4 ms·

Why?

danaris 3y ago
Well, "consciousness", at least as we recognize it, requires a mechanism by which the entity being measured can continuously form new "thoughts" and "memories" (which requires continuity of learning, and at the very least continuity of input being fed back from its own output), and some form of continuous external input of information about the world to at least be available, even if it is not always on. A standard LLM is a static bundle of trained data that sits, inert, on a drive, with a process waiting for discrete input. When that input arrives, it does nothing to modify the trained data—the LLM's "memory"—it simply triggers a computational process that reads both the input and the trained data and produces an output based on them. This does not resemble in any way the structure of something that could be reasonably described as a conscious mind.
- hackinthebochs 3y ago
  Continuous processing may be putting undue weight on accidental features of humans to be a necessary feature. Consider that a conscious mind can't represent the gaps in its processing, and so has an appearance of continuity. But this appearance probably doesn't map onto a continuous reality. An example is anesthesia patients that report a seemingly uninterrupted time from counting down pre-surgery to waking up. So interruptions, gaps, discontinuities, and so on don't necessarily eliminate the possibility for consciousness. It may be the case that LLMs are conscious when they are engaged in active inference. While I generally favor a requirement for recurrent processing, I have low but non-zero credence for certain feedforward networks being conscious. The point of recurrence is to allow information about itself to influence its processing. But It seems plausible that feedforward constructs can represent meta-information in a way that is computed as part of constructing the output.
- adrianN 3y ago
  We don’t have a definition of consciousness that allows you to recognize it.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    People rarely even offer a definition of consciousness that stays consistent between both premises of a syllogism.

Why?

Well, "consciousness", at least as we recognize it, requires a mechanism by which the entity being measured can continuously form new "thoughts" and "memories" (which requires continuity of learning, and at the very least continuity of input being fed back from its own output), and some form of continuous external input of information about the world to at least be available, even if it is not always on. A standard LLM is a static bundle of trained data that sits, inert, on a drive, with a process waiting for discrete input. When that input arrives, it does nothing to modify the trained data—the LLM's "memory"—it simply triggers a computational process that reads both the input and the trained data and produces an output based on them. This does not resemble in any way the structure of something that could be reasonably described as a conscious mind.

hackinthebochs 3y ago
Continuous processing may be putting undue weight on accidental features of humans to be a necessary feature. Consider that a conscious mind can't represent the gaps in its processing, and so has an appearance of continuity. But this appearance probably doesn't map onto a continuous reality. An example is anesthesia patients that report a seemingly uninterrupted time from counting down pre-surgery to waking up. So interruptions, gaps, discontinuities, and so on don't necessarily eliminate the possibility for consciousness. It may be the case that LLMs are conscious when they are engaged in active inference. While I generally favor a requirement for recurrent processing, I have low but non-zero credence for certain feedforward networks being conscious. The point of recurrence is to allow information about itself to influence its processing. But It seems plausible that feedforward constructs can represent meta-information in a way that is computed as part of constructing the output.
adrianN 3y ago
We don’t have a definition of consciousness that allows you to recognize it.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  People rarely even offer a definition of consciousness that stays consistent between both premises of a syllogism.