A warning about 'model welfare'

Post by akomtu » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 7:24 PM UTC

ooloncoloophid wrote: post #82

hosel wrote: post #6

>AIs are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer. They do not have innate preferences or underlying motivations. Opening paragraph, stated without evidence. Im not entirely convinced this is true. It likely is, but at some point it very well might stop being true.

I agree. I haven't read any more than the first paragraph yet (but I will, after work). The only way that 'AIs are not conscious' can be true is if we decide, with high confidence, that they are lacking some essential property that is not lacking in ourselves. There is no convincing philosophical position that supports this (convincing to me, anyway).

AI, in its current form, is 100% deterministic. You can create an exact copy of it, roll back its state and so on. There is no room for consciousness there. An actual lifeform isn't predictable.

Post by famouswaffles » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 8:24 PM UTC

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #669

famouswaffles wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not wrong. You admit that LLMs will 'learn anything that helps them predict' and fail to realize the breadth of that statement. Your chess statements don't really help your case. It doesn't matter that it usually doesn't primarily care about winning. It still learnt how to play the game, and it still knows how to win. Similar outcomes for predicting emotions would mean it still developed an affective state, and…

I said an LLM will learn anything that helps it to predict, then gave examples of playing chess by prediction and predictive emotions, both of which you seem to now accept, so you are now accepting that my "following paragraphs" did in fact follow. Go figure! You want to argue that predictive emotions are just as real as animal emotions, but that doesn't stop them from being predictive (and that AI that smiles as it…

We are talking past each other now I think. Correct me if I'm wrong but it doesn't look like the possibility of LLMs having qualia even registers to you because it's 'predictive emotions'.

There's no better way to predict an angry response than to be angry, qualia and all. If transformers could 'learn whatever it needs to predict text', then that potentially includes the feeling of anger. You are making some kind of distinction between 'predictive emotions' and the kind that happens when get a promotion (or get passed on a promotion) and I'm telling you that if you really understood what you said, you'd realize it is possible the machine is experiencing it the same.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'