4 ms·

>I mean, you're just a continuous chain of chemical reactions. The "just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. I also have an immortal soul, as do you.

dr_dshiv 4y ago
Philolaus, a Pythagorean, wrote that the feelings arise from the combination of the soul with the body. And that the soul was part of the same noetic world as mathematics. They didn’t have a word for information—but from their perspective, LLMs might well have soul. But without a body, I don’t think they can feel.
- pixl97 4y ago
  What is a body? In humans it is many things, but primarily a life support system for that continuous chain of chemical reactions. To continue that chain you have to so some particular things, like keep it from getting too hot, or too cold. Keep it fed and watered. Keep it from getting injured, which is the job of our sensory systems. Those are the baseline things we see in animals. In humans, at least until recently we had little to no means to extend our body beyond our original biological constraints. But now imagine I put a wireless sensor on your arm feeding into the nerves on your skin. On the otherside was a 'wireless' hand, we'll ignore if its biological or artificial on the other side, and it feeds back data to your implant so you can feel remotely. You'd still consider that 'feeling' right? But now lets take it up a step, instead of feeding back to your skin, feed those wireless impulses directly to your brain. The same interpretation is still happening. External impulses (data) are being fed back to your body for interpretation and processing. Depending on how LLMs scale in the future, our idea of embodiment may have to change. With a significant enough sensor network, an AI could embody a planet.
Joeri 4y ago
I posit there is no such thing as a soul, it is a human hallucination. This is really the question that everything hinges on: are we nothing more than the ghost in the shell of a chemical machine? If so we will create AGI eventually. If not, we likely can’t create AGI.
8bitchemistry 4y ago
> I also have an immortal soul, as do you. Genuinely curious: We have a pet rescue greyhound who feels like a genuine part of the family - would you say he has a soul too? (I presume you would say my daughter's pet goldfish does not.)
- HideousKojima 4y ago
  I believe that all living things have souls, so yes even your goldfish
  - 8bitchemistry 4y ago
    Even single-celled life, such as bacteria? (I presume "no" for viruses and prions.)
    - HideousKojima 4y ago
      Yes for bacteria, maybe for viruses, probably not for prions. For what it's worth, I'm LDS (Mormon) and I think my view is probably pretty common amongst members of the church. That said we would technically use the term spirit instead of soul, I just used soul because it's a more commonly understood term. Basically all living things have a spirit in addition to their physical form.
      - majkinetor 4y ago
        So when you transplant whatever thing from a body to another body, what happens with its soul/spirit? Notice that we transplanted all of them (in humans and animals). Do we have multi spirit/soul chimeras?
      - 8bitchemistry 4y ago
        Thank you for replying to my questions in good faith.

dr_dshiv 4y ago

Philolaus, a Pythagorean, wrote that the feelings arise from the combination of the soul with the body. And that the soul was part of the same noetic world as mathematics. They didn’t have a word for information—but from their perspective, LLMs might well have soul. But without a body, I don’t think they can feel.

pixl97 4y ago
What is a body? In humans it is many things, but primarily a life support system for that continuous chain of chemical reactions. To continue that chain you have to so some particular things, like keep it from getting too hot, or too cold. Keep it fed and watered. Keep it from getting injured, which is the job of our sensory systems. Those are the baseline things we see in animals. In humans, at least until recently we had little to no means to extend our body beyond our original biological constraints. But now imagine I put a wireless sensor on your arm feeding into the nerves on your skin. On the otherside was a 'wireless' hand, we'll ignore if its biological or artificial on the other side, and it feeds back data to your implant so you can feel remotely. You'd still consider that 'feeling' right? But now lets take it up a step, instead of feeding back to your skin, feed those wireless impulses directly to your brain. The same interpretation is still happening. External impulses (data) are being fed back to your body for interpretation and processing. Depending on how LLMs scale in the future, our idea of embodiment may have to change. With a significant enough sensor network, an AI could embody a planet.

Joeri 4y ago

I posit there is no such thing as a soul, it is a human hallucination. This is really the question that everything hinges on: are we nothing more than the ghost in the shell of a chemical machine? If so we will create AGI eventually. If not, we likely can’t create AGI.

8bitchemistry 4y ago

> I also have an immortal soul, as do you. Genuinely curious: We have a pet rescue greyhound who feels like a genuine part of the family - would you say he has a soul too? (I presume you would say my daughter's pet goldfish does not.)

HideousKojima 4y ago
I believe that all living things have souls, so yes even your goldfish
- 8bitchemistry 4y ago
  Even single-celled life, such as bacteria? (I presume "no" for viruses and prions.)
  - HideousKojima 4y ago
    Yes for bacteria, maybe for viruses, probably not for prions. For what it's worth, I'm LDS (Mormon) and I think my view is probably pretty common amongst members of the church. That said we would technically use the term spirit instead of soul, I just used soul because it's a more commonly understood term. Basically all living things have a spirit in addition to their physical form.
    - majkinetor 4y ago
      So when you transplant whatever thing from a body to another body, what happens with its soul/spirit? Notice that we transplanted all of them (in humans and animals). Do we have multi spirit/soul chimeras?
    - 8bitchemistry 4y ago
      Thank you for replying to my questions in good faith.