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The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

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Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#81

Post by 0xBA5ED »

colordrops wrote: post #49
GMoromisato wrote: post #24

I think this is a circular argument. It defines a separation between computation and experience (between the abstraction and the "mapmaker") and then concludes that computation cannot be experience because they are in separate categories. There are really only two solutions to the Hard Problem of Consciousness: 1. Consciousness is an unknown physical something (force/particle/quantum whatever). 2. Consciousness is an…

What is a "real" thing and not an "illusion" if you go with #2? Is a car a real thing, or just a collection of atoms? Is an atom a real thing? Or a collection of processes? Is it not turtles all the way down? What is "real"?

Well if you can't concede that anything is real, that sort of makes you crazy doesn't it? A tree is real. But the concept of a tree and the word "tree" and all the ideas you have about the tree and what tree means, is that real? No, because it doesn't change the nature of the tree. When you cease to exist, the tree will still be there. Can you be absolutely 100% sure of that? Also no. But if you believe that other people are conscious individuals like you are and that some of them die and the tree keeps going, you can concede that it is probably true that the tree exists separate from your idea of it.

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#82

Post by brotchie »

colordrops wrote: post #78
brotchie wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Originally rejected the paper premise, but I get it now, certainly made me question my belief that consciousness binds to any arbitrary information processing that's of sufficient complexity. IIUC the author is saying that the human brain is running directly on "layer zero": chemical gradients / voltage changes, while AI computes on an abstraction one layer higher (binary bit flips over discretized dyanmics). In esse…

Is there a layer zero though? What does that even mean? It implies the universe is designed and built upon layers of abstraction. That's just in our heads though, not out there. The layered model is a human abstraction.

It's the difference between:

  a) Actually pouring a cup of water into a pond (layer zero), and
  b) Running a fluid dynamics simulation of pouring a cup of water into a pond (some layer above layer zero).

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#84

Post by colordrops »

brotchie wrote: post #82
colordrops wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a layer zero though? What does that even mean? It implies the universe is designed and built upon layers of abstraction. That's just in our heads though, not out there. The layered model is a human abstraction.

It's the difference between: a) Actually pouring a cup of water into a pond (layer zero), and b) Running a fluid dynamics simulation of pouring a cup of water into a pond (some layer above layer zero).

I understand the original framing which is what you are repeating. I'm saying the framing itself is an illusion. It's an arbitrary distinction and also implies fully understanding all the underlying processes that go into pouring a cup of water in a pond (we don't) and that running a fluid dynamics simulation is some trivial thing (it's not).

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#85

Post by tsimionescu »

Maxatar wrote: post #59
tsimionescu wrote: post #25

I've never understood why certain philosophers view computation as some kind of abstract symbolic manipulation, while they easily accept that consciousness is a physical process. Computation is something that a computer provably does. We build physical hardware, at great effort, to do computation. The hardware works and does the computation regardless of whether there is anyone to understand or interpret it. If it di…

>I've never understood why certain philosophers view computation as some kind of abstract symbolic manipulation The abstraction is over the multitude of different physical ways that computation can be performed. That is the role of abstraction, to separate something from a particular means of implementation so that we can think about computation without having to fix a particular physical process.

Sure, but I don't think that's what this paper and other similar ones are saying. I agree, of course, that things like programming languages or algorithms or even logical circuit diagrams are abstractions, obviously. But they are abstract descriptions of a real physical process that happens, for example, inside a CPU - in exactly the same way that an electrical diagram is an abstract descriptio of a real physical process that happens in an electrical circuit, or a thermodynamic calculation is a description of what happens inside an engine.

But the engine, the electrical circuit, and the computation inside the CPU are objective realities. There could be many other ways to describe and characterize the same physical realities, of course, but that doesn't make them observer-dependent phenomena.

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#86

Post by Eisenstein »

Anon84 wrote: post #33

I would argue that, before we can begin to address whether or not AI can instantiate consciousness, we should agree on a practical, unequivocal definition of what consciousness is... and I think we're still pretty far from that milestone... Until then, this kind of argument are nothing more than pipe dreams, solipsism, and idle philosophising

I think consciousness is a red herring and is being used to distract from the actual substantive question that must be resolved, which is whether or not a non-biological system which has outputs that cannot be meaningfully distinguished from that of a biological one deserves moral consideration.

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#87

Post by elliotec »

GMoromisato wrote: post #24

I think this is a circular argument. It defines a separation between computation and experience (between the abstraction and the "mapmaker") and then concludes that computation cannot be experience because they are in separate categories. There are really only two solutions to the Hard Problem of Consciousness: 1. Consciousness is an unknown physical something (force/particle/quantum whatever). 2. Consciousness is an…

#0 Is what William James described as consciousness not being a separate substance, but a set of relations within experience itself:

> Consciousness connotes a kind of external relation, and does not denote a special stuff or way of being. The peculiarity of our experiences, that they not only are, but are known, which their 'conscious' quality is invoked to explain, is better explained by their relations — these relations themselves being experiences — to one another.

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#88

Post by visarga »

Rather than talking about consciousness which we can't even define or observe in others directly, why not focus on something more concrete - cost. A process or pattern that pays its costs, or gains to offset its costs. Why cost? Because cost decides what can be. It shapes what we can be, and what we need, including the need to learn from experience and act serially - to channel that parallel brain activity in a serial stream of actions.

So, how does AI stand? Humans pay their costs. AI is beginning to. It does not matter what we think about it, as long as it can self sustain and reacts to cost gating pressure. Of course not alone, it depends on us too, like we do individually also depend on society.

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#89

Post by tsimionescu »

brotchie wrote: post #70
GMoromisato wrote: post #24

I think this is a circular argument. It defines a separation between computation and experience (between the abstraction and the "mapmaker") and then concludes that computation cannot be experience because they are in separate categories. There are really only two solutions to the Hard Problem of Consciousness: 1. Consciousness is an unknown physical something (force/particle/quantum whatever). 2. Consciousness is an…

Originally rejected the paper premise, but I get it now, certainly made me question my belief that consciousness binds to any arbitrary information processing that's of sufficient complexity. IIUC the author is saying that the human brain is running directly on "layer zero": chemical gradients / voltage changes, while AI computes on an abstraction one layer higher (binary bit flips over discretized dyanmics). In esse…

> while AI is running on a discretization of this (we're essentially discretizing the physical dynamics and to create state changes of 0 -> 1, 1 -> 0).

But this is just a discretization we impose when we try to represent the system for ourselves. The reality is that the AI is a particular time-ordered relation between the continuous electric fields inside the CPU, GPU, and various other peripherals. We design the system such that we can call +5V "1" and 0V "0", but the actual physical circuits do their work regardless of this, and they will often be at 2V or 0.7V and everywhere in between. The physical circuit works (or doesn't) based exclusively on the laws of electricity, and so the answer of the LLM is a physical consequence of the prompt, just as a standing building is a physical consequence of the relationships between the atoms inside its blocks. The abstract description we chose to use to build this circuit or this building is irrelevant, it's just the map, not the territory.

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