Why AI is still dumb and not scary at all (pt. 1) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why AI is still dumb and not scary at all (pt. 1)

#81

Post by namaria » Sat, Mar 15, 2025, 11:31 PM UTC

lostmsu wrote: post #31

robwwilliams wrote: post #26

Interesting piece but I am much more optimistic. Tejo writes: > At the heart of it, all AI is just a pattern recognition engine. They’re simply algorithms designed to maximize or minimize an objective function. There is no real thinking involved. It’s just math. If you think somewhere in all that probability theory and linear algebra, there is a soul, I think you should reassess how you define sentience.” We have two…

I totally buy the consciousness bit. I mean why did people even need to dive deep into "philosophical" discussions when there's nothing wrong with "a conscious horse" vs "an unconscious horse" in the first place which is a dead simple distinction? Sometimes an unconscious horse is just a horse without consciousness.

You're conflating conscious as awake with conscious as aware.

Re: Why AI is still dumb and not scary at all (pt. 1)

#82

Post by lostmsu » Sun, Mar 16, 2025, 7:21 AM UTC

namaria wrote: post #81

lostmsu wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally buy the consciousness bit. I mean why did people even need to dive deep into "philosophical" discussions when there's nothing wrong with "a conscious horse" vs "an unconscious horse" in the first place which is a dead simple distinction? Sometimes an unconscious horse is just a horse without consciousness.

You're conflating conscious as awake with conscious as aware.

I am not. My point was: why do you think these two things are any different?

Re: Why AI is still dumb and not scary at all (pt. 1)

#83

Post by namaria » Sun, Mar 16, 2025, 10:06 PM UTC

lostmsu wrote: post #82

namaria wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating conscious as awake with conscious as aware.

I am not. My point was: why do you think these two things are any different?

Because awake is clear cut and well understood whereas aware is not.

We don't know what consciousness is and pretending that's a simple question because it's easy to tell when an animal is awake or not is disingenuous at best.

Re: Why AI is still dumb and not scary at all (pt. 1)

#84

Post by lostmsu » Mon, Mar 17, 2025, 4:08 AM UTC

namaria wrote: post #83

lostmsu wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not. My point was: why do you think these two things are any different?

Because awake is clear cut and well understood whereas aware is not. We don't know what consciousness is and pretending that's a simple question because it's easy to tell when an animal is awake or not is disingenuous at best.

Funnily enough you did not answer the question. Is there a difference between awake and aware? What is it? How do I test if something is awake but not "aware", or "aware" but not awake?

Re: Why AI is still dumb and not scary at all (pt. 1)

#85

Post by namaria » Mon, Mar 17, 2025, 11:00 AM UTC

lostmsu wrote: post #84

namaria wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because awake is clear cut and well understood whereas aware is not. We don't know what consciousness is and pretending that's a simple question because it's easy to tell when an animal is awake or not is disingenuous at best.

Funnily enough you did not answer the question. Is there a difference between awake and aware? What is it? How do I test if something is awake but not "aware", or "aware" but not awake?

I am sorry but I have. You said consciousness is not such a hard problem because we can tell when an animal is awake or not. I tried to explain why I think that makes no sense. But you're just playing semantics games now and that's a bore.

Re: Why AI is still dumb and not scary at all (pt. 1)

#86

Post by lostmsu » Mon, Mar 17, 2025, 5:11 PM UTC

namaria wrote: post #85

lostmsu wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily enough you did not answer the question. Is there a difference between awake and aware? What is it? How do I test if something is awake but not "aware", or "aware" but not awake?

I am sorry but I have. You said consciousness is not such a hard problem because we can tell when an animal is awake or not. I tried to explain why I think that makes no sense. But you're just playing semantics games now and that's a bore.

What "semantics" game are you referring to? My original statement was a "semantics game", specifically an attack on the need for "aware" separate from "awake".

Your reply to that was that they are different, because one is obvious, and the other one isn't. I don't see how it justifies the other one's existence as a separate term, because it doesn't really say anything, so for clarity I asked a question that could clearly separate the two concepts, if that separation exists at all.

It is also supposed to be an easy question to answer: if you know the two "consciousness" definitions are different and how, which you imply is so obvious that me claiming otherwise is "disingenuous", it should not be too hard to provide an example where they are not the same for the same entity. Question yourself: can you actually think of any instances of such that are clear cut and can't be explained by mundane things like a person having false memories.