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Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

theatlantic.com

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Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#211

Post by bottlepalm »

ryandrake wrote: post #180
martin1975 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easily one of my top 10 favorite episodes. The judge broached on the subject of what makes us distinct from Data (e.g. machines w/great heuristics) - the existence of a soul. Or rather, I'd like to think, in the words of CS Lewis, that we are a soul with bodies attached.

Based on how some actual humans I know speak and act, I'm less and less convinced the human brain is much more than a stochastic next-thought prediction stream.

35 years old and just as relevant today - https://web.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...

A silicon alien coming to earth might poke us, we would say ouch, and just determine the ouch sound is just the result of a bunch of chemistry - not really conscious or feeling pain like it can, just emulating.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#212

Post by tvshtr »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #18

This makes sense. However there is an issue where many people conflate "consciousness" with the ability to make novel insights, think genuinely, etc. They use this to claim that since AI is not conscious, AI could never actually "think" and is instead just always a regurgitation of its training data. It is a natural human hubris to make our abilities seem unquantifiable and mysterious, but all the useful things the h…

Is there even an agreed and actionable definition of consciousness? I'm worried that if such a thing existed some humans would fail to measure up.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#213

Post by felipeerias »

margalabargala wrote: post #185
gabrieledarrigo wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, it's kind of mind boggling that Ted Chiang (of all people!) can't imagine intelligence without a body. and the whole thing just begs a lot of questions. How can you have a subjective experience without a body? That's the point, in my opinion: your physical/chemical state (body) in a given moment is then translated into the higher abstraction of the emotion. An emotion that *you* feel, because you are self awa…

Your point generalizes to, your emotional state is a reflection of the state of your physical medium. Why can't that physical medium be GPUs and RAM? And temperature sensors and cameras? What's special about our meat that it's our "body" in the way a computer is not the body of an AI? I don't think the point being argued can be true without some incredibly contrived, human centric definitions of "body".

What are you, ultimately, if not your body?

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#214

Post by qarl »

Waterluvian wrote: post #164

I think about Star Trek: TNG’s “Measure of a Man” a lot lately. We can be so confident to decide what is and isn’t alive from vibes alone. The conclusion I’m currently at is that I don’t know and probably can’t ever know. Maybe you’re all philosophical zombies. Maybe I am one too! But at some point we will get close enough that it hopefully becomes obvious that we must tread carefully. The entire episode is incredibl…

Any time I bump into a device that acts like a human I'm going to treat it like a human.

Because treating things that act human inhumanely is not something I want to learn how to do.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#215

Post by ares623 »

Lots of comments about "what even is consciousness".

This article and others like it are important.

The creators and owners of these tools are the ones saying "it's conscious" in the first place! (or more accurately "i'm not saying it's conscious, but...") Never mind there's billions of dollars and our collective futures on the line.

Are we not allowed to respond to that kind of rhetoric at all?

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#216

Post by [deleted] »

throwatdem12311 wrote: post #209
Waterluvian wrote: post #164

I think about Star Trek: TNG’s “Measure of a Man” a lot lately. We can be so confident to decide what is and isn’t alive from vibes alone. The conclusion I’m currently at is that I don’t know and probably can’t ever know. Maybe you’re all philosophical zombies. Maybe I am one too! But at some point we will get close enough that it hopefully becomes obvious that we must tread carefully. The entire episode is incredibl…

I’ve also rewatched it lately and I’m more on the side of the Starfleet scientists when I was obviously on Picard/Data’s side before.

[deleted]

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#217

Post by vondur »

Waterluvian wrote: post #164

I think about Star Trek: TNG’s “Measure of a Man” a lot lately. We can be so confident to decide what is and isn’t alive from vibes alone. The conclusion I’m currently at is that I don’t know and probably can’t ever know. Maybe you’re all philosophical zombies. Maybe I am one too! But at some point we will get close enough that it hopefully becomes obvious that we must tread carefully. The entire episode is incredibl…

Don't forget the other episode "Quality of Life" with these working robots who data discovers have become sentient: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quality_of_Life_(Star_Trek... I do miss the old TNG show.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#218

Post by qarl »

Nevermark wrote: post #194

> My intention is to highlight the fact that LLM conversations are cleverly disguised examples of sentence continuation Regardless of bigger issues, this kind of statement reveals a deep misunderstanding. Problem type does not limit problem complexity. Nor does problem type limit solution complexity or power. If a machine has to learn to understand humans to complete text, then that is what it has to do. And there is…

Yeah. There are good arguments against LLM consciousness. This is not one of them.

I'm hearing a lot of bad arguments against LLM consciousness lately. Bad argumentation heralds bad outcomes.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#219

Post by McGlockenshire »

radial_symmetry wrote: post #128
McGlockenshire wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fancypants autocomplete cannot be conscious. It's just echoing previous human experiences, which make it sound like a person. It is not a person. It is an algorithm. There is no mechanism by which it can obtain consciousness. People believing otherwise are fools. People debating this are idiots. I realize these words are harsh, but it's the truth.

[dead]

Life. Being alive. I'm not going to get into a semantic debate with you so don't bother following up with some whining about conflating life and consciousness. It's autocomplete. It is not alive, it cannot think, it cannot sense, it cannot perceive, it is math. If you believe it is alive then you are out of your mind. Go learn how it works.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#220

Post by jvanderbot »

Waterluvian wrote: post #164

I think about Star Trek: TNG’s “Measure of a Man” a lot lately. We can be so confident to decide what is and isn’t alive from vibes alone. The conclusion I’m currently at is that I don’t know and probably can’t ever know. Maybe you’re all philosophical zombies. Maybe I am one too! But at some point we will get close enough that it hopefully becomes obvious that we must tread carefully. The entire episode is incredibl…

I think about this from the other end. It cannot be considered a conscious being. There just isn't a world in which we should start to think of a machine using ethics we reserve for humans.

AI is essentially infinitely reproducible at zero cost, and won't suffer from decay etc. There's not scarcity to preserve.

So, I'd turn off an AI in a moment to save property or real possessions or money. I'd sacrifice property and money to save animals. I would never choose to save an animal over a person. I'd probably not choose to save a person over a child.

I don't see any inversion of any of those priorities that makes any sense.

It is interesting to think about what would cause me to consider these priorities incorrect, but a majority consensus about a program being sentient isn't it.

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