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When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?

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Re: When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?

#251

Post by fragmede »

marliechiller wrote: post #199
dumpsterdiver wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because something can communicate in a way that you can interpret, doesnt mean something is conscious The phrase “the trap of anthropomorphism” betrays a rather dull premise: that consciousness is strictly defined by human experience, and no other experience. It refuses to examine the underlying substrate, at which point we’re not even talking the same language anymore when discussing consciousness.

I think these ideas are orthogonal. I do not think that conciousness is defined by human experience at all - in fact, I think humans do a profound disservice to animals in our current lack of appreciation for their clear displays of conciousness. That said, if a chimpanzee bares its teeth to me, I could interpret that to be a smile when in fact its a threatening gesture. Its this misinterpretation that I am trying to…

Why does a neuron, which is simply a cell that takes in chemicals and electricity, and shits out neurotransmitters; why does 90 billion of those give rise to human intelligence? Neurons are just next chemical state machines. We can model individual ones on a computer. Yet 90 billion of them together make up a human brain, and gives rise to consciousness and intelligence. If you get stuck on the next word prediction part, and ignore the ridiculous scale that's involved with training a model, you miss the forest for the trees.

Re: When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?

#252

Post by boxed »

pydry wrote: post #132
boxed wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't even know what the pre-requisites for consciousness are so we have no way of knowing. Imo we don't even have a definition of the word that we agree on.

We're pretty clear on the distinction between a conscious and an unconscious human. We might not clearly understand the diff between the two states but we can certainly point to it and go "it's that".

Those terms are not really how we use the word "conscious" in any other situation though. With a definition like that you would say a rock is unconscious (I guess reasonable), a pretty cold bacteria is unconscious (hmm.. ok I guess?), and a warm bacteria is conscious (now I'm not on board anymore).

We have to be WAY more specific in what the word even means!

Re: When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?

#253

Post by threethirtytwo »

gizajob wrote: post #244
vidarh wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large part of the problem is what you consider consciousness. If you talk about having a subjective experience, then we don't know of any way to prove that even other humans than ourselves have one. We go entirely by assumptions based on physical similarity and our ability to communicate. But we have no evidence that physical similarity is a prerequisite, nor that it is sufficient. So the bigger trap is to assume t…

“If you talk about having a subjective experience, then we don't know of any way to prove that even other humans than ourselves have one.“ Wittgenstein kinda blows this burden of proof apart. Just because you can doubt something like the subjectivity of others to the point where it needs to be reconstructed from proofs, that’s an issue with the doubting experiment more than the subjectivity. Others possessing Subject…

The problem with your thinking here is that we are creating artificial beings now that display and output the same subjectivity.

The argument you present like many arguments breaks down when the topic becomes self referential. It makes sense for other topics as analyzing subjectivity becomes pedantic when asking questions like why is the sky blue.

But now subjectivity itself is in question. The argument you present calls for the subjectivity of others to be taken as true because all reality breaks down if we don’t… but what’s suddenly stopping you from applying the same assumptions to an LLM? That is the heart of the problem. People are questioning whether the burden of subjectivity is applicable to LLMs.

Or another way to frame it… what makes humans rise to the level where we can assume their subjectivity is true? What is the mechanism and reasoning behind that? We can no longer simply assume human subjectivity is true because LLMs are now displaying outward behaviors that are indistinguishable from humans.

Also stop relying on the wonderings of old school philosophers. We are now in times where you can basically classify their ideas as historically foundational but functionally obsolete and outdated. Think deeper.

Re: When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?

#254

Post by jhbadger »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #189
qnleigh wrote: post #155

It's easy, and very tempting to dismiss this sort of thing. But given how little we know about the human brain, let alone consciousness, I don't see how we can be confident that LLMs aren't conscious. I've had a lot of thoughts and conversations over the years that changed my mind on what consciousness likely requires. One was the realization that a purely mechanical computer can, in principle simulate the laws of ph…

You could push the analogy even further and run the thought experiment where every forward pass through an LLM could in principle be done on pen and paper, distributed throughout all humanity. Sure it would take a long time, but the output would be exactly the same. We’ve just shifted the implementation from GPU to scribbling things down on paper. If you want to assert that LLMs are “conscious” then you would have to…

When we get complete neuronal connection maps (which we are getting close to for mice and humans will be done within a decade or two), we could in principle simulate a brain on a computer or on paper too. Unless you assert something magical like a "soul", these connections are what determine human consciousness. It is one thing to argue that LLMs don't resemble brains and if they could be "conscious" they wouldn't be conscious in the sense we are, but asserting that anything understandable can't be conscious won't age well.

Re: When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?

#255

Post by lelanthran »

vereis wrote: post #192
laichzeit0 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could push the analogy even further and run the thought experiment where every forward pass through an LLM could in principle be done on pen and paper, distributed throughout all humanity. Sure it would take a long time, but the output would be exactly the same. We’ve just shifted the implementation from GPU to scribbling things down on paper. If you want to assert that LLMs are “conscious” then you would have to…

the problem with this is I'd strongly argue that you could do this pen and paper process with the human brain and our consciousness too; we just lack enough understanding to put pen to paper in that case the notion of consciousness being something an experience that other animals/humans share is entirely faith based. the only person with evidence of ones consciousness is the person claiming they're conscious.

> the problem with this is I'd strongly argue that you could do this pen and paper process with the human brain and our consciousness too; we just lack enough understanding to put pen to paper in that case.

You're basing your premise on a lack of understanding[1], the GP's premise is based on an exact understanding[2].

You don't see the difference between your premise and the GP'S premise?

-----------------

[1] "We don't know how brains actually come up with the things they come up with, like consciousness"; IOW, we don't know what the secret ingredient is, or even if there is one.

[2] "We can mechanically do the following steps using 18th-century tech and come up with the same result as the LLM"; IOW, every ingredient in here is known to us.

Re: When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?

#256

Post by roxolotl »

marliechiller wrote: post #159
qnleigh wrote: post #155

It's easy, and very tempting to dismiss this sort of thing. But given how little we know about the human brain, let alone consciousness, I don't see how we can be confident that LLMs aren't conscious. I've had a lot of thoughts and conversations over the years that changed my mind on what consciousness likely requires. One was the realization that a purely mechanical computer can, in principle simulate the laws of ph…

Why do you think stringing words together is any more a sign of consciousness than google maps is when it tries to find the best route available to your destination? It seems to me that humans often fall into the trap of anthropomorphism. This is a theme thats touched upon in the novel "Blindsight" by Peter Watts. Just because something can communicate in a way that you can interpret, doesnt mean something is conscio…

Yea a while a back I read an article which had a quote something like “what happened to weather prediction has happened to language.” Which is an oversimplification on both sides but if you think LLMs are conscious there’s good reason to think that GFS is too.

Re: When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?

#257

Post by almostjazz »

ganymedes wrote: post #229

To those that genuinely consider LLMs could be conscious... Remember that other mammals do not have language and ability to think in language, but they likely do "think" in visual imagery and are able to navigate their landscape, breed, get food and have varying levels of problem solving intelligence that have been studied in labs. Human brain has evolved on top of that, the language is a layer above that supercharge…

Of course the language abilities of LLMs is not proof of consciousness at all. If some alien entity made a model that was truly just 10^1000 hard-coded if-statements to respond to every possible question, it might seem way better than our best models now but would obviously not be conscious.

The problem is just that even in the most lousy, turing test-failing LLM there's no guarantee that not a single subsection of these giant neural nets hasn't replicated the basic computational blocks of consciousness found in something even as simple as a snail.

Here's another question: can LLMs do addition?

Re: When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?

#258

Post by Arodex »

abc123abc123 wrote: post #214
tovej wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've followed Dawkins' trajectory, I don't think it's clear that he's "otherwise of sound mind" anymore. He's had some very strange output on biological gender, where he tries to handwave away the existence of intersex people. And he's a biologist.

Biological gender exists. If you have a Y you're male, and if not, you're female. Easy as that. I, for one, am happy that wokeness and the post-truth ideology that tries to teach that there is no truth in math, is on its way to the garbage heap of history. It has done enough damage already, and must be thrown away quickly.

Blahblahblah bullshit

While you invent the terrible menace of the "anti-math woke" (it doesn't exist), the current president and secretary of health - who have actual power of nuisance over all Americans and a large part of the world - are unable to do correct basic percentage calculations and openly boast of it: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2026/apr/23/robert-f-k...

Meanwhile, yes, gender is a social construct, sex is another thing completely, and both can be changed.

Re: When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?

#259

Post by threethirtytwo »

marliechiller wrote: post #199
dumpsterdiver wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because something can communicate in a way that you can interpret, doesnt mean something is conscious The phrase “the trap of anthropomorphism” betrays a rather dull premise: that consciousness is strictly defined by human experience, and no other experience. It refuses to examine the underlying substrate, at which point we’re not even talking the same language anymore when discussing consciousness.

I think these ideas are orthogonal. I do not think that conciousness is defined by human experience at all - in fact, I think humans do a profound disservice to animals in our current lack of appreciation for their clear displays of conciousness. That said, if a chimpanzee bares its teeth to me, I could interpret that to be a smile when in fact its a threatening gesture. Its this misinterpretation that I am trying to…

Replace the word chimpanzee with human in your own argument and realize that the same logic applies to other humans.

When another human smiles you assume he is happy and not just baring his teeth at you because that’s what you do when you smile. You are “anthropomorphizing” other people. You fall for the same category error in a daily basis when you interact with people; it is not just chimpanzees.

> In the case of LLMs though, why does using a mathmatical formula for predicting the next word give any more credence to conciousness than an algorithm which finds a nearest neighbour?

First we don’t know whether LLMs are conscious. People speaking here are talking about the realistic possibility that it is conscious.

Second the algorithm is much more than a next word predictor. The intelligence that goes into choosing the next word such that it constructs arguments and answers that are correct involves a lot more then simple prediction. We know this because the LLM regularly answers questions that require extreme understanding of the topic at hand. It cannot token predict working code in my companies code base without understanding the code.

Third, we do not know what drives human consciousness but we do know it is model-able in a very complex mathematical algorithm. We know this because we have pretty complete mathematical models for lower resolutions of reality. For example we can models atoms mathematically. We know brains are made of atoms and because atoms are mathematically model-able we know that human brains and thus consciousness is mathematically model-able.

The sheer complexity of the LLM model is the problem we cannot have high level understanding of it because conceptual understanding cannot be simplified into a few concepts.

   To understand the LLM requires simultaneous understanding of likely billions of concepts at the same time and how all the weights interact in the LLM.
What you are missing with your analysis is that this is the same reason why we don’t understand the human brains. The foundational math already exists as we can models atoms in math and thus since the brain is made out of atoms we should be able to model the brain… but we can’t. We can’t because it is too complex.

   To understand the human brains requires simultaneous understanding of likely billions of concepts at the same time and how all the weights interact in the human brain.
I italicized two sentences here to help you understand the logic. Our thinking is more foundational then anthropomorphization. The argument has moved far beyond that. You need to think deeper.

The key here is that we don’t understand human brains and we don’t understand LLMs. But since the output LLMs produce are very similar to the output produced by the human brain… and since for no logical reason we assume human brains are conscious… what is stopping us from assuming the LLM is conscious?

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