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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?

#31

Post by vidarh »

brookst wrote: post #28
digitaltrees wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is evidence that awareness is an emergent property from sensory experience. And consciousness is an emergent property of language that has grammatical meaning for self and other.

These LLMs don’t have senses, they have a token stream. They have no experience of the world outside of the language tokens they operate on. I’m not sure I believe that consciousness emerges from sensory experience, but if it does, LLMs won’t get it.

Sensory input is nothing but data.

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

#33

Post by digitaltrees »

throwyawayyyy wrote: post #19

Current LLMs prove that the Turing Test was insufficient all along. But they also prove that intelligence != consciousness. One can, after all, be conscious without a thought in one's head. We certainly have ongoing work in identifying the neural correlates of consciousness in animals, none of which is going to be remotely applicable to machines. We're genuinely blind to the question of whether a sufficiently large n…

Wrong based on what criteria? Or are we just moving the goal post because we are uncomfortable with the idea that neural networks might be conscious?

If a single cell organism moves towards light and away from a rock, we say it’s aware. When a roomba vacuum does the same we try to create alternate explanations. Why? Based on the criteria applied to one it’s aware. If there is some other criteria, say we find out the roomba doesn’t sense the wall but has a map of the room and is using GPS and a programmed route, then the criteria of “no fixed programs that relate to data outside of the system, would justify saying the roomba isn’t “aware”.

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

#34

Post by vidarh »

ofjcihen wrote: post #27
digitaltrees wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is evidence that awareness is an emergent property from sensory experience. And consciousness is an emergent property of language that has grammatical meaning for self and other.

What you’re missing is a “self” to have the “experience”. LLMs do not have a self. This is like arguing that the algorithm responsible for converting ripped YouTube music videos to MP3s has a consciousness.

How do I know you have this "self"?

How do you know other humans do?

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

#35

Post by search_facility »

canjobear wrote: post #11
search_facility wrote: post #6

Since the times GPT-2 was reimplemented inside Minecraft - its quite obvious LLMs are just math. Nothing else, by nature. Modern LLMs have the same math as in GPT-2 - just bigger and with extra stuff around - and math is the only area of human knowledge with perfect flawless reductionism, straight to the roots. It was build that way since the beginning, so philosophy have no say in this :) And because of that flawles…

You could simulate your own brain in Minecraft. What do you conclude from this?

I can not simulate my brain, it's a huge stretch to imply this.

But with LLMs - anyone can simulate LLM. LLM can be simulated without any uncertainties in pen and paper and a lot of time. Does it mean that 100 tons of paper plus 100 years of time (numbers are just examples) calculating long formulae makes this pile of paper consiousness? Imho answer is definitive no.

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

#36

Post by ofjcihen »

Incredibly confusing that people who are otherwise of sound mind seem to fall for this.

Especially confusing when it’s someone who knows how algorithms work.

Barring connectivity issues when’s the last time you messaged an LLM and it just decided to ignore you? Conversely when has it ever messaged you unprompted?

Never, because they’re incapable of doing anything independently because there is no sense of self.

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

#37

Post by rellfy »

baggy_trough wrote: post #20
rellfy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, (in our current understanding) yes, but there may be underlying aspects of physics and the universe that we do not understand that could be the reason consciousness kicks in. It could turn out that LLMs do work similarly to how humans think, but as an abstracted system it does not have the low level requirements for consciousness.

> it does not have the low level requirements for consciousness. What is the evidence for this?

I didn’t mean it as fact. “Could turn out that …”

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

#38

Post by digitaltrees »

api wrote: post #25
throwyawayyyy wrote: post #19

Current LLMs prove that the Turing Test was insufficient all along. But they also prove that intelligence != consciousness. One can, after all, be conscious without a thought in one's head. We certainly have ongoing work in identifying the neural correlates of consciousness in animals, none of which is going to be remotely applicable to machines. We're genuinely blind to the question of whether a sufficiently large n…

That was one of my thoughts years ago after playing with early ChatGPT and local llama1: this proves that intelligence and consciousness do not necessitate one another and may not even be directly related . I’ve kind of thought this for many years though. A bacterium and a tree are probably conscious. I think it’s a property of life rather than brains. Our brains are conscious because they are alive. They are also in…

But why? A roomba has senses, and can access them when it has power and respond to stimulation. When it runs out of power it no longer experiences this sensation and no longer responds to stimulus.

How is that different than a cell?

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

#39

Post by brookst »

throwyawayyyy wrote: post #19

Current LLMs prove that the Turing Test was insufficient all along. But they also prove that intelligence != consciousness. One can, after all, be conscious without a thought in one's head. We certainly have ongoing work in identifying the neural correlates of consciousness in animals, none of which is going to be remotely applicable to machines. We're genuinely blind to the question of whether a sufficiently large n…

Obligatory Blightsight recommendation for intelligence != consciousness.

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

#40

Post by ofjcihen »

vidarh wrote: post #34
ofjcihen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you’re missing is a “self” to have the “experience”. LLMs do not have a self. This is like arguing that the algorithm responsible for converting ripped YouTube music videos to MP3s has a consciousness.

How do I know you have this "self"? How do you know other humans do?

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