Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Consciousness doesn't exist I can confirm that this is incorrect.
But not in any convincing way, which seems like the root of the problem.
I can confirm too. It's empirical, look!
Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
891–900 of 1001 posts
Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
#892Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably not, we're nowhere near the complexity of the human brain yet, there are also quantization limits to the human brain (i.e. molecules, quantum physics, etc) so to characterize them as having infinite detail is probably a bad modal. If I'm going to be honest most of the people who advocate this type of thing tend to be, shall we say, crypto-duelists who really believe in a soul but not like intellectually but…
You nailed it which is that almost everyone I’ve met seems to believe in some version of dualism If that’s even subtly your position then there’s no way to have a productive conversation about perception, reality/truth, epistemology and especially consciousness It’s honestly maddening cause I’ve had great conversations about this with educated people, and all but only a handful, collapse into the other person relying…
> collapse into the other person relying on some non-falsifiable dualist argument
Are there any non-duelist, scientific theories out there that could plausibly be tested? I can't say I've seen any but if you know of any then I'm curious to hear about them. From what I've seen, anyone trying to explain phenomenal consciousness in scientific objective terms falls into at least one of these three strategies:
1.) Saying that consciousness "arises" inevitably or is an emergent phenomenon of a complex information processing system. There are a number of theories along these lines but they aren't falsifiable from what I've seen and usually at some point rely on some magic unexplainable step or are actually dualist.
2.) Defining consciousness just as the easily explainable stuff via biology, such as being awake vs. asleep.
3.) Dismissing the idea that subjective experience exists at all. I sometimes wonder if people arguing strongly for this are something like a philosophical zombie and there's nothing inside them experiencing.
Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
#893Earlier quoted context omitted.
The danger of anthropomorphism is not we elevate the machines, it's that we debase humanity. I also think different ideas get conflated. It may be possible to build a machine that is super-human in the sense it can outperform the human brain in all kinds of measurable ways. Does not imply it possesses all the same qualities of the brain. I respect a number of things Anthropic has published about the ethical issues at…
A fundamental misunderstanding of consciousness is to attribute it entirely to the brain.
Where else?
Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
#894The Anthropic Gestapo flags dissent and spreads misinformation. Anthropic is a ruthless as Scientology and also a fake religion.
Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
#895I often hear the assumption that LLMs can or will become conscious because consciousness is likely substrate independent . The idea being that our brain is just a computer made out of meat and it doesn't do anything that can't be precisely simulated by a silicon computer. But I wonder if some of the magic in the human brain is its analog nature. Chemical signaling and impulses of neurons interact with each other with…
If we want to be really pedantic, a computer does not necessarily need to be digital. You could build a consciousness-coprocessor with analog circuitry that brings in what you say could be needed. But honestly I doubt that there is a real requirement for that, surely you could just increase the resolution you're running the simulation at until the difference decreases sufficiently. Imagine using 256 bit floats for ex…
IBM has made a few analog chips like this [1]. If I remember correctly, one was even pulse time based, like neurons.
Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
#896I often hear the assumption that LLMs can or will become conscious because consciousness is likely substrate independent . The idea being that our brain is just a computer made out of meat and it doesn't do anything that can't be precisely simulated by a silicon computer. But I wonder if some of the magic in the human brain is its analog nature. Chemical signaling and impulses of neurons interact with each other with…
Consciousness is substrate independent, but that's not the differentiator here:
My toddler son is conscious, he feels happiness and sadness and have urges and impulses without needing to know the entire history worth of writing from human civilization.
A dictionary is not, and a LLM sized dictionary with optimized query is still not conscious.
It doesn't have anything to do whether consciousness is substrate independent, or even analog vs discrete, the overall implementation just aren't parallel.
Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
#897It’s not possible for LLMs to achieve consciousness. This was already debunked decades ago (e.g Chinese room theorem, Searle, etc.). It’s surprising these debates are coming back again.
Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
#898Everyone but me might be a philosophical zombie. But I still treat them with respect. I do this because I like living in a world that gives us the benefit of that doubt.
It can't hurt to say "please" and "thank you" to an LLM.
Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
#899Everyone but me might be a philosophical zombie. But I still treat them with respect. I do this because I like living in a world that gives us the benefit of that doubt. It can't hurt to say "please" and "thank you" to an LLM.
If you thank a chatbot you may as well also thank chairs, utensils, the floor you walk on, the air you breathe
Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
#900Earlier quoted context omitted.
Each and every one of many billion transistors in a GPU works due to certain quantum effects on P-N junction. That does not mean GPU computation is nondeterministic, unknowable or magic.
Sure, but it's designed to minimize the chance that a quantum fluctuation could change the outcome of a computation, right? Whereas in the brain that might not be the case. A lot of the "interesting" neural activity (e.g. relating to decision making, language, etc) happen in highly sensitive dynamical regimes: on a threshold of firing, or activating one neural population vs another. (Arguably you can get the same eff…
It's not implausible that evolutionary pressures made the brain robust enough to withstand parasitic signals. We know that most people think in similar, predictable ways.