4 ms·
> It seems to me to posit that to understand requires that the understandee is human. Here's a thought experiment. Suppose we make first contact tomorrow, and
by dvt 4y ago
> It seems to me to posit that to understand requires that the understandee is human.
Here's a thought experiment. Suppose we make first contact tomorrow, and we meet some intelligent aliens. What are some questions you would ask them? How would you decide on their sentience or understanding?
Sentience involves goal-seeking, understanding, sensory inputs, first-personal mental states (things like pain, happiness, sadness, depression, love, etc.), a sense of what philosophers like Elizabeth Anscombe call I-ness, etc. Most of this stuff, to me, seems like is language-agnostic. Even a baby that can't speak feels pain or happiness. Even a dog feels anxiety or affection.
LLMs are a cute parlor trick, but a phantasm nonetheless.
- iliane5 4y agoThere's no denying LLMs are anything but sentient however is sentience really needed for intelligence? I feel like if we can have machines that are X% smarter than a human could ever get for any given task, it'd be a much better outcome for us if they were not sentient.
- lordnacho 4y agoDoes that mean sentient beings need to have had the evolutionary history that people have had? After all why would aliens have feelings like we have feelings? Don't we have feelings because either it was useful to our ancestors, or they are a spandrel of something that was?
- pegasus 4y agoMaybe that's all there is to it. But maybe not. These questions are not settled. It might seem obvious to you, but it doesn't seem so to me. Check out some of my other comments in this thread if you'd like to understand where my reservations come from.