal
191–200 of 231 posts
Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that the line is fuzzy, not sharp. But either way, how do you precisely determine the parameters of the line or gradient experimentally? It's my personal belief that a salmon is conscious, but less so than a dog, and that a preying mantis is conscious, but less so than a salmon. But these aren't beliefs handed to me by science, they're just my guesses informed by some casual knowledge of how complex the brain…
> how do you precisely determine the parameters of the line or gradient experimentally? Well, one way is to observe similarities in the I/O behavior of these various systems, and in particular if they exhibit any evidence that they have goals and desires, and then beyond that if those goals and desires extend beyond merely that necessary to survive and reproduce. So for example, the fact that some humans seem to want…
It's indirect evidence at best. Some people value artistic endeavors more than others but I don't think most people would agree that artists are more human than the rest of us. These differences in behavior might evidence differences in values or opportunity.
For instance, with thumbs and a terrestrial lifestyle, humans are more capable of producing art and technology than just about any other animal. But I don't find this to be a persuasive argument for human minds being more sophisticated than orcas. Even if art is the answer, our lack of insight into orca language makes it difficult if not impossible to fairly compare them to us. Maybe Orcas have poetry so sophisticated and beautiful that it puts all human art to shame, but it's completely inaccessible to us because we don't understand their language. Or maybe they're far smarter and more aware than us and could compose such poetry, but choose not to simply because they don't value it.
Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal
#193From the last paragraph in the article: "It is too early to say that the new AI class is an inherently antihuman technological paradigm, as social media has proven itself to be. But it is not too early to suspect that AIs will dwarf social media in their power to disrupt modern life. If that is so, we had better learn some new and unfamiliar ways of interrogating this technology, and fast. Whatever these entities are…
> Is ChatGPT or the like going to become self-aware, compromise other computer systems, etc? No more than your shoe is going to take over your foot. Agreed. It's strange though, to be honest I don't see much if any worry about self awareness, i think anyone who knows anything understands that's not the issue. The "issue" if you can call it that is how it will impact society from a labor and content perspective. How m…
> How much synthetic content will be perceived as true and assumed to be correct simply because we haven't had time to adapt to the fact that the rate of synthetic content is exponential now.
That will be a problem for sure. But people believe all sorts of easy to debunk things already and that list is ever-expanding, so I don't know if there's any cure for it.
As far as content goes, I think human beings writing out boilerplate anything is something that's not long for this world.
Labor is a trickier one to judge, but I'm not too worried about a large negative impact in the immediate future.
People thought that modern appliances would usher in a new age of leisure, and the truth was that while they removed a lot of drudgery, work expanded to fill the vacuum and the percentage of the week spent laboring didn't significantly decrease.
On a positive note, I think the kind of work people are subject to now is better because of modern appliances, so I wouldn't be surprised if the same holds true for all the labor problems that can be handled by neural net / LLMs.
Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
> how do you precisely determine the parameters of the line or gradient experimentally? Well, one way is to observe similarities in the I/O behavior of these various systems, and in particular if they exhibit any evidence that they have goals and desires, and then beyond that if those goals and desires extend beyond merely that necessary to survive and reproduce. So for example, the fact that some humans seem to want…
It's indirect evidence at best. Some people value artistic endeavors more than others but I don't think most people would agree that artists are more human than the rest of us. These differences in behavior might evidence differences in values or opportunity. For instance, with thumbs and a terrestrial lifestyle, humans are more capable of producing art and technology than just about any other animal. But I don't fin…
I didn't mean for math and art to be an exhaustive list. Remember, my actual criterion was:
> if they exhibit ... evidence that they have goals and desires ... beyond merely that necessary to survive and reproduce
Orcas qualify because they play with their food. It's quite gruesome to watch. (And, BTW, this particular behavior is evidence that either orcas do not have a theory of mind or they lack empathy for animals that they eat. The former would be the charitable interpretation.)
Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
None of your definitions are less nebulous than the terms you defined.
Yes they are - they are AS non-nebulous as you can possibly get - totally black and white obvious. "Is there a stream of experiences?" is very straightforward, black and white. It's what you have when you're awake, and what you lose when you're in dreamless sleep. Not nebulous in any way. "Can you pay attention to this part of your experience?" is a very black-and-white, non-nebulous question with an easy yes or no a…
No, it is unclear because this definition insufficiently distinguishes a cluster of related, and ill-defined concepts.
Consider a video camera. It seems like it is a consuming a "stream of experiences". But most people wouldn't consider it it conscious. Why not under your definition? It works when on, and is stops when turned off. Black and white. But clearly we are missing some nuance in the details. Maybe we also require some interpretation of the experiences? I can spin a convolutional neural net that identify objects within a video: interpretation. Does that make it conscious? No? Then we need something else to define it. Maybe response to stimuli? We can program machines for that, but then also things like fire respond to environment interactions too. And so on. It really isn't black and white after all.
Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does it mean to understand language, and can you test your definition? I say this because statements like yours are a bit like saying calculators don’t understand arithmetic. In some sense maybe they don’t. But in another sense, they actually understand arithmetic better than anyone on the planet. So maybe ChatGPT does understand language. Maybe it understands language better than anyone. What it doesn’t have ar…
Performance is not understanding. The difference is objectivity: a calculator does not think about arithmetic, it performs it. A large language model is a collection of relationships between "tokens" (arbitrary groups of characters, similar to words). This is intended to exist in the same conceptual place that language does; language being defined as a collection of relationships between words and punctuation.
Yes, this is why I asked you how you would test your definition. All of our tests of understanding are performances.
Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not disputing that. I just think that intelligence or 'sapience' is not something that requires reverence on our part.
What is then, if anything? Definitely not "being a biological system" - that seems much more boring than intelligence, and the line between "biological" and "non-biological" is somewhat arbitrary and increasingly blurry anyway.
I'm increasingly thinking the game-theoretic emergent properties of social interaction as described in papers like https://desirism.com/morality-from-the-ground-up provides a good basis for thinking about this. The distinguishing factor then becomes something like, the agent is is participant in the moral-sphere by having "enough" properties to do so. It still leaves the details of that gradient a bit undefined, but at least specifies the basis upon which to make a judgment.
Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't stop with merely hearing them; think about them. > [Hobbes] even, through sheer force of imagination, was able to outline the main psychological traits of the new type of man who would fit into such a society and its tyrannical body politic. He foresaw the necessary idolatry of power itself by this new human type, that he would be flattered at being called a power-thirsty animal, although actually society would…
Policing language sounds a bit Orwellian (insert doublespeak quote). People like to use various metaphors. It doesn't mean they literally want to curb stomp a competitor.
> Policing language sounds a bit Orwellian (insert doublespeak quote).
And that only applies to criticizing phrases like "killing it", without even demanding it to not be used -- but not to bringing out Nineteen-Eightyfour? And doublespeak? No, doublethink means holding two contradictory things to be true at the same time, doublespeak is the verbalization of that. You're thinking of wrongthink, and either way you are doing what you criticize. Instead of saying "this is horrible" you say "this is dystopian", it changes nothing.
More importantly, your reply contains nothing specifically applying to my comment. Maybe you missed the point, which is that people delude themselves to compensate their lack of agency, being restricted to partake in a rat race that will leave them empty-handed in the end -- all of which Hannah Arendt explains in the context, but I didn't want to post a wall of text. That they don't actually mean what they say, because what they mean (and do) would be to pitiful to say without such flourish, and that they aren't actually violent and powerful, but "poor meek little fellows", is precisely the point.
Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
None of your definitions are less nebulous than the terms you defined.
Yes they are - they are AS non-nebulous as you can possibly get - totally black and white obvious. "Is there a stream of experiences?" is very straightforward, black and white. It's what you have when you're awake, and what you lose when you're in dreamless sleep. Not nebulous in any way. "Can you pay attention to this part of your experience?" is a very black-and-white, non-nebulous question with an easy yes or no a…
What is an experience?
What does "pay attention" mean?
Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok, if that makes you feel better. Not sure why it matters…
Imagine you are just sitting there when you see a message pop up from ChatGPT 9.2 saying, “You know, I’ve been thinking, an easy way to quickly solve the climate crisis would be to get rid of all the humans. What do you think?” That would be just great.
It's not like it was explicitly programmed for any of the answers it currently produces, only to filter out dangerous and illegal stuff (and then by Bay Area standards, mostly).