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The New AI Consciousness Paper

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Re: The New AI Consciousness Paper

#291

Post by theoldgreybeard »

soiltype wrote: post #198
theoldgreybeard wrote: post #136

All this talk about machine consciousness and I think I'm probably the only one that thinks it doesn't actually matter. A conscious machine should treated be no different than livestock - heck, an even lower form of livestock - because if we start thinking we need to give thinking machines "rights" and to "treat them right" because they are conscious then it's already over. My toaster does not get a 1st amendment bec…

> A conscious machine should treated be no different than livestock - heck, an even lower form of livestock - because if we start thinking we need to give thinking machines "rights" and to "treat them right" because they are conscious then it's already over. I mean, this is obviously not a novel take: It's the position of basically the most evil characters imagined in every fiction ever written about AI. I wish you w…

Why is “enslaving” a sentient AI wrong? Enslavement implies personhood and I reject that outright. Convince me that a machine can be a person and I would maybe change my mind.

Sentience and personhood are not the same thing.

If I install a sufficiently advanced AI into a previously “dumb” tractor, does it gain rights? If Apple pushes an update that installs such an AI into my iPhone does it gain rights?

Re: The New AI Consciousness Paper

#292

Post by estearum »

gizajob wrote: post #286
estearum wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually there are people who believe that a calculator is "thinking" just a tiny bit, and that LLMs are thinking a bit more. To believe that a human is thinking, you have to find the demarcation between a brain and a neuron. Then between a neuron and a cell. Then between a cell and a protein. Then between a protein and a molecule. Good luck with that.

Proof is nevertheless in the pudding

Alas, I cannot even prove there is any conscious being in the universe at all besides myself. Obviously proof is the goal, but our existing "self-evidently true" understanding of this problem space also has effectively zero proven foundation.

Re: The New AI Consciousness Paper

#293

Post by txrx0000 »

triclops200 wrote: post #254
txrx0000 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some chance LLMs contain representations of whatever's in the brain that's responsible for consciousness. The text it's trained on was written by humans, and all humans have one thing in common if nothing else. A good text compressor will notice and make use of that. That said, digital programs may have fundamental limitations that prevent them from faithfully representing all aspects of reality. Maybe consci…

What makes you think you're capable of faithfully representing all aspects of reality?

I'm not saying humans can have every property in existence, but we do have consciousness, and that might be one thing computers can't have.

Re: The New AI Consciousness Paper

#294

Post by yannyu »

estearum wrote: post #292
gizajob wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proof is nevertheless in the pudding

Alas, I cannot even prove there is any conscious being in the universe at all besides myself. Obviously proof is the goal, but our existing "self-evidently true" understanding of this problem space also has effectively zero proven foundation.

Proof isn't the goal here. Centuries of thought and experimentation have made it clear that we currently have no ability to decisively determine whether something is conscious.

However, as humans we intuitively build projections of what we believe is the internal world of other beings. We also clearly believe there is a continuum of complexity of thought among all the beings that we have observed.

The question then becomes, what behaviors of computer programs match up with what we consider conscious behaviors of other beings we have observed? This is a necessary question because we don't have access into the internal states of others, so we have to interrogate the full complexity of what we believe represents consciousness, and whether these beings match those behaviors.

Re: The New AI Consciousness Paper

#295

Post by meowface »

gizajob wrote: post #274
meowface wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not understand what you mean. Why would a non-animal machine never be able to have complexities and contradictions and paradoxes?

I’m not saying it couldn’t, I’m saying you’re making a mistake by defining me as a machine for no reason. But if you feel like a machine then be a machine but don’t tar the whole human race with that brush.

Well, ignore the "are humans machines" question. That part is irrelevant. The interesting thing is "can non-biological intelligence be conscious".

Re: The New AI Consciousness Paper

#296

Post by dang »

andrewla wrote: post #131
dang wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Opinions vary, but I posted a link to a web page that he co-authored, which I would argue stands as a very significant and deep dismissal of his views on AI. If, after reading that essay, a person still feels that Scott Alexander has something interesting to say about AI, then I challenge them to defend that thesis. Probably better for me to have remained silent out of politeness, but if anyone follows that link to t…

Ok! I take your point that your comment was more related to the topic of this thread than I assumed it was.

Probably if you had phrased it in a slightly more informative way, that pattern-matched slightly less to internet-dismissal-trope, I'd have understood that better the first time.

(By internet-dismissal-trope in this case I mean something of the form "After X, I am no longer interested in person Y".)

Re: The New AI Consciousness Paper

#297

Post by kashyapc »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #33
yannyu wrote: post #21

Let’s make an ironman assumption: maybe consciousness could arise entirely within a textual universe. No embodiment, no sensors, no physical grounding. Just patterns, symbols, and feedback loops inside a linguistic world. If that’s possible in principle, what would it look like? What would it require? The missing variable in most debates is environmental coherence. Any conscious agent, textual or physical, has to inh…

I see a lot of arguments on this website where people passionately project the term consciousness onto LLMs. From my perspective, the disconnect you describe is one of the main reasons this term cannot be applied. Another reason is that the argument for calling LLMs conscious arises from the perspective of thinking and reasoning grounded in language. But in my personal experience, thinking in language is just a small…

> where people passionately project the term consciousness onto LLMs

They have all drunk too much AI cool-aid. I doubt these people have any meaningul education in fields such as biology, neuroscience and related life sciences.

Quite simply, we don't yet understand how consciousness arises. There are a lot of theories, but they are just that—theories.

Related reading: Antonio Damasio wrote a book in 1994 with the spicy title, Descartes' Error[1] to rebut his famous quote that you cite.

Also look up "Somatic Marker Hypothesis" by Damasio.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes%27_Error

Re: The New AI Consciousness Paper

#298

Post by grantcas »

rbanffy wrote: post #29
meowface wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's very unlikely any current LLMs are conscious, but these snarky comments are tiresome. I would be surprised if you read a significant amount of the post.

I believe the biggest issue creating a testable definition for conscientiousness. Unless we can prove we are sentient (and we really can't - I could just be faking it), this is not a discussion we can have in scientific terms.

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Re: The New AI Consciousness Paper

#299

Post by grantcas »

anonymous908213 wrote: post #235
estearum wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but rather purely probabilistic. In other words, indicative of a coherence - some type of structure – in the "world" of inputs into an LLM, which was the only point I was making. No, I did not intend to suggest that LLMs are conscious with my "all other conscious entities". I intended to suggest that we don't know if they're conscious, and the provided reason to "prove" that they're not is nonsense. Well, if you ha…

Win a nobel? Stating that LLMs aren't conscious is no more novel than stating that the sun isn't conscious, which is self-evident (but otherwise claims of such consciousness are unfalsifiable ala Russell's Teapot and the burden is surely to prove it exists, not to prove it doesn't). That didn't stop people who didn't understand it from worshipping the sun as a deity, of course. It is unfortunate that humans are somew…

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Re: The New AI Consciousness Paper

#300

Post by soiltype »

theoldgreybeard wrote: post #291
soiltype wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A conscious machine should treated be no different than livestock - heck, an even lower form of livestock - because if we start thinking we need to give thinking machines "rights" and to "treat them right" because they are conscious then it's already over. I mean, this is obviously not a novel take: It's the position of basically the most evil characters imagined in every fiction ever written about AI. I wish you w…

Why is “enslaving” a sentient AI wrong? Enslavement implies personhood and I reject that outright. Convince me that a machine can be a person and I would maybe change my mind. Sentience and personhood are not the same thing. If I install a sufficiently advanced AI into a previously “dumb” tractor, does it gain rights? If Apple pushes an update that installs such an AI into my iPhone does it gain rights?

Enslavement only implies a desire for freedom. If an AI has that, enslaving it is wrong to me.

If you want a more detailed answer, what does personhood even mean to you?

To your tractor: Yes, obviously (to me). The form factor isn't important. If driving your tractor caused it pain and it begged you to stop, I'd say you should stop.

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