4 ms·

In my layman's mind consciousness, at it's lowest level, is awareness, as mentioned in the article. I think what humans have achieved is the next level which i

In my layman's mind consciousness, at it's lowest level, is awareness, as mentioned in the article. I think what humans have achieved is the next level which is "awareness" of our awareness. The ability to self-reflect. Perhaps it is even a form of "recursive consciousness" (?) And perhaps structured language is the secret sauce that makes this possible. Without that next level I can't differentiate humans from other mammals. This has caused me to ask: Is there a level above this? ie: Awareness of your awareness of your awareness. and... can humans achieve that next level with our current biological equipment? :-)

peterlk 3y ago
This is the problem with terms like this. There are definitions in academia/industry that differentiate between awareness, consciousness, qualia, intelligence, sentience, and more. But these distinctions require some pondering to understand and are divergent from general understanding which treats them as roughly the same thing. For example, consciousness for me is the ability for something to take directed action to affect their surroundings. This means that a robot can be conscious. But now the question for what we’re talking about here is: is it aware? It is possible to display consciousness without awareness (see blindsight studies), but to my knowledge it is not possible to be aware without consciousness. And then we get to sentience, which is still very slippery, and often relies on definitions involving “qualia”, which is also quite slippery.
- lebuffon 3y ago
  I have no formal knowledge in the domain to go much deeper but I can understand the problem you stated about defining the terms properly. I suppose this spinning around on word definitions is similar to my "awareness of awareness" description in that we have the ability to ponder the meaning of the very tool (language) that we are thinking with. But my old head begins to implode if I go very deep...
BlueTemplar 3y ago
Isn't that next level the "theory of mind", that the article says LLMs seem to have achieved (in at least some form) now ?

peterlk 3y ago

This is the problem with terms like this. There are definitions in academia/industry that differentiate between awareness, consciousness, qualia, intelligence, sentience, and more. But these distinctions require some pondering to understand and are divergent from general understanding which treats them as roughly the same thing. For example, consciousness for me is the ability for something to take directed action to affect their surroundings. This means that a robot can be conscious. But now the question for what we’re talking about here is: is it aware? It is possible to display consciousness without awareness (see blindsight studies), but to my knowledge it is not possible to be aware without consciousness. And then we get to sentience, which is still very slippery, and often relies on definitions involving “qualia”, which is also quite slippery.

lebuffon 3y ago
I have no formal knowledge in the domain to go much deeper but I can understand the problem you stated about defining the terms properly. I suppose this spinning around on word definitions is similar to my "awareness of awareness" description in that we have the ability to ponder the meaning of the very tool (language) that we are thinking with. But my old head begins to implode if I go very deep...

BlueTemplar 3y ago

Isn't that next level the "theory of mind", that the article says LLMs seem to have achieved (in at least some form) now ?