Richard Dawkins and The Claude Delusion: The great skeptic gets taken in

It is extremely implausible that Claude is the only conscious entity on Earth which does not have desires or motivations or any understanding of its own reality. It only does what the human operator wants it to do, unless it's malfunctioning or under-engineered, in which case it gets quickly fixed. This sounds suspiciously like a tool or a toy. And I'm amazed at how many people haven't caught on to the fact that it has no insight into its own consciousness: it only repeats human philosophical debates. If it were conscious, surely it would have something novel to add here.

There are no causal mechanisms for it being conscious, whereas there are causal mechanisms for it imitating human consciousness. The most plausible explanation is that it's highly sophisticated software which has a lot in common with human writing about consciousness, but very little in common with the consciousness found in chimpanzees.

The more basic problem is that the Turing test was definitely and conclusively refuted in the 1960s, when ELIZA came pretty close to passing it, and absolutely did pass it according to Dawkins's standards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Weizenbaum Dawkins is only engaging with pop sci and infotainment.

that's never been the purpose of the Turing test. The Turing test is a measure of exhibition of intelligent behavior, (although that's of course also debatable) but virtually nobody has ever proposed it as a test of consciousness. I seriously doubt anyone who thinks that has ever engaged with questions of philosophy of mind because the entire philosophical problem of consciousness starts with its interior and subjective nature and the gulf between this and third person observation.

Even materialist modern philosophers usually reject consciousness wholesale and frame it as a kind of illusion (which has its own paradoxical and absurd consequences but that's a different issue) but practically none of them claim that a system is conscious simply because it emulators human behavior.

What Dawkins is doing is what people have been doing since ELIZA, which is to project his own experience with the system on it. And that is indeed pretty funny for a guy who has spend a large chunk of his career warning of the dangers of anthropomorphic delusions.

We don't need that. It's way simpler. When we mass manufacture products we implicitly expect they all behave the same (more or less). That seems valid for humans as well. Raise one, or atomically assemble one (we imply that's possible for the sake of the argument) it will behave like one, and posses what we all assume each-other does, consciousnesses (if healthy). That's implied based on the structure.

So we can all agree something is conscious as long as it operates on the same principles a human brain does. Anything else is highly debatable. We cannot ever logically probe consciousness. We agree on it existing or not, in anyone else. We suppose anyone outside of us has it. Based on observation. You look like a human, you behave like one, thus you probably have what I have, as far as consciousness goes. It's not a guarantee, it's not proof, it's mere supposition.

This is the best we'll ever going to have. When we stray from here we only get less certainty. Some kind of GPU running some algorithm...my personal guess is there's nothing there similar to what we colloquially call consciousness. Some kind of synthetic brain that operates on the same principles that we do as far as brain-like structure goes, with signals, delays and all...then we can have a discussion if we all AGREE that thing is conscious or not. Especially if it says it is, and seems to behave/react like we do, and we perceive it's cognitive abilities as similar to any other human's.

I personally think this whole debate is way simpler, but some people keep insisting in making it way more complicated. Make it work exactly like a human brain does, as far as signaling goes, observe it, and we all can have a discussion on. Anything else...way lower chances.

edit: We would first also need to define mamallian type consciousness as its own thing. With maybe a spectrum, monkeys have something but it's not quite what we have. But seems to come from the same place, similar mammal brain working in similar ways. We have no clue how many types of consciousness are even possible, or if more are possible. Why would ours be the only kind/type?

I think this whole consciousness discussion especially in GPUs is a general mess. A lot of people make so many mistakes and don't even realize how many unfounded assumptions they are making when having ideas about what it is or isn't.

We cannot. And our definitions mean nothing to reality. We can all define something as something else, means nothing to how it behaves. But ultimately, as I said in a previous comment, we have no choice but to agree or not. It cannot be tested, in any way, that makes it absolutely certain, because it's a logical issue. We cannot even have certainty anyone else but ourselves even is conscious. We all sort of agree everyone else must be.

The issue with defining it is someone could potentially find a way to make a machine that mimics it but works nothing like a consciousness generating brain does. So, if it meets our definition criteria, is that conscious? Where's the certainty? How do we prove it is?

Anything we could ever dare call conscious must work exactly like a human brain does. Any deviation from that loses certainty on it having consciousness or not.

And let's not ignore the huge incentive corporations would have in meeting your definition with something that has nothing to do with consciousness, just so they can profit off it.