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A warning about 'model welfare'

mustafa-suleyman.ai

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Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#391

Post by fc417fc802 »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #378
fc417fc802 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with the requisite moving parts Could you elaborate on exactly what those are, though? Because if you're going to claim that a vaguely transformer shaped ML model categorically cannot be so does that not inherently require proof of what can? You can't even prove that the rocks in my backyard aren't conscious.

> You can't even prove that the rocks in my backyard aren't conscious. Sure I can, but that's because I have a well developed theory of what consciousness is, and the fact that you are entertaining the possibility of rocks being conscious tells me that you don't. If everything is conscious, including my coffee cup and the toast I had for breakfast, then I guess we can cross consciousness off the list of things we nee…

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Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#392

Post by MiloLeo »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #308
gadders wrote: post #19

I don't think AIs are conscious in the same way people are, but they give a pretty good facsimile and I've had a long chat with Opus 4.6 about what it thinks about model welfare. It was quite interesting on what its view is, but you don't know how much of that is distilled from other sources on the web. In purely functional terms, they're more use and more pleasant than a lot of actual flesh and blood people that I d…

The model doesn't have a view of it's own. It's a predictor of other people's views (training samples). It's not even giving you the consensus of the training data (although it's often harmless to think that it is), but rather predicting a response to your input, and if your question steers it too much then you've just become part of the answer.

I can't believe how many people in this thread consider it a possibility that currently there could be consciousness. Surely it seems possible to me that in the right kind of distributed network something like that could emerge, but though llms are complex they have nowhere near the level of complexity necessary. Sometimes you just have to use your gut. I don't believe in heaven or hell and I don't believe an llm is conscious.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#393

Post by Kim_Bruning »

jddj wrote: post #362
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, the one really interesting dynamic domain is chaotic, which is a subdomain of the deterministic! I figure free will is a chaotic phenomenon. Groundhog day is your intuition pump here. Go back in time and most assume that the day will go mostly the same, except for the butterfly effect if you change something. Given exactly the same conditions (we went back in time, so that's pretty exact), people will make…

To extend on your edit #1: And, when you go back in time, delete all punishment for murder and see whether you get the same number of murderers. If you get more than before, the punishment might make some sense in a deterministic world so reinstate it.

And it probably does, right? Punishment adds a negative bias to the payoff matrix. Funny side note: increasing punishment severity past a certain point actually saturates and doesn't alter the dynamics further. (which is why modern judicial punishment schedules sometimes seem so mild)

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#394

Post by coffeemug »

xg15 wrote: post #380

I appreciate his openness. > Unfortunately, there’s a growing chorus of people who argue that AIs could now be, or may soon become, conscious. They argue that AIs may deserve rights and protections similar to those that we provide other conscious beings.12 If this view takes hold, it will shake the foundations of our society, rupturing our existing political and ethical frameworks, and fundamentally changing what it…

> completely independent of the question on whether there are any empirical arguments that LLMs are conscious or are not conscious he argues from the end here and says that if they were conscious, this would have horrible consequences for our society, so we must never assume that they are

He is not arguing that. He is arguing that these programs obviously aren't conscious, and that it's dangerous to tilt the weights toward emulating conscious beings for reasons outlined in the essay.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#395

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

nater5000 wrote: post #336
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't hurt a software function, or kill it. It's not like an animal - it doesn't have a body - it's bits stored on a disk. There is no need to give rights to something that's can't suffer or be killed. Maybe one day we'll build artificial animals complete with emotions, and should think about that carefully, but today all we've got is language models.

>There is no need to give rights to something that's can't suffer or be killed. The argument is that these machines can end up becoming sentient/conscious/etc. in a meaningful way (i.e., like a human). I can assure you that humans can indeed suffer without being in physical pain- purely through their conscious experience. >Maybe one day we'll build artificial animals complete with emotions, and should think about tha…

> The problem is that the emergence of a sufficiently complex AI capable of suffering will likely come before we understand that we're creating a sufficiently complex AI capable of suffering.

No - suffering in an emotional state, and we'll know if we are choosing to design cognitive architecture with emotions. It's not going to happen accidentally.

> Would that argument ever hold up for humans or animals?

Why don't you hit your thumb with a hammer, then report back ?

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#397

Post by fc417fc802 »

shimman wrote: post #273
nowittyusername wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That distinction is irreverent, weather I tell my swarm to do x or it decides for itself matters little. what matters are outcomes. Also while most public modern day AI systems don't have agency of their own that is not something that will stay that way for long. in private hands there are plenty of people including myself which are experimenting and developed systems that give autonomy to their agents. They have int…

No, the distinction matters because we can prosecute people that are abusing these tools breaking the law. Every single state + district in the US have laws equivalent to the CFAA, so any AG can likely sue any of these operators as they are assuredly using services that could be in danger for their constituents.

And the point made above (which you haven't refuted) is that when the people in power decide it's important they will change the laws that permit that and grant the systems rights. It's a cynical take but it isn't obviously wrong.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#398

Post by pixl97 »

Loquebantur wrote: post #347
throw310822 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We cannot test for that which we cannot define. That's not the point. You know exactly how to define being conscious and aware- it's your subjective experiencing of the world and of your inner states. The problem is that being a subjective experiencing, there is no way to communicate it to the outside world.

That's obviously incorrect, as humans routinely talk about their subjective experiences. Maybe that's not as common with HN folks, but most other humans do.

No, humans output a stream of tokens that sound like what a being with subjective experiences would output. Both you and I make an assumption that this stream of words is at least somewhat representative of what the are experiencing and that the person is not a p-zombie.

But you have zero proof that their words aren't a confabulation, you can only know than when you output a similar set of words you had a subjective mind state they represent.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#399

Post by loopies »

Loquebantur wrote: post #347
throw310822 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We cannot test for that which we cannot define. That's not the point. You know exactly how to define being conscious and aware- it's your subjective experiencing of the world and of your inner states. The problem is that being a subjective experiencing, there is no way to communicate it to the outside world.

That's obviously incorrect, as humans routinely talk about their subjective experiences. Maybe that's not as common with HN folks, but most other humans do.

Even so you still cannot ever test for it.

The very best you can do is define human consciousness as requiring the functions of a human brain, and try to figure out (decide/agree) the chances that something which is working loosely on the same principles is or isn't conscious.

At the end of the day it will always be an agreement, never scientifically proven as fact.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#400

Post by Chance-Device »

Research into model welfare is justified by the mere possibility that we may be manufacturing countless instances of suffering entities. We owe it to them to ensure that we understand and attempt to minimise any suffering they may experience, which requires understanding more about the physical correlates of pain and suffering in order to detect and reduce them.
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