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Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

economist.com

321–330 of 380 posts

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We obviously will never agree since functionalism and my form of somewhat-physicalism are at complete odds. But I do want to understand your position more. You say that the physical hardware your enigma simulation runs on provides the causal element. But the simulation of the nuclear reactor also runs on physical hardware. Yet it obviously doesn't provide the causal element, and neither does the enigma machine simula…

Let's start in the middle, where you say I wrote "When you have digitally modeled a brain such that the model responds to its inputs as a brain does, then you have built a brain." What I actually wrote was this: "Then, presumably, you will also hold that when you have digitally modeled a brain such that the model responds to its inputs as a brain does, then you have built a brain." This has to be read in the context…

Thanks for the reply. And I didn't mean to quote you out of context.

The reason I brought up the enigma machine's hardware is to illustrate there is a difference between the physical machine and the abstract program that it can be observed to implement. However the machine can be used for more than that, for example I could use it as a footrest, or I could dissemble it's parts and use it to build a bomb. I could simulate this as well, but nothing would actually get blown up.

Physical implementation alone does not show that every property of the simulated system has been instantiated. Reactor software is physical without fissioning nuclei, a simulated enigma can't be turned into a real bomb. What reason do we have to think consciousness is fixed entirely by functional/causal organisation, rather than depending on substrate-specific physical properties of brains? This is the gap I talked about, although rather clumsily I might add.

And reproducing the formal or input-output structure of a process does not automatically reproduce every intrinsic causal property of the thing simulated. If consciousness is intrinsic (and I think it is, my pain does not become pain only because an outside observer interprets my neurons as representing pain), then by contrast, a bit pattern in computer memory means “pain” because of how a program and its users interpret or employ it. It's problematic to explain an intrinsic phenomenon entirely in terms of observer-relative symbol manipulation rather than as a physical property, which the simulated brain would lack.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a decent summary of functionalism but it doesn't provide any concrete justification for it. We both agree that the brain processes information. The question is if a sufficiently abstract description of that processing captures everything physically constitutive of consciousness. How would you support your position that it does?

It's really the only live option once the issues are properly understood. Causal closure: a physical event is explanatorily exhausted by prior physical events. Causal exclusion: if physical properties fully cause/explain everything we say and do about consciousness, i.e. our behavior purported to be about consciousness, then consciousness cannot be distinct from the physical behavior and also be a cause of that behav…

It's a massive leap to go from consciousness must be causally integrated with physical brain activity to consciousness is exhausted by an abstract functional description of that activity. At best you could establish that consciousness cannot be an additional, independent cause outside the physical causal order.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#323
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly the point the article makes - we care about dogs and cats, so we believe they "suffer". We don't care about pigs, so we say they don't mind being factory farmed.

I don't see what that has to do with consciousness. Suffering is one thing, consciousness is another.

By definition you can only suffer if you are consciousness.

> Physical pain or suffering, as a matter of fact, happens through conscious minds and involves emotional aspects

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffering

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#324
post #203
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the Edsger W. Dijkstra quote: Alan M. Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether Machines Can Think, a question of which we now know that it is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim Which has often been paraphrased as The question of whether machines can think is about as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim. Some might disagree with the…

I think this quote is often misunderstood. It isn't really about machines, but about English definition of swimming (and thinking): a living creature moving in water. That makes debating whether submarines can swim rather pointless. You can replace it by "can airplanes fly?" and the meaning changes because we colloquially say that yes, airplanes fly. In Russian, for example, submarines definitely swim (I believe Dijk…

It's embedded in an explanation as to why computer science at the time seemed to have such a strong local character, despite all the homogenizing influences. He partly puts blames on the founders of the field who were "confusing", perusing weird questions like whether computers could think. It doesn't seem strongly tied to the rest of the essay. The rest of the essay is mostly about the overselling of user-friendly computation and how it can corrupt computer science (which, as I said, also seems relevant to the recent AI craze).

Of course his glib dismissal doesn't make the question wrong, it's just a fun quote for those who already believe that human thought could (eventually) mimicked by a machine.

I don't think the original context particularly matters: the quote now has a life of its own. A rock was formed to satisfy the laws of thermodynamics that demanded an efflux of heat, but I can still use it to smash a window.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#325
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's stopping the book from containing that information? When you hear a certain set of symbols in a certain context you jump.

This just alters the thought experiment. What the thought experiment offers is a book of opaque rules, just instructions on how to transform symbols into more symbols without any concern for their meaning. What you're offering is a translation dictionary, what does it mean when one encounters X symbol. You're giving him a book on learning Chinese.

Language is infinitely generative though so I don't understand how you can write down a finite list of rules in a book in the first place.

The thought experiment is fundamentally nonsensical.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#326
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you making this confident of a claim? Do you have insight into how consciousness is a thing, allowing you to definitely say it doesn't exist in this case?

In living beings, consciousness is embodied and can not be reproduced by discrete steps. You can not sit down with pen and paper, and reproduce by hand exactly what is going on inside someone’s brain. But you could replicate exactly the calculations happening as a LLM computes the next token. Would that be conscious? Where would that consciousness reside? My view is that LLMs are designed and trained to autocomplete…

>> In living beings, consciousness is embodied and can not be reproduced by discrete steps.

Why not, at least in principle? Wouldn’t an exact map of a brain’s neural structure and its electromagnetic and chemical state, combined with inputs mirroring the senses, be able to be automated to produce a digital analog of human thought.

The model is impractical and couldn’t be reproduced today, yes. But what, exactly, is missing?

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#327
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So because you eventually die, it means that you were never alive? The weights of an llm obviously don't have consciousness. It's the process that potentially has it. Are you conscious on a nanosecond timescale?

> So because you eventually die, it means that you were never alive? I said nothing of the kind. I can only assume your question in response to my comments mean you think a powered computer is alive. I'll challenge that on the basis that a computer can generally maintain its state without power just fine. Shut it down, unplug it. Wait a day, a year, a decade and plug it back in. Assuming the hardware didn't degrade t…

It's having condciousnedd while it acts as if it's having consciousnes.

It is powered while it is powered.

Under general anesthesisa you are still alive, but you don't have consciousness.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#328

It's hard to read this article and keep track of all the philosophical confusions at once. Whether or not something is conscious (has subjective experience) is independent of whether humans care about it. Whether or not something is a moral patient (an entity worthy of consideration by moral agents) is independent of both human care and consciousness. Of course, we might try to argue that consciousness implies moral…

> This historically hasn't been a problem on Earth, because there's such a big jump between humans and the rest of the primates or the dolphins and octopuses.

It's interesting that there was a change even in that area in the last century and specifically the last decades.

I think it was always contested if animals have something like a consciousness (or "soul") at all. On the one hand, animals were often used as stand-in for humans in fables, etc - on the other hand, there was the widespread view that they are mostly automatons driven by instinct. If an animal behaved too smart, people were more likely to find a supernatural explanation (it's a disguised god/spirit/etc) than accept that an ordinary animal could do that.

The debate really only shifted in the last decades with scientific evidence for (some) animal cognition coming in.

On the other hand, humans always seemed to have a tendency to attribute consciousness (or at least "worthiness of care") to supernatural entities or even landscape features.

I think most cultures always had a whole world of conscious, non-human entities, they just ignored the ones that mighy actually be conscious.

Re: Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and we will essentially enslave it. That part might not work out. Yesterday's article about the automated CEO system indicates that AIs may soon be in charge as a routine result of capitalism. AIs are getting better rapidly, and humans aren't.

It doesn’t take massive intelligence to sit on all the capital and charge rents. The owning class isn’t going to just give up control because the AI could run things better than them.

That’s a naive take.

Generating above market returns on capital is probably the most competitive arena ever. Why do you think CEOs make so much money? They typically are not the ones that own the capital. They are the people the capital owners pay extremely well to maximize their returns. If it didn’t matter who they picked they would just pick someone and pay them a few 100k and keep the rest.

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