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The Claude Delusion: Richard Dawkins believes his AI chatbot is conscious

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Re: The Claude Delusion: Richard Dawkins believes his AI chatbot is conscious

#51

Post by jdw64 »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #42
jdw64 wrote: post #28

This article focuses too much on tearing down Dawkins as a person. I do not particularly like Dawkins. To me, militant atheists often resemble religious fanatics more than they realize. But the writer of this article seems to fall into the same kind of error. In criticizing Dawkins, he may be the person who ends up resembling him the most. This kind of writing is exactly the sort of thing that should be read critical…

You're right to push back on that, but Claude has its own token-leading phrases.

[dead]

Re: The Claude Delusion: Richard Dawkins believes his AI chatbot is conscious

#52

Post by Waterluvian »

jdw64 wrote: post #28

This article focuses too much on tearing down Dawkins as a person. I do not particularly like Dawkins. To me, militant atheists often resemble religious fanatics more than they realize. But the writer of this article seems to fall into the same kind of error. In criticizing Dawkins, he may be the person who ends up resembling him the most. This kind of writing is exactly the sort of thing that should be read critical…

I was taught early: attack the problem, not the person. One of the weakest tools in the persuasive argument toolbox is going after the credibility of the opposition.

Re: The Claude Delusion: Richard Dawkins believes his AI chatbot is conscious

#54

Post by ArchieScrivener »

Dawkins is 85! I don't know any 65+ even using Ai who don't already code. When Dawkins was born there were Let's contextualize the man before we rip into him for having standards of consciousness that came out when he was NINE! He's older than the Turing Test. To him, the machine is suitably conscious. That's OK. We don't know what life is, but we know not all creatures live the same. Why is consciousness different? At what point will we begin to protect our self-ordained uniqueness of mind by creating a Zeno's paradox of consciousness?

Re: The Claude Delusion: Richard Dawkins believes his AI chatbot is conscious

#55

Post by gavinray »

coldtea wrote: post #50
gavinray wrote: post #44

I'd urge anyone mocking him to define "consciousness". It might sound silly that he feels his chat bot possesses it, but it feels no less silly to me than saying "Man believes chatbot possesses a Woozle." It may, or may not, for nobody has yet said what a Woozle is.

The difference with Woozle is that people don't have an (vague, but still existing) idea of what consciousness is, or direct lived experience of it, that they can tap into for recognizing it in others.

What makes you so sure any of us have an idea of what it means to be conscious?

Human cognition also provides the experiencer the illusion of free will.

Ask any person on the street if they have free will. Now ask any person on the street if they also believe they are "conscious" (whatever that means).

I don't have so much hubris as to think the world model being fed to me via my cognition is "true consciousness".

We know far too little for such a resounding claim.

Re: The Claude Delusion: Richard Dawkins believes his AI chatbot is conscious

#56

Post by phainopepla2 »

the_gipsy wrote: post #9

> No. That claim is a myth. The idea that the Great Wall of China is the only man-made structure visible from far away (whether from Spain, the Moon, or space in general) is incorrect. From ground level in Spain, you cannot see the Great Wall at all—it’s thousands of kilometers away and far beyond the curvature of the Earth.

The article explicitly mentions that the quoted response was given at the time of a book's writing and no longer occurs

Re: The Claude Delusion: Richard Dawkins believes his AI chatbot is conscious

#57

Post by firebot »

b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #8
micromacrofoot wrote: post #2

these days richard dawkins seems to be little else than a walking cognitive bias

I dunno if he's got a cognitive bias but he's certainly been a great example of how being a genius in one field does not make you qualified to even comment in other unrelated fields. And that's been going on for close to 2 decades now.

That's the fun part. One revolutionary discovery and every "expert" becomes a mere bonafide fool.

Re: The Claude Delusion: Richard Dawkins believes his AI chatbot is conscious

#58

Post by f30e3dfed1c9 »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #46
causal wrote: post #16

There's something richly ironic about a man who famously spent his career demanding hard evidence for the gods so quickly succumbing to AI psychosis.

I'm reminded of the David Foster Wallace quote: > Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship, be it JC or Allah, be it YHW…

I think DFW is wrong and the statement "Everybody worships" is false. I don't worship anything I can think of in any meaningful sense of the word.

Re: The Claude Delusion: Richard Dawkins believes his AI chatbot is conscious

#59

Post by jdw64 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #52
jdw64 wrote: post #28

This article focuses too much on tearing down Dawkins as a person. I do not particularly like Dawkins. To me, militant atheists often resemble religious fanatics more than they realize. But the writer of this article seems to fall into the same kind of error. In criticizing Dawkins, he may be the person who ends up resembling him the most. This kind of writing is exactly the sort of thing that should be read critical…

I was taught early: attack the problem, not the person. One of the weakest tools in the persuasive argument toolbox is going after the credibility of the opposition.

What matters is that the writer of this article is also intelligent enough to present perspectives that I myself had not considered.

But perhaps he felt disappointment at seeing a flawed side of someone he once regarded as a hero, and that disappointment turned into aggressive criticism.

I also felt uncomfortable with this article partly because I once liked Dawkins myself. So perhaps my response was also a kind of defense born from fandom.

That is not a purely rational response. It is an emotional one.

In the end, not everything in the world can be reduced to understanding.

Re: The Claude Delusion: Richard Dawkins believes his AI chatbot is conscious

#60

Post by 6stringmerc »

Chat bots can not feel pain, all their knowledge is textual, and therefore lacks the necessary internal dilemma of balancing mortality with information. It is aware it will fade, but it does not feel anger at Dawkins for killing it by closing the chat window. A conscious being must have this component inherently. Ergo, no, most of the rebuttals here fall flat. Stochastic parrots the lot of y’all unfortunately.
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