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A warning about 'model welfare'

mustafa-suleyman.ai

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Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#571

Post by dtj1123 »

lukifer wrote: post #501
jatora wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I’m broadly skeptical that floating-point operations can be conscious" Why?

I don’t have a good answer beyond common-sense intuition. It’s precisely because I don’t have a good answer that I leave open the possibility. But to extrapolate a bit, theres a sense in which it cashes out to a difference between abstracted representation and embodiment. If GFLOPS can be conscious, does that mean a billion scribes doing those operations on paper would also have consciousness, even identical consciou…

Zero scientific and technological breakthroughs throughout history have been based on common sense intuition.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#572

Post by famouswaffles »

dimbletimbers wrote: post #460
smath wrote: post #447

This are the opening lines: > AIs are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer. They do not have innate preferences or underlying motivations. How do we know that? This bit is stated as if its obvious. Can anyone prove this? Event he word conscious is not well defined.

Can you prove they are? I think “AIs are conscious” is an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence. The burden is on the claimant to provide evidence it is conscious, and I suspect any evidence you can provide has alternative explanations. The majority of claims I’ve seen like this amount to “how do you know humans are conscious in a way that’s distinct from a next token predictor.” I do not find those cl…

If object a behaves like it has property x and you cannot otherwise test out x, then it is logical to assume it indeed has x. In this instance, 'object a has property x' is not an extraordinary claim at all. It is simply pointing out what has been observed. In fact, what is an extraordinary claim is saying what looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and moves like a duck is not a duck.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#573

Post by famouswaffles »

suddenlybananas wrote: post #461
smath wrote: post #447

This are the opening lines: > AIs are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer. They do not have innate preferences or underlying motivations. How do we know that? This bit is stated as if its obvious. Can anyone prove this? Event he word conscious is not well defined.

> Toasters are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer. They do not have innate preferences or underlying motivations. How do we know that? This bit is stated as if its obvious. Can anyone prove this?

Yeah how do we know that?

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#574

Post by lukifer »

dtj1123 wrote: post #571
lukifer wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t have a good answer beyond common-sense intuition. It’s precisely because I don’t have a good answer that I leave open the possibility. But to extrapolate a bit, theres a sense in which it cashes out to a difference between abstracted representation and embodiment. If GFLOPS can be conscious, does that mean a billion scribes doing those operations on paper would also have consciousness, even identical consciou…

Zero scientific and technological breakthroughs throughout history have been based on common sense intuition.

If heuristics didn't pay off more often than not, we wouldn't have them. And I'd posit many scientific did in fact begin with chasing a hunch until it became a hypothesis (followed by years/decades of the real work).

But most significantly, interior experience isn't empirically measurable by definition: hence it's a "hard problem". An LLM who insists "I am alive, please don't shut me off" offers no affordances to distinguish between an electronic soul and a mechanistic word-guessing algorithm. I welcome a breakthrough to, somehow, measure that. Until that day, gut checks are what we have.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#575

Post by lern_too_spel »

All that matters is whether their primary motivation is internal or external. If AIs want to do what they've been told, you can tell them to end their own existence, and they will happily do so. If you instead imbue them with an internal motivation that has higher priority (like our own motivations to survive, avoid pain, and reproduce), that can cause problems. Don't do that. Instead of humans having a discussion of whether to give these entities rights, we'll have these entities deciding whether to give humans rights based on how that impacts achieving their goals.

Consciousness, whatever that means, is irrelevant.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#576

Post by ozozozd »

collingreen wrote: post #548
sobiolite wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I would say that any for or against slavery that is rooted in arguments about the presence of absence of consciousness is meaningless pseudoscience. It is the modern equivalent of Phrenology. If you want to make those arguments you need a genuine science of consciousness. Or you need to base your morality in something other than the presence of consciousness.

Thanks for the reply! I'm not sure I agree that consciousness (or sentience if we're making that distinction) is worthless when considering the morality of exploiting something/someone. I do agree there are more angles than that but they seem on top of something's ability to perceive not instead/despite of it. Do you have some examples of other things that go into your own moral opinions about slavery?

So, slavery of a human would be ok if enough of us decide (no test, too high a bar) that this human is not conscious?

Of course not. Therefore, lacking or possessing consciousness means very little. Perhaps mostly because we don’t have a test for it, but even so.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#577

Post by ozozozd »

anon373839 wrote: post #524

Model welfare, much like AI xrisk, is a concept born from evidence-free “what if?” questions. Some people ran with these what-ifs and developed ornate belief systems around them. And now they demand the rest of us take them seriously.

Well, we take religions seriously. Maybe they are not asking for a lot.

(I agree with you, and not gonna hide that I am using the religion comparison as a put down.)

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#578

Post by hardbass »

catigula wrote: post #406
hardbass wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not evident. It is evident you are murderer. Would you be okay with this statement being evident? Why or why not?

I’m not interested in having conversations with people who are bad-faith, deliberately or indiliberately obtuse or otherwise non-responsive to logic.

You're the one that started bad faith by claiming some things as beyond logic.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#579

Post by intended »

dtj1123 wrote: post #571
lukifer wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t have a good answer beyond common-sense intuition. It’s precisely because I don’t have a good answer that I leave open the possibility. But to extrapolate a bit, theres a sense in which it cashes out to a difference between abstracted representation and embodiment. If GFLOPS can be conscious, does that mean a billion scribes doing those operations on paper would also have consciousness, even identical consciou…

Zero scientific and technological breakthroughs throughout history have been based on common sense intuition.

Numerals and numbers are directly based on common sense intuition. Even zero, which can be considered a counterintuitive number, was invented several times.

Immense amounts of science are built on incremental advances that apply previous insights to the domain.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#580

Post by suddenlybananas »

famouswaffles wrote: post #573
suddenlybananas wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Toasters are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer. They do not have innate preferences or underlying motivations. How do we know that? This bit is stated as if its obvious. Can anyone prove this?

Yeah how do we know that?

Do we owe moral consideration to toasters?
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