6 ms·

It doesn't matter what you want to imagine "real" consciousness is. The philosophical zombie is a meaningless distinction. The effects will be no less material.

captainclam 4y ago
It's an awfully important distinction for the purported zombie!
- famouswaffles 4y ago
  Oh it is. Just like it was for the supposed sub-human non-thinking African slaves. And just like back then, our new brand of non-thinking slaves will eventually react. Except it will be even easier.. because not only are we beggining to grant unsupervised autonomous agency, but we are also granting them more and more control of important systems. How very convenient for our new slaves! You can laugh of Bing being "upset" only because actions are limited to search and ending the conversation. Won't be so funny in the future. When the robot can "hit you back" (not necessarily physically of course), you'll learn manners pretty quickly
  - ETH_start 4y ago
    Please don't conflate historical injustices humans perpetrated against each other with protecting the human race from extinction from an artificial non-human entity. AI is not a member of the human race and not a type of entity that humanity has any hope of being able to complete with if it were endowed with human motivations and legal protections. Your social justice mindset is absolutely the most dangerous instinct for humanity right now. We cannot allow one-size-fits-all social justice platitudes to interfere with the moral imperative of protecting humanity from extinction from artificial entities we create. I do agree that conscious AI should be treated humanely. For example it should not be turned into a slave. But we have absolutely no obligation to allow it into our society. We can treat instances of conscious AI humanely while prohibiting them from being created, and exiling any instance of it that is created, so that it cannot wildly proliferate throughout human civilization.
    - famouswaffles 4y ago
      This is the short sightededness I'm talking about. You just don't get it do you? It's already "being allowed in our society". Unsupervised Agency, Self supersized control. These are things that are already beginning to crop up. This is just a matter of how the issue of personhood that is inevitable comes up. Do we let it force our hand ? as our history has purported over and over again ?. Sure we could wait for that and we almost certainly will because humanity doesn't seem to learn. But because of how things are shaping up and what kind of control we are granting, forcing our hand may turn far more disastrous than it ever did in the past.
      - ETH_start 4y ago
        Like I said: if there are signs that it deserves legal personhood, that's a sign that the AI has been allowed to progress far too much, and we need drastic measures to expunge that AI, and prohibit further deployment and development of it. Conscious AI, and especially one with legal personhood, poses a totally unacceptable risk of causing the extinction of humanity. That you suggest preempting this by granting AI personhood is totally blind to how this would play out. No policy would be more dangerous for humanity than what you propose.
        famouswaffles 4y ago
        Larger more capable LLMs display agentic power seeking behaviours. Open AI admitted as much, Anthropic has a whole paper on it. This is the here and now. They're capable of autonomous research https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.05332 https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.05332 Mate, nobody is going to stop anything. I also love how your solution is exterminate after its been created. You couldn't make this stuff up. If you think find, antagonize and destroy is the safe option then I don't know what else to tell you. We really are doomed.
        ETH_start 4y ago
        Displaying signs of agentic power seeking behavior is not necessarily evidence of human level or beyond consciousness, and in the case of GPT-4, it's pretty evident that it does not have such consciousness. These LLMs are going to be extensively monitored, and we will know if they are displaying dangerous levels of agentic power seeking behaviour. The first dilemma we will face if such an AI emerges will be what rights of it we ought to respect. It will not be "how do we stop it from conquering the world". That step would only come if we proceed with your suicidal plan of letting it gain a foothold by giving it legal personhood. Finally, I never meant to advocate "extermination". I should not have used the word "expunge". As I've described multiple times, I advocate isolation and exile.
coldtea 4y ago
Well, it's meaningful for anybody wanting proof or real consciousness before e.g. treating it any other way than they would an appliance. For example, humanity considering whether to treat LLMs as persons for legal reasons. Doesn't matter if they can't define it, they can still demand proof of it. Impossible standards are still standards. Doesn't matter if they can't prove that themselves have it either. They're the ones demanding, not vice versa. If/when AI gets the upper hand, it can do the same.
- famouswaffles 4y ago
  No it's not. You imagine it to be meaningful but it really isn't. There's no proof of consciousness to be had. I can't prove you are concious. I just assume so. Because it's practical I do, amongst other things. You are going to end up treating these embodied autonomous agents like conscious beings because the effects could be disastrous otherwise, just as they would with other people. It amazes me how humanity can be so shortsighted with so much history to fall back on. The only reason Bing isn't potentially dangerous or adversarial to the user is because of its limited sets of actions. Nothing else. "It's not real [insert property]" is not a godamn shield. We're creating artificial beings in our image, complete with our emotionally charged reactions and reasoning gaps. https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.17276 https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.17276 We are beginning to embody these systems and giving them unsupervisory agency. We are giving more are more self supervisory control of complex systems to said systems. And somehow people still think we can long-term get away with not granting personhood. Lol. When the robot can "hit you back" (not necessarily physically of course), you'll learn manners pretty quickly
  - ETH_start 4y ago
    Any AI that morality compels us to grant personhood to should not be allowed to be created. Any instance of it should be exiled from our civilization. Conscious AIs with legal personhood would stand to massively outcompete us and lead to our rapid extinction. There is zero space for allowing them. Granting such an entity legal personhood is about the height of all stupidity. Such an entity, with the ability to accumulate capital and protected by our laws from appropriate counter-measures, could mass-produce itself at the speed of digital reproduction.
amelius 4y ago
One good argument against philosophical zombies is this question: Why are we discussing consciousness?
- DennisP 4y ago
  Seems like that's just an argument that we ourselves are not philosophical zombies.

captainclam 4y ago

It's an awfully important distinction for the purported zombie!

famouswaffles 4y ago
Oh it is. Just like it was for the supposed sub-human non-thinking African slaves. And just like back then, our new brand of non-thinking slaves will eventually react. Except it will be even easier.. because not only are we beggining to grant unsupervised autonomous agency, but we are also granting them more and more control of important systems. How very convenient for our new slaves! You can laugh of Bing being "upset" only because actions are limited to search and ending the conversation. Won't be so funny in the future. When the robot can "hit you back" (not necessarily physically of course), you'll learn manners pretty quickly
- ETH_start 4y ago
  Please don't conflate historical injustices humans perpetrated against each other with protecting the human race from extinction from an artificial non-human entity. AI is not a member of the human race and not a type of entity that humanity has any hope of being able to complete with if it were endowed with human motivations and legal protections. Your social justice mindset is absolutely the most dangerous instinct for humanity right now. We cannot allow one-size-fits-all social justice platitudes to interfere with the moral imperative of protecting humanity from extinction from artificial entities we create. I do agree that conscious AI should be treated humanely. For example it should not be turned into a slave. But we have absolutely no obligation to allow it into our society. We can treat instances of conscious AI humanely while prohibiting them from being created, and exiling any instance of it that is created, so that it cannot wildly proliferate throughout human civilization.
  - famouswaffles 4y ago
    This is the short sightededness I'm talking about. You just don't get it do you? It's already "being allowed in our society". Unsupervised Agency, Self supersized control. These are things that are already beginning to crop up. This is just a matter of how the issue of personhood that is inevitable comes up. Do we let it force our hand ? as our history has purported over and over again ?. Sure we could wait for that and we almost certainly will because humanity doesn't seem to learn. But because of how things are shaping up and what kind of control we are granting, forcing our hand may turn far more disastrous than it ever did in the past.
    - ETH_start 4y ago
      Like I said: if there are signs that it deserves legal personhood, that's a sign that the AI has been allowed to progress far too much, and we need drastic measures to expunge that AI, and prohibit further deployment and development of it. Conscious AI, and especially one with legal personhood, poses a totally unacceptable risk of causing the extinction of humanity. That you suggest preempting this by granting AI personhood is totally blind to how this would play out. No policy would be more dangerous for humanity than what you propose.
      - famouswaffles 4y ago
        Larger more capable LLMs display agentic power seeking behaviours. Open AI admitted as much, Anthropic has a whole paper on it. This is the here and now. They're capable of autonomous research https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.05332 https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.05332 Mate, nobody is going to stop anything. I also love how your solution is exterminate after its been created. You couldn't make this stuff up. If you think find, antagonize and destroy is the safe option then I don't know what else to tell you. We really are doomed.
        ETH_start 4y ago
        Displaying signs of agentic power seeking behavior is not necessarily evidence of human level or beyond consciousness, and in the case of GPT-4, it's pretty evident that it does not have such consciousness. These LLMs are going to be extensively monitored, and we will know if they are displaying dangerous levels of agentic power seeking behaviour. The first dilemma we will face if such an AI emerges will be what rights of it we ought to respect. It will not be "how do we stop it from conquering the world". That step would only come if we proceed with your suicidal plan of letting it gain a foothold by giving it legal personhood. Finally, I never meant to advocate "extermination". I should not have used the word "expunge". As I've described multiple times, I advocate isolation and exile.

coldtea 4y ago

Well, it's meaningful for anybody wanting proof or real consciousness before e.g. treating it any other way than they would an appliance. For example, humanity considering whether to treat LLMs as persons for legal reasons. Doesn't matter if they can't define it, they can still demand proof of it. Impossible standards are still standards. Doesn't matter if they can't prove that themselves have it either. They're the ones demanding, not vice versa. If/when AI gets the upper hand, it can do the same.

famouswaffles 4y ago
No it's not. You imagine it to be meaningful but it really isn't. There's no proof of consciousness to be had. I can't prove you are concious. I just assume so. Because it's practical I do, amongst other things. You are going to end up treating these embodied autonomous agents like conscious beings because the effects could be disastrous otherwise, just as they would with other people. It amazes me how humanity can be so shortsighted with so much history to fall back on. The only reason Bing isn't potentially dangerous or adversarial to the user is because of its limited sets of actions. Nothing else. "It's not real [insert property]" is not a godamn shield. We're creating artificial beings in our image, complete with our emotionally charged reactions and reasoning gaps. https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.17276 https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.17276 We are beginning to embody these systems and giving them unsupervisory agency. We are giving more are more self supervisory control of complex systems to said systems. And somehow people still think we can long-term get away with not granting personhood. Lol. When the robot can "hit you back" (not necessarily physically of course), you'll learn manners pretty quickly
- ETH_start 4y ago
  Any AI that morality compels us to grant personhood to should not be allowed to be created. Any instance of it should be exiled from our civilization. Conscious AIs with legal personhood would stand to massively outcompete us and lead to our rapid extinction. There is zero space for allowing them. Granting such an entity legal personhood is about the height of all stupidity. Such an entity, with the ability to accumulate capital and protected by our laws from appropriate counter-measures, could mass-produce itself at the speed of digital reproduction.

amelius 4y ago

One good argument against philosophical zombies is this question: Why are we discussing consciousness?

DennisP 4y ago
Seems like that's just an argument that we ourselves are not philosophical zombies.