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Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

theatlantic.com

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Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#571

Post by FrancisMoodie »

jjcm wrote: post #452

I think we might be looking at it the wrong way. An individual chat with an LLM is not consciousness, but the entire model itself, over time, might be. Everyone has a different definition of consciousness, but in my mind memory and the ability to change over time is an inherent aspect of this. The underlying weights don't change when you chat with an LLM... but they do with further RL. Overtime that reinforcement wil…

But doesn't the fact that WE have to feed the existing chats back into it and WE have to do further RL prove that your point is moot? Consciousness does not wait to be prompted. Consciousness does not need anything fed back into it because it is already there because they experienced the actual interaction. A conscious mind does not have an on/off switch where it waits for another being to flip the switch in order for it to learn or experience. These systems are static without human intervention. They are in that sense still a lot more like a computer and a lot less like a living organism that exists.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#572

Post by bigcat12345678 »

I laugh

Consciousness is an invention in human language. Just like "cat", it's not a particularly more fundamental essence than any other concept in human language.

Its peculiarity is that it's at the pinnacle of abstraction hierarchy. So it's the most fitting to be toyed inside one's mind. Just like the concept of "God" which induces the most fantastic imagination of human mind, consciousness itself also induces the most fascinating thoughts in our modern world.

The progress is in human progress distilled into more efficient systems that advanced Universe's own structuredness.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#575

Post by big-chungus4 »

> we would never conclude that the LLM has conjured up digital re-creations of Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan

At some point the AI might become so powerful that whatever it reasons through isn't any less real than a computer simulation. If we assume that a person in a perfect computer simulation is conscious, then if it reasons about how people might suffer, it might simulate the outcomes, and there will be a conscious experience of those people suffering.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#576

Post by hastily3114 »

I don't think consciousness is an is or isn’t. Something can be more or less conscious. Humans are quite conscious. Fish are probably also somewhat conscious, but less so than humans.

I'd say that an LLM perhaps represents something that would make a machine slightly more conscious.

The human brain also calculates a response based on some input, it's just a lot more complex.

If we build a machine that is as complex as the human brain, then yes, I would say that this is consciousness. The fact that we are able to explain how it works should not matter.

If a human is a 100 on the consciousness scale, an LLM (with memory) is perhaps a 4 or something. The interesting question is how far on the scale do you have to be to have certain rights etc. This is something that people are already discussing in regards to animals, i.e. a dog has more rights than an ant.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#577

Post by dwroberts »

felipeerias wrote: post #344

IMHO the sane position is essentially the Aristotelian one. Hylomorphism: body and consciousness are intrinsically linked. The nature of that link is an open metaphysical question. Virtue ethics: even if LLMs are not conscious, we should not abuse or mistreat them them because cruelty practised on anything trains one's disposition toward cruelty.

> Virtue ethics: even if LLMs are not conscious

Why would this stop at LLMs? Why not extend it to every inanimate object?

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#578

Post by supertroop »

george_max wrote: post #369
supertroop wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reinforcement learning changes the model. So it can and does change and remember based on experience. Eventually reinforcement learning can happen in real time.

But is the model aware of the training? Unless you hook the model up to an MCP server, or something similar, and have it analyze the RL changes, it will not know if it has changed or not. Even if it is real-time RL, it is not aware of the previous state.

Why not? Why can’t part of its previous state be part of the training?

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#579

Post by __alexs »

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…

This all comes back to Dualism. A radical and dangerous ideology that is fundamentally unscientific but all too common.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#580

Post by lev_thresh »

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…

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