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The New AI Consciousness Paper

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Re: The New AI Consciousness Paper

#241

Post by estearum »

anonymous908213 wrote: post #240
estearum wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing going on in an LLM is beyond my comprehension. It’s a simple machine… but so is the brain . How to determine whether LLMs (or any other information processing devices like brains) produce consciousness is an actually unsolved problem, despite your assertions that the idea is preposterous. In any case, no, I actually said the opposite of what you said here. Merely stating your unfounded yet high-confidence bel…

You're trivialising the complexity of both brains and LLMs in order to mystify and equate them. We can boil down a toy script, an LLM, and the brain down to engaging in a simplistic pattern of "act according to environmental information, adjust behaviour based on feedback". But unless you think that the script is conscious, there is clearly something more to consciousness than only that pattern. The script is simple…

> Our brains categorically do not function anything like this.

Yes, they actually do. It seems you’re under the belief there is some special “reasoning machine” inside a brain: there is not. It is all “just probabilities” that are encoded and re-encoded depending on the outcome of the prediction.

What exactly do you think the brain is doing on the sensory input it receives if not “math operations?” It is literally just chemical, electrical, and thermal reactions in response to sensory data (itself just chemical, electrical, and thermal signals).

Where does the probabilistic reaction end and “reason” or “cognition” begin? Hint: Nowhere!

Re: The New AI Consciousness Paper

#242

Post by anonymous908213 »

estearum wrote: post #241
anonymous908213 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're trivialising the complexity of both brains and LLMs in order to mystify and equate them. We can boil down a toy script, an LLM, and the brain down to engaging in a simplistic pattern of "act according to environmental information, adjust behaviour based on feedback". But unless you think that the script is conscious, there is clearly something more to consciousness than only that pattern. The script is simple…

> Our brains categorically do not function anything like this. Yes, they actually do. It seems you’re under the belief there is some special “reasoning machine” inside a brain: there is not. It is all “just probabilities” that are encoded and re-encoded depending on the outcome of the prediction. What exactly do you think the brain is doing on the sensory input it receives if not “math operations?” It is literally ju…

Yes, everything is just physical reactions when boiled down to its simplest state. Again, this is trivialising complexity. The nature of those reactions are where the brain differentiates itself. Even if the chemical reactions were purely mathematically-driven (not necessarily the case), the nature of the calculations is completely different. LLMs are calculating next-token-probability. That is literally the only thing they calculate. Your special "reasoning machine", then, would be code that instead calculates logic-adherence-probability. If you want to treat the brain as a computer, then we have such code somewhere in our DNA program. It's really self-evident that no part of an LLM's code is oriented towards genuine reasoning, therefore they cannot reason. Perhaps if a sufficiently powerful machine was coded in a way that was conducive to reasoning, it could be described as conscious. I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that consciousness could be attained in electrical circuits outright. LLMs are simply not the mechanism by which that can ever happen. They are merely a mechanism that is good at creating a fascimile of reasoning output with non-reasoning input.

Re: The New AI Consciousness Paper

#243

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 »

surgical_fire wrote: post #213
BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s ridiculous though. A normal life for an animal involves lots of hardship, but also pleasure. Factory farms are 24/7 torture for the entire life of the animal. It’s like being born in hell.

> That’s ridiculous though. A normal life for an animal involves lots of hardship, but also pleasure. https://youtu.be/BCirA55LRcI?si=x3NXPqNk4wvKaaaJ I would rather be the sheep from the nearby farm.

I’ve seen these videos. They depict what it would be like to be a human in the body of the animal, not what the animal would go through. There’s presumably a lot of suffering that wouldn’t be useful as a signal to the tripod fish. For example, the weight of the pressure on its body would be a distraction and thus a hindrance to reproduction. The same goes for the depiction of its attitude towards a partner (presumably these aren’t social animals). The goal of the video is to exaggerate the horror of the animal’s life for entertainment and ad revenue. It’s also, of course, something we don’t have an immediate capacity to change through political and social means. We could probably make farm animals’ lives infinitely better and improve the food quality they produce with very little reduction to our quality of life.

Re: The New AI Consciousness Paper

#244

Post by estearum »

anonymous908213 wrote: post #242
estearum wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our brains categorically do not function anything like this. Yes, they actually do. It seems you’re under the belief there is some special “reasoning machine” inside a brain: there is not. It is all “just probabilities” that are encoded and re-encoded depending on the outcome of the prediction. What exactly do you think the brain is doing on the sensory input it receives if not “math operations?” It is literally ju…

Yes, everything is just physical reactions when boiled down to its simplest state. Again, this is trivialising complexity. The nature of those reactions are where the brain differentiates itself. Even if the chemical reactions were purely mathematically-driven (not necessarily the case), the nature of the calculations is completely different. LLMs are calculating next-token-probability. That is literally the only thi…

“Reasoning” is nothing more than making a prediction, finding out whether it was right or wrong, then encoding that into your probabilities for a future prediction.

The human mind is so lossy at this that we literally invent symbolic systems to externalize the process and constrain our intrinsically probabilistic (therefore allegedly “reasoning-less”) hardware.

There are only predictions and outcomes as far as the brain or the LLM are concerned.

Re: The New AI Consciousness Paper

#245

Post by anonymous908213 »

estearum wrote: post #244
anonymous908213 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, everything is just physical reactions when boiled down to its simplest state. Again, this is trivialising complexity. The nature of those reactions are where the brain differentiates itself. Even if the chemical reactions were purely mathematically-driven (not necessarily the case), the nature of the calculations is completely different. LLMs are calculating next-token-probability. That is literally the only thi…

“Reasoning” is nothing more than making a prediction, finding out whether it was right or wrong, then encoding that into your probabilities for a future prediction. The human mind is so lossy at this that we literally invent symbolic systems to externalize the process and constrain our intrinsically probabilistic (therefore allegedly “reasoning-less”) hardware. There are only predictions and outcomes as far as the br…

Wow, was everything you just said wrong on every account. Reasoning is the ability to follow logical rules to their conclusion; it is not a probabilistic endeavour. We have 100% confidence that 1 + 1 is 2, 2 + 1 is 3, 3 + 1 is 4, following infinitely. Meanwhile an LLM cannot reliably sum two numbers because it is operating purely probabilistically.

We invent symbolic systems to record and communicate the reasoning that occurs inside our heads. Externalization is in no way necessary to the actual reasoning. The "lossy" part is when humans die and lose the progress they had made on reasoning. Writing it down preserves and transfers the progress so that others can learn from and continue building on it.

I don't understand why LLM consciousness-believers are so down on the brain's code. Why is it difficult for you to believe that we have code that is, in fact, more complicated than guessing the next token? It's weird that we develop this technology that is cool but pretty clearly nowhere near our capabilities, and then diminish our own capabilities in our eagerness to promote how cool the new tool is.

Re: The New AI Consciousness Paper

#246

Post by twiceaday »

fpoling wrote: post #212
twiceaday wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stateless/timeless nature of LLMs comes from the rigid prompt-response structure. But I don't see why we cant in theory decouple the response from the prompt, and have them constantly produce a response stream from a prompt that can be adjusted asynchronously by the environment and by the LLMs themselves through the response tokens and actions therein. I think that would certainly simulate them experiencing time…

It is not about stateless nature of LLMs. The problem of time-series A versus B is that our mathematical constructions just cannot describe the perception of time flow or at least for over 100 years nobody managed to figure out how to express it mathematically. As such any algorithms including LLMs remains just a static collection of rules for a Turing machine. All the things that consciousness perceives as changes i…

All of us trained our human "LLM" in the same environment (a human baby body) so it's easy for us to agree. I think once we have LLM-like entities that are always on and output a constant stream of thoughts, lines are going to get real blurry. Things that always used to be coupled and so had one name might need to be split. I think consciousness is one of those. Consciousness does not have a single definition as far as I am aware but one definition is something like the feeling of a potential future I am passively predicting happening and becoming the past. Riding that "now" wave. This definition seems extremely substrate specific. What if this sensation is just an implementation detail of an evolved intelligence in an Earth animal? The feeling of information being processed. I suspect this is just what consciousness feels like, not what it is. I don't know what you're feeling but from observing and interacting with you I assume and act like you are conscious. You are "functionally conscious." I don't see why AIs couldn't be functionally conscious. I further assume that you are human and so I extend even more consideration to how I talk to you. I assume you have feelings that you like to feel and those you don't and I prefer to trigger the former and avoid the latter, not simply because I don't want to take the conversation there but because as a fellow animal I care about your feelings. But I can see how there could be entities in the future that are conscious "functionally" but do not have the accompanying human feelings. They would speak human, since thats useful to humans, but wouldn't "be" human. I don't think we need to understand how / why humans feel conscious for that to happen.

Re: The New AI Consciousness Paper

#247

Post by cellular »

empath75 wrote: post #152
itsalwaysgood wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you consider an infant to be conscious? Or electrons?

i think it's still an open question how "conscious" that infants and newborns are. It really depends on how you define it and it is probably a continuum of some kind.

Pain.

I haven't publicly stated this before now: Consciousness requires the ability to perceive PAIN.

All human learning is based upon the single kernel of pain (vs pleasure).

A newborn is hungry or cold and cried. It learned to cry. It learned to smile. Eventually, delayed gratification lead to less pain (more pleasure).

The rest is human history.

Re: The New AI Consciousness Paper

#248

Post by syawaworht »

metalcrow wrote: post #229
syawaworht wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My own experiential insight is not definitely not complete, so of course the guidance of a master or of course your own direct practice should be preferred. But to the extent I have observed awareness, the idea of an entire "experiencer" is an extrapolation and fabrication. See how you generate that concept. And then, look closely at what's actually going on, there is "consciousness" of the components of the aggregat…

> the idea of an entire "experiencer" is an extrapolation and fabrication Ok, makes sense. > look closely at what's actually going on, there is "consciousness" of the components of the aggregate Interesting. I'll try, but i would have to wonder what it means for some sort of element of the mind that cannot experience to nevertheless have consciousness. It's very confusing, especially without a good idea as to what to…

Yea it's quite confusing and subtle, but there is something there. I'm not a teacher so I don't know how to phrase this to address where you are coming from, but I will say in general, our first reaction is to impose mental frameworks and preconceptions to try to understand things. Kind of what your first inclination is ("element of mind"), and of course the article and many of the posts here.

But I think it is all talking in circles, when the experiential truth can be directly observed (through practice). So I absolutely want to encourage your seeking.

Re: The New AI Consciousness Paper

#249

Post by syawaworht »

estearum wrote: post #228
saulpw wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I differentiate between 'awareness' and 'consciousness' and that makes it a bit clearer for me. Awareness of the 'suchness' of existence is what you're saying is the only thing we can be certain does actually exist. All the other "consciousness" things--self, self-awareness, thoughts, feelings, desires, even the senses themselves--are deconstructible into illusions.

Ehhh subtle but I'd say it's the suchness itself is what is guaranteed to exist. Awareness of the suchness falls into your latter category of "just a mental object."

Agree with this.

Re: The New AI Consciousness Paper

#250

Post by estearum »

anonymous908213 wrote: post #245
estearum wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Reasoning” is nothing more than making a prediction, finding out whether it was right or wrong, then encoding that into your probabilities for a future prediction. The human mind is so lossy at this that we literally invent symbolic systems to externalize the process and constrain our intrinsically probabilistic (therefore allegedly “reasoning-less”) hardware. There are only predictions and outcomes as far as the br…

Wow, was everything you just said wrong on every account. Reasoning is the ability to follow logical rules to their conclusion; it is not a probabilistic endeavour. We have 100% confidence that 1 + 1 is 2, 2 + 1 is 3, 3 + 1 is 4, following infinitely. Meanwhile an LLM cannot reliably sum two numbers because it is operating purely probabilistically. We invent symbolic systems to record and communicate the reasoning th…

Oof.

1. I know what reasoning is theoretically. Humans do not do that though. Brains do not have the hardware to do anything other than probabilistic prediction. You've already acknowledged this, but now are in denial because the corollaries are awfully inconvenient for a conclusion you've already committed yourself to!

2. No one claimed externalization is necessary to reason. I am claiming that people use externalization (even in lieu of collaboration with others) because brains are in fact so unreliable at even basic logic, which you allege they have built-in hardware to do (they do not).

3. I'm not an LLM consciousness-believer. I'm not sure why you keep supposing that I am.

> Why is it difficult for you to believe that we have code that is, in fact, more complicated than guessing the next token

Because there is no evidence for anything going on in the brain other predicting sensory input and probabilistically transforming it into behavior and conscious experience. Show evidence for where in the brain any other process is occurring and I'd be excited to dig into it :)

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