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Life is more than an engineering problem

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Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#21

Post by bookofjoe »

Squarex wrote: post #6
vrnvu wrote: post #4

Highly recommend "Stories of Your Life and Others". I describe Ted Chiang as a very human sci-fi author, where humanity comes before technology in his stories. His work is incredibly versatile, and while I expected sci-fi, I'd actually place him closer to fantasy. Perfect for anyone who enjoys short stories with a scientific, social, or philosophical twist. Another anthology I'd recommend with fresh ideas is Axiomati…

Ted Chiang and Greg Egan are my absolutely favourite authors. Do you know about other similar writers?

The last time I responded to a similar comment by suggesting asking an AI, I was downvoted to hell. I won't do it again. I will note, though, that the list generated was excellent and provided rewarding information.

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#22

Post by ChrisKnott »

thwackamole wrote: post #17
ChrisKnott wrote: post #14

> "It’s like imagining that a printer could actually feel pain because it can print bumper stickers with the words ‘Baby don’t hurt me’ on them. It doesn’t matter if the next version of the printer can print out those stickers faster, or if it can format the text in bold red capital letters instead of small black ones. Those are indicators that you have a more capable printer but not indicators that it is any closer…

You appear to be conflating 'feeling' and 'intelligence', which is not what TC is doing. He is also not wrong about whether current AIs experience feelings. I suggest you learn more about the neuroscience of feelings.

Well, he is making an analogy that real internal experience cannot be confirmed externally, however convincing the performance, but this is the only way we know about the internal experience of all things, including ones we typically assign "real" consciousness to (humans, dogs) and ones we don't (amoeba, zygotes, LLMs).

To be clear I'm not for a moment suggesting current AIs are remotely comparable to animals.

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#23

Post by jodrellblank »

almusdives wrote: post #19
ChrisKnott wrote: post #14

> "It’s like imagining that a printer could actually feel pain because it can print bumper stickers with the words ‘Baby don’t hurt me’ on them. It doesn’t matter if the next version of the printer can print out those stickers faster, or if it can format the text in bold red capital letters instead of small black ones. Those are indicators that you have a more capable printer but not indicators that it is any closer…

> We actually know exactly which gene sequence is responsible for real intelligence. We don't at all know this.

“suppose”

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#24

Post by JadeNB »

ycombinete wrote: post #16
Squarex wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ted Chiang and Greg Egan are my absolutely favourite authors. Do you know about other similar writers?

I’ve never encountered anything like Egan before. I’ve heard Stanislaw Lem mentioned in conversations about him though. But I can’t vouch for the comparison myself as I’ve never read Lem.

Both are fresh voices and well worth reading, but I don't think Lem comes anywhere near Egan's diamond-hard sci-fi. Egan knows, and does, real math; you can sometimes find him at the n-category Café. My impression is that Lem's beautiful philosophical ideas were not accompanied by comparable math or physics knowledge.

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#25

Post by breakitmakeit »

Squarex wrote: post #6
vrnvu wrote: post #4

Highly recommend "Stories of Your Life and Others". I describe Ted Chiang as a very human sci-fi author, where humanity comes before technology in his stories. His work is incredibly versatile, and while I expected sci-fi, I'd actually place him closer to fantasy. Perfect for anyone who enjoys short stories with a scientific, social, or philosophical twist. Another anthology I'd recommend with fresh ideas is Axiomati…

Ted Chiang and Greg Egan are my absolutely favourite authors. Do you know about other similar writers?

As a fan of both I highly recommend Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Time_(novel)) for something deeply imaginative, empathetic, and technically plausible.

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#26

Post by 7thaccount »

gcanyon wrote: post #9

I'll take this as my chance to recommend Ted Chiang -- he is among the very best short story writers working in science fiction (I say confidently, not having done an extensive survey...). His works are remarkably clever, from Understand, which does a credible job of portraying human superintelligence, to Exhalation, which explores the concept of entropy in a fascinating way. And of course Story of Your Life, on whic…

Understand really was my favorite super intelligence story. Isn't the new show severance based off one of his short stories as well? I can't remember. I wasn't a big fan of the pacing of the digients story with the little digital life forms. It was certainly thought provoking though.

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#27

Post by I-M-S »

7thaccount wrote: post #26
gcanyon wrote: post #9

I'll take this as my chance to recommend Ted Chiang -- he is among the very best short story writers working in science fiction (I say confidently, not having done an extensive survey...). His works are remarkably clever, from Understand, which does a credible job of portraying human superintelligence, to Exhalation, which explores the concept of entropy in a fascinating way. And of course Story of Your Life, on whic…

Understand really was my favorite super intelligence story. Isn't the new show severance based off one of his short stories as well? I can't remember. I wasn't a big fan of the pacing of the digients story with the little digital life forms. It was certainly thought provoking though.

Severence is an original work written by Dan Erickson.

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#28

Post by ChrisKnott »

epr wrote: post #18
ChrisKnott wrote: post #14

> "It’s like imagining that a printer could actually feel pain because it can print bumper stickers with the words ‘Baby don’t hurt me’ on them. It doesn’t matter if the next version of the printer can print out those stickers faster, or if it can format the text in bold red capital letters instead of small black ones. Those are indicators that you have a more capable printer but not indicators that it is any closer…

I disagree. The reason humans anthropomorphize "AI" is because we apply our own meta-models of intelligence to llms, etc., where they simply don't apply. The model can spit out something that seems extremely intelligent and well thought out that would truly be shocking if a monkey said it for example due to our meta-model of intelligence, and that may be valid in that case if we determined it wasn't simply memorized.…

I agree that with current LLMs the error goes the other way; they appear more conscious than they are, compared to, say, crows or octopuses which appear less conscious than they actually are.

My point is that "appears conscious" is really the only test there is. In what way is a human that says "that hurts" really feeling pain? What about Stephen Hawking "saying it", what about if he could only communicate through printed paper etc etc. You can always play this dial-down-the-consciousness game.

People used to say fish don't feel pain, they are "merely responding to stimulus".

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#29

Post by wat10000 »

teleforce wrote: post #13

> And even though I know a perfect language is impossible It's already existed for a very long time and it's called Arabic language. It's the extreme opposite of English where English is a hodgepodge of a languages mixtures where about 1/3 is French language, about one third is old English and about 1/3 of other world's languages including Arabic. Comparing the best of English literatures for example Shakespeare's bo…

If it’s perfect, why are there so many different dialects of it?

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#30

Post by aaronblohowiak »

teleforce wrote: post #20
encomiast wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument seems to presuppose that a language is more perfect if it has fewer influences and contributions from other languages. But you didn’t actually state that assumption, and certainly didn’t support it. Maybe the most perfect language is a perfect amalgamation of all languages. That’s at least as plausible to me.

According to Islamic tradition it's the language of the heavens. The bottom line is that the best and/or perfect language there is, should be able to create the best and/or perfect literature either in the form of book/oration/etc. Mind you Quran is not originally in the form of book it's actually oral tradition and Muhammad is a well known illiterate person. In fact (I'm not making this up) currently there are many…

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