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>In defining what it means for a mathematical structure to be of conscious experience, our proposal does not answer the question of what this mathematical struc

>In defining what it means for a mathematical structure to be of conscious experience, our proposal does not answer the question of what this mathematical structure is. Nothing is answered in this article. We simply don't know. This article is up here because nobody is sure whether or not chatGPT is in any way representative of an aspect of our conscious experience. Is chatGPT a mathematical model of consciousness? We know it doesn't represent the whole experience because... it has huge flaws... but we aren't sure whether it represents an aspect of what we are. Disagree or agree, we have something in our hands and it could be it... but at this point we don't know.

naasking 4y ago
> We know it doesn't represent the whole experience because... it has huge flaws To be clear, we can't yet conclude that these huge flaws are due to its structure rather than the extra sensory data that we have and it doesn't. Doesn't really change your overall point, just wanted to clarify what we can and cannot conclude from the evidence, because people are far too quick to jump to conclusions after seeing the flaws.
- kilgnad 4y ago
  Completely agreed. There are flaws. But there are times where the output appears that it cannot anything else other then complete understanding of what was given to it as input.
  - ethanwillis 4y ago
    A big lookup table.
    - naasking 4y ago
      A lookup table with compression. Intelligence is a form of compression.
      - HKH2 4y ago
        Compression is necessary for intelligence but not sufficient.
      - ethanwillis 4y ago
        The vast majority of information cannot be compressed and the proof of this is trivial by a simple counting argument. In any case, it is still just a lookup table. Compression, unless lossy, doesn't change the meaning of the information in this lookup table. It just makes access more indirect. Hutter might think that intelligence is a form of compression, but I think that's just wishful thinking. It might be my ego speaking to say I think I'm the one that's right. But it's not my ego speaking to say that there's no hard proof to say unequivocally that intelligence is equivalent to compression.
        naasking 4y ago
        > The vast majority of information cannot be compressed and the proof of this is trivial by a simple counting argument It doesn't have to be lossless compression. Intelligence is also about being discerning about the information that's relevant, although that's basically the same point. > But it's not my ego speaking to say that there's no hard proof to say unequivocally that intelligence is equivalent to compression. Actually I think it's kind of trivial to see that intelligence is a necessarily form of compression. Abstractions, concepts, theories, these are all lossy descriptions that discards irrelevant details and capture only relevant details to make problem solving via deduction, induction or abduction tractable. And yet, using those concepts, theories, abstractions you can reproduce/predict observations with very high fidelity. That's compression. Do you have a counterexample of something that we consider intelligence that doesn't fit this model? I suppose it depends what specifically you mean by "equivalent".
smitty1e 4y ago
> Nothing is answered in this article. We simply don't know. It is unclear what necessitates any closed-form mathematical description of 'consciousness'. Such a concept seems tantamount to a faith claim.
logicchains 4y ago
>Nothing is answered in this article. We simply don't know. No, we haven't clearly defined consciousness. For a given exact definition of consciousness, we can determine whether something fits that definition or not. If we don't clearly define it, then we're just talking about a feeling, a qualia, and it's not possible for people to reach a consensus because they're not even discussing the exact same thing when they say "consciousness".
- kilgnad 4y ago
  The consistency arises from the fact that even though we don't know the definition, we are in agreement in what is classified as conscious. We agree that humans are conscious, we agree that rocks are not conscious. This classification is clear and points to a underlying definition we cannot fully articulate. It is more than a qualia or whatever you call it. We know it has exact parameters simply because we are able to perform classification tasks. The consensus breaks for things like chatGPT. chatGPT straddles some uncertain border that we can't articulate. But in general for the term consciousness we reach consensus by how we classify things as conscious or unconscious.
  - logicchains 4y ago
    > The consistency arises from the fact that even though we don't know the definition, we are in agreement in what is classified as conscious. Clearly there's not agreement in what is classified as conscious, given this thread/article. >We agree that humans are conscious, we agree that rocks are not conscious. This classification is clear and points to a underlying definition we cannot fully articulate. It is more than a qualia or whatever you call it. This is a fallacy. People agree that yellow is not violet and green is not violet, but they don't agree that indigo is not violet. Just because there are some classifications on which people agree about the label this doesn't imply they agree upon all classifications. A more direct example is whether plants are conscious or not.
    - kilgnad 4y ago
      >Clearly there's not agreement in what is classified as conscious, given this thread/article. There is general agreement. We agree for most things like rocks and humans..there are a few things where we aren't sure, like chatGPT. But in general humans are in agreement for most things. >Just because there are some classifications on which people agree about the label this doesn't imply they agree upon all classifications. Well just because ambiguities for certain things exist doesn't preclude the existence of things that are utterly clear to be conscious or unconscious. We know humans are conscious and we know humans have all the required parameters to make them classified as conscious. We just can't deduce the exact thresholds and features that cause a phase shift when changed. But we know these parameters exist.
dvt 4y ago
> Is chatGPT a mathematical model of consciousness? Unless we reduce models of consciousness to purely stochastic processes, this is trivially false. And no one seriously reduces consciousness to probabilistic pattern recognition. > We know it doesn't represent the whole experience... It doesn't represent any experience. ChatGPT doesn't "experience" things as conscious things do. It's not even comparable to the experience of a simple invertebrate, for example.
- Lyapunov_Lover 4y ago
  That's the (hard) problem of qualia. You can't say for sure that ChatGPT doesn't experience anything. And I can't say for sure that you do, either. It's trivial to dismiss it on the basis of "well obviously it's like that"—far more difficult is to say something about why it's not like that. I think consciousness has to be the product of an algorithmic process. I think this process can be summed up as "prediction". I don't think there's some secret quantum/soul/magic aspect to it. Which is why I think it's plausible that transformer models may capture some aspect of what we refer to as consciousness, though I don't quite buy it at a gut level. You say that "it's not even comparable to the experience of a simple invertebrate," but that's just you writing down what your gut is telling you. What is the experience of a simple invertebrate like, exactly?
  - vba616 4y ago
    >You can't say for sure that ChatGPT doesn't experience anything. And I can't say for sure that you do, either. The question rattling around in my brain tonight is - if some, many, people don't develop a theory of mind as young children, how many of the people around me are like this? Is it just the philosophers? It seems of much more moment than the essence of ChatGPT.
    - messe 4y ago
      Given how many people in this thread don’t seem to grasp the idea of qualia, and think the hard problem of consciousness to be easy, I’m not entirely unconvinced I’m surrounded by a bunch of imperfect p-zombies.

naasking 4y ago

> We know it doesn't represent the whole experience because... it has huge flaws To be clear, we can't yet conclude that these huge flaws are due to its structure rather than the extra sensory data that we have and it doesn't. Doesn't really change your overall point, just wanted to clarify what we can and cannot conclude from the evidence, because people are far too quick to jump to conclusions after seeing the flaws.

kilgnad 4y ago
Completely agreed. There are flaws. But there are times where the output appears that it cannot anything else other then complete understanding of what was given to it as input.
- ethanwillis 4y ago
  A big lookup table.
  - naasking 4y ago
    A lookup table with compression. Intelligence is a form of compression.
    - HKH2 4y ago
      Compression is necessary for intelligence but not sufficient.
    - ethanwillis 4y ago
      The vast majority of information cannot be compressed and the proof of this is trivial by a simple counting argument. In any case, it is still just a lookup table. Compression, unless lossy, doesn't change the meaning of the information in this lookup table. It just makes access more indirect. Hutter might think that intelligence is a form of compression, but I think that's just wishful thinking. It might be my ego speaking to say I think I'm the one that's right. But it's not my ego speaking to say that there's no hard proof to say unequivocally that intelligence is equivalent to compression.
      - naasking 4y ago
        > The vast majority of information cannot be compressed and the proof of this is trivial by a simple counting argument It doesn't have to be lossless compression. Intelligence is also about being discerning about the information that's relevant, although that's basically the same point. > But it's not my ego speaking to say that there's no hard proof to say unequivocally that intelligence is equivalent to compression. Actually I think it's kind of trivial to see that intelligence is a necessarily form of compression. Abstractions, concepts, theories, these are all lossy descriptions that discards irrelevant details and capture only relevant details to make problem solving via deduction, induction or abduction tractable. And yet, using those concepts, theories, abstractions you can reproduce/predict observations with very high fidelity. That's compression. Do you have a counterexample of something that we consider intelligence that doesn't fit this model? I suppose it depends what specifically you mean by "equivalent".

smitty1e 4y ago

> Nothing is answered in this article. We simply don't know. It is unclear what necessitates any closed-form mathematical description of 'consciousness'. Such a concept seems tantamount to a faith claim.

logicchains 4y ago

>Nothing is answered in this article. We simply don't know. No, we haven't clearly defined consciousness. For a given exact definition of consciousness, we can determine whether something fits that definition or not. If we don't clearly define it, then we're just talking about a feeling, a qualia, and it's not possible for people to reach a consensus because they're not even discussing the exact same thing when they say "consciousness".

kilgnad 4y ago
The consistency arises from the fact that even though we don't know the definition, we are in agreement in what is classified as conscious. We agree that humans are conscious, we agree that rocks are not conscious. This classification is clear and points to a underlying definition we cannot fully articulate. It is more than a qualia or whatever you call it. We know it has exact parameters simply because we are able to perform classification tasks. The consensus breaks for things like chatGPT. chatGPT straddles some uncertain border that we can't articulate. But in general for the term consciousness we reach consensus by how we classify things as conscious or unconscious.
- logicchains 4y ago
  > The consistency arises from the fact that even though we don't know the definition, we are in agreement in what is classified as conscious. Clearly there's not agreement in what is classified as conscious, given this thread/article. >We agree that humans are conscious, we agree that rocks are not conscious. This classification is clear and points to a underlying definition we cannot fully articulate. It is more than a qualia or whatever you call it. This is a fallacy. People agree that yellow is not violet and green is not violet, but they don't agree that indigo is not violet. Just because there are some classifications on which people agree about the label this doesn't imply they agree upon all classifications. A more direct example is whether plants are conscious or not.
  - kilgnad 4y ago
    >Clearly there's not agreement in what is classified as conscious, given this thread/article. There is general agreement. We agree for most things like rocks and humans..there are a few things where we aren't sure, like chatGPT. But in general humans are in agreement for most things. >Just because there are some classifications on which people agree about the label this doesn't imply they agree upon all classifications. Well just because ambiguities for certain things exist doesn't preclude the existence of things that are utterly clear to be conscious or unconscious. We know humans are conscious and we know humans have all the required parameters to make them classified as conscious. We just can't deduce the exact thresholds and features that cause a phase shift when changed. But we know these parameters exist.

dvt 4y ago

> Is chatGPT a mathematical model of consciousness? Unless we reduce models of consciousness to purely stochastic processes, this is trivially false. And no one seriously reduces consciousness to probabilistic pattern recognition. > We know it doesn't represent the whole experience... It doesn't represent any experience. ChatGPT doesn't "experience" things as conscious things do. It's not even comparable to the experience of a simple invertebrate, for example.

Lyapunov_Lover 4y ago
That's the (hard) problem of qualia. You can't say for sure that ChatGPT doesn't experience anything. And I can't say for sure that you do, either. It's trivial to dismiss it on the basis of "well obviously it's like that"—far more difficult is to say something about why it's not like that. I think consciousness has to be the product of an algorithmic process. I think this process can be summed up as "prediction". I don't think there's some secret quantum/soul/magic aspect to it. Which is why I think it's plausible that transformer models may capture some aspect of what we refer to as consciousness, though I don't quite buy it at a gut level. You say that "it's not even comparable to the experience of a simple invertebrate," but that's just you writing down what your gut is telling you. What is the experience of a simple invertebrate like, exactly?
- vba616 4y ago
  >You can't say for sure that ChatGPT doesn't experience anything. And I can't say for sure that you do, either. The question rattling around in my brain tonight is - if some, many, people don't develop a theory of mind as young children, how many of the people around me are like this? Is it just the philosophers? It seems of much more moment than the essence of ChatGPT.
  - messe 4y ago
    Given how many people in this thread don’t seem to grasp the idea of qualia, and think the hard problem of consciousness to be easy, I’m not entirely unconvinced I’m surrounded by a bunch of imperfect p-zombies.