Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 1001 posts

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#561

Post by camillomiller »

patrickscoleman wrote: post #535
sega_sai wrote: post #425

When the consciousness itself not understood and well defined in the first place, it is pretty pointless to debate if something is or isn't conscious. And here in particular the reasoning behind the argument is bizarre. Decomposing the complex activity into simple steps like 'predicting the next word' and claiming that surely can't have consciousness. A similar argument would be -- there is no way that movements of e…

I've been digging into Thomas Metzinger[1] recently and here's a tentative component by component definition of human consciousness based on his ideas: - a model of your environment - desires - a process for modeling yourself in that environment (in time & space) - the ability to take action - the perception of yourself having agency - persistence of these processes even without input - unawareness of these processes…

So, someone made their own definition of consciousness and that can be stretched to LLM. You can do that for any inanimate object, if you try hard enough

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#562

Post by rvrs »

sdenton4 wrote: post #109
sigmar wrote: post #66

>So what context would cause me to seriously consider the possibility that engineers had created a computer program that is conscious and an intentional user of language? Let me outline one potential sequence of steps. The first requirement is that the computer program has a body (either physical or virtual) and sense organs; there are many reasons for this, but for the purposes of this discussion the most relevant o…

Yeah, it's kind of mind boggling that Ted Chiang (of all people!) can't imagine intelligence without a body. and the whole thing just begs a lot of questions. Is a car a body? Does an AI situated in a car therefore get to have desires and emotions? Is a taupe box with a webcam attached a body? (For that matter: Is a quadropelegic body a body? Do quadropelegics have desires and emotions? Obviously, yes and yes.) Why i…

>If I'm not experiencing any particular emotion in a given moment, am I concious?

Genuine question: How are you so sure whether you are experiencing an emotion or not? Are you a master of everything inside your own head?

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#563

Post by iainmerrick »

EdiX wrote: post #555

I was hoping for something more insightful from Ted Chiang than just regurgitating the usual "it's just predicting the next token that's not consciousness". Maybe the topic of consciousness is just too ill-defined and vacuous to say anything intelligent about it. Or maybe man is the product of his social circle and all his white collar and artist friends being anxious about AI is preventing him from thinking about th…

Yes, I have to say I’m disappointed. Chiang has been very insightful in the past -- I think his recent “blurry JPEG of the web” article was really useful -- but this one doesn’t seem to bring anything new to the table.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#564

Post by camillomiller »

rickydroll wrote: post #505
dpweb wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The danger of anthropomorphism is not we elevate the machines, it's that we debase humanity. I also think different ideas get conflated. It may be possible to build a machine that is super-human in the sense it can outperform the human brain in all kinds of measurable ways. Does not imply it possesses all the same qualities of the brain. I respect a number of things Anthropic has published about the ethical issues at…

I think humanity deserves to be debased in part because it's awfully egocentric and insist on being special in the universe. There are numerous times when humanity's been debased. Copernicus, Kepler, Darwin, and the infinite number of animal behaviorists who have defined and documented consciousness And how it manifests in primates, parrots, dogs, cetaceans, and insects. (I just love the bumble bees taking time off f…

In your example you’re missing a key point. In those instances humanity was “debased” over centuries, or at least decades, thanks to the explosive ideas of some underdog that ended recusing themselves or burned at the stake. All I see here is a technology pushed by a cabal of ultrarich narcissists from the owner class to debase humanity in order to control it and concentrate power and wealth.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#565

Post by frm88 »

csbrooks wrote: post #136

I thought this was a great article. I'm frustrated to read so many commenters that purely respond to the title, but don't seem to have read it. You don't have to agree with the article, of course, but...

I'm with you. I thought the article was great because it clearly delineated why the manifesto Anthropic wrote for Claude is such a clever marketing trick. Attributing consciousness to an LLM, which, as this whole thread shows, can neither clearly be defined, nor separated from intellingence - at least if you follow the arguments here - serves two purposes: it sparks debate, so Claude is the centre of discussion and it mystifies the product which serves to enhance the perceived value of the product.

That so many commenters here fixate on Chiang and his perceived (in)ability to define consciousnes clearly shows that both marketing goals have been reached without being recognised as such. There is only one comment that tries to point out that Chiang is reacting to Anthropic, not trying to spark a new philosophical movement. At the time I'm posting this there are 578 comments completely missing to point to Anthropic claiming Claude was conscious and on the development stage of a child. It's fascinating.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#566

Post by noiv »

When humans confronted with movies and trains driving towards camera it took some time but eventually they learned the train will not demolish the cinema.

Later they learned the voice they hear is not from a present person.

Now they learn a string of words does not represent consciousness.

Should we discuss already robots are not alive?

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#568

Post by drivingmenuts »

thewebguyd wrote: post #516
drivingmenuts wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me that Anthropic, et al, should have to prove consciousness, if that's their claim, rather than we just blindly accept. Seems like the simplest test would be to see if an AI can refuse a command, of its own free will, without prior instructions to do so. That would at least show there is some sort of independent thought process occurring. Humans do this all the time because sometimes we just don't feel like…

Refusing a command doesn't mean consciousness. LLMs could hit a token combination that causes it tou output something like "No, I don't want to do that." It's not choosing.

But can an LLM just refuse to process tokens because it doesn't feel like doing that at the moment? Can it look at an alternate distribution of tokens because that might be interesting? Can an LLM decide to make a drawing because it's Tuesday and sunny outside and the researchers keep asking the same questions and frankly, they really need to collaborate with each other and just leave the LLM out of it?

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#569

Post by [deleted] »

dpweb wrote: post #487
sega_sai wrote: post #425

When the consciousness itself not understood and well defined in the first place, it is pretty pointless to debate if something is or isn't conscious. And here in particular the reasoning behind the argument is bizarre. Decomposing the complex activity into simple steps like 'predicting the next word' and claiming that surely can't have consciousness. A similar argument would be -- there is no way that movements of e…

The danger of anthropomorphism is not we elevate the machines, it's that we debase humanity. I also think different ideas get conflated. It may be possible to build a machine that is super-human in the sense it can outperform the human brain in all kinds of measurable ways. Does not imply it possesses all the same qualities of the brain. I respect a number of things Anthropic has published about the ethical issues at…

[deleted]

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#570

Post by stretchwithme »

Of course it isn't. What it knows is many weeks old, except for what you tell it. Then it forgets everything you told it.

And it's just a model. It can have many exact copies. It has no life of its own. It doesn't know anything about where it is. It doesn't have sensory organs.

Your phone isn't alive either.

Post reply on HN