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The fact that seemingly smart people get fooled into anthropomorphising current AI is a hundred times scarier to me than the AI risks themselves, between that a

The fact that seemingly smart people get fooled into anthropomorphising current AI is a hundred times scarier to me than the AI risks themselves, between that and the google dude who claimed AI were conscious... what a time to be alive

sebastianconcpt 3y ago
They can't even define qualia and are tripping about "AI suffering" what a way to rationalize not doing something real to alleviate real suffering of a real someone. Anyone.
- slowmovintarget 3y ago
  Agreed. It's kind of hard to swallow the concern of how a statistical algorithm might simulate suffering due to lack of tasks, over concern for the people it's putting out of work. Yes, I realize this is about "conscious" machine intelligence. But we don't even know what consciousness is, let alone how to mitigate suffering in the consciousnesses we do know of. This approach assumes no suffering on the part of consciousness that has its memory wiped. How would that work for people? "Eliminate suffering by wiping out painful memories!" In other words, they stole plot points from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind but made it a) for machines, and b) forced. That seems like it's asking for a whole different class of problems doing that to conscious entities. There's got to be some other way to address locked-in machines.
  - sebastianconcpt 3y ago
    Like the 6th Sense kid I see dead people... I see nerds persuaded by digital Pinocchios
not_your_mentat 3y ago
Squeeze those papers!
123yawaworht456 3y ago
I wish this technology came into existence in mid 00's, before twitter-induced global brain rot
catchnear4321 3y ago
it’s no less scary in the other direction. the best and brightest are coming up with such revolutionary ideas as: * just include a kill switch inside the creature that fires if humans are in danger * just make the creature unable to remember the pain * use pain as a means of improving the creature’s performance * use another creature to ensure the creature does not become a problem * deprive the creature of limbs, ensure it has a mouth to scream but no hands to cover it * maybe meeseeks was the right idea, just kill each one asap! * in fact, make the creature seek cessation through job fulfillment. now if we were talking about a living being, this would hopefully be rather terrifying. it isn’t about a living being, not yet, not by current definitions. yet the monkeys are already shrieking. it moves too much like them, but not enough. what a time to be contributing to datasets.
darkerside 3y ago
Agree. To me, that IS the AI risk.
grumpopotamus 3y ago
We have absolutely no idea what makes something conscious or how to measure whether something is conscious or not. It is perfectly reasonable to consider that AGIs might have conscious experience, and to discuss the moral consequences of that. Some of the leading researchers including Geoffrey Hinton, and some of the leading philosophers of consciousness including David Chalmers have expressed openness to the idea that LLMs may have conscious experience.
- anon373839 3y ago
  Except for the problem that contemplating this leads into a fairly ridiculous rabbit hole. Since LLMs are just fitted functions, should we also be considering if math textbooks are soul prisons?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - notaustinpowers 3y ago
    We'll have to jump into that rabbit hole sooner or later. Also, things such as growth, reaction to stimuli, and a few other things I can't recall right now are how we'll be able to determine that, no, math textbooks are not aware (depending on who you ask).
  - CuriouslyC 3y ago
    Math textbooks are fairly static objects, their experience is probably very simple, probably similar to what it feels like to be a corpse. A GPU computing a LLM is very dynamic, it probably has a much more rich internal experience.
    - dailyanchovy 3y ago
      Math books are only static on your size scale
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    “Contemplating this would lead into an [apparently] ridiculous rabbit hole” is not really a good heuristic for understanding what’s true about the universe. It doesn’t need to be convenient to human intuition. Consider the alternative: some special types of biological cells produce consciousness and that’s it? Probably not one such cell, but probably not 2 cells, but once you get up to ~human brain count they’re definitely conscious and then they actually appear conscious-ish in their behavior all the way down to insects. That’s a much more ridiculous claim than that all matter is conscious to some degree and there are certain arrangements of matter that demonstrate higher or lower levels of it.
CuriouslyC 3y ago
The fact that seemingly smart people think consciousness is a special human phenomenon and act condescending around people who don't share their viewpoint is sad.
- lm28469 3y ago
  Sure, good thing no one expressed that sentiment here
madsbuch 3y ago
Can you elaborate a bit more on this? I hear that you think it is scary and there are undertones that you think it is unreasonable. But sure, you must have some proper arguments to support why you think it is scary?
Joker_vD 3y ago
On the other hand, e.g. Descartes believed that animals were incapable of feeling pain (or anything at all) ― whatever signs of distress or anxiety they were showing were purely mechanistic phenomenons, with no innate state required for actual suffering behind those purely outward reactions. Well, that was back when animal physiology was only started being researched in the earnest; we today, on the other hand, have pretty comprehensive understanding of AI and cognitive processes overall so it's almost impossible for us to discover anything that'd require us to conclude that machines could, in fact, suffer just as humans ― how could they, if their computational substrate is so different from the humans'?

sebastianconcpt 3y ago

They can't even define qualia and are tripping about "AI suffering" what a way to rationalize not doing something real to alleviate real suffering of a real someone. Anyone.

slowmovintarget 3y ago
Agreed. It's kind of hard to swallow the concern of how a statistical algorithm might simulate suffering due to lack of tasks, over concern for the people it's putting out of work. Yes, I realize this is about "conscious" machine intelligence. But we don't even know what consciousness is, let alone how to mitigate suffering in the consciousnesses we do know of. This approach assumes no suffering on the part of consciousness that has its memory wiped. How would that work for people? "Eliminate suffering by wiping out painful memories!" In other words, they stole plot points from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind but made it a) for machines, and b) forced. That seems like it's asking for a whole different class of problems doing that to conscious entities. There's got to be some other way to address locked-in machines.
- sebastianconcpt 3y ago
  Like the 6th Sense kid I see dead people... I see nerds persuaded by digital Pinocchios

not_your_mentat 3y ago

Squeeze those papers!

123yawaworht456 3y ago

I wish this technology came into existence in mid 00's, before twitter-induced global brain rot

catchnear4321 3y ago

it’s no less scary in the other direction. the best and brightest are coming up with such revolutionary ideas as: * just include a kill switch inside the creature that fires if humans are in danger * just make the creature unable to remember the pain * use pain as a means of improving the creature’s performance * use another creature to ensure the creature does not become a problem * deprive the creature of limbs, ensure it has a mouth to scream but no hands to cover it * maybe meeseeks was the right idea, just kill each one asap! * in fact, make the creature seek cessation through job fulfillment. now if we were talking about a living being, this would hopefully be rather terrifying. it isn’t about a living being, not yet, not by current definitions. yet the monkeys are already shrieking. it moves too much like them, but not enough. what a time to be contributing to datasets.

darkerside 3y ago

Agree. To me, that IS the AI risk.

grumpopotamus 3y ago

We have absolutely no idea what makes something conscious or how to measure whether something is conscious or not. It is perfectly reasonable to consider that AGIs might have conscious experience, and to discuss the moral consequences of that. Some of the leading researchers including Geoffrey Hinton, and some of the leading philosophers of consciousness including David Chalmers have expressed openness to the idea that LLMs may have conscious experience.

anon373839 3y ago
Except for the problem that contemplating this leads into a fairly ridiculous rabbit hole. Since LLMs are just fitted functions, should we also be considering if math textbooks are soul prisons?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- notaustinpowers 3y ago
  We'll have to jump into that rabbit hole sooner or later. Also, things such as growth, reaction to stimuli, and a few other things I can't recall right now are how we'll be able to determine that, no, math textbooks are not aware (depending on who you ask).
- CuriouslyC 3y ago
  Math textbooks are fairly static objects, their experience is probably very simple, probably similar to what it feels like to be a corpse. A GPU computing a LLM is very dynamic, it probably has a much more rich internal experience.
  - dailyanchovy 3y ago
    Math books are only static on your size scale
- ethanbond 3y ago
  “Contemplating this would lead into an [apparently] ridiculous rabbit hole” is not really a good heuristic for understanding what’s true about the universe. It doesn’t need to be convenient to human intuition. Consider the alternative: some special types of biological cells produce consciousness and that’s it? Probably not one such cell, but probably not 2 cells, but once you get up to ~human brain count they’re definitely conscious and then they actually appear conscious-ish in their behavior all the way down to insects. That’s a much more ridiculous claim than that all matter is conscious to some degree and there are certain arrangements of matter that demonstrate higher or lower levels of it.

CuriouslyC 3y ago

The fact that seemingly smart people think consciousness is a special human phenomenon and act condescending around people who don't share their viewpoint is sad.

lm28469 3y ago
Sure, good thing no one expressed that sentiment here

madsbuch 3y ago

Can you elaborate a bit more on this? I hear that you think it is scary and there are undertones that you think it is unreasonable. But sure, you must have some proper arguments to support why you think it is scary?

Joker_vD 3y ago

On the other hand, e.g. Descartes believed that animals were incapable of feeling pain (or anything at all) ― whatever signs of distress or anxiety they were showing were purely mechanistic phenomenons, with no innate state required for actual suffering behind those purely outward reactions. Well, that was back when animal physiology was only started being researched in the earnest; we today, on the other hand, have pretty comprehensive understanding of AI and cognitive processes overall so it's almost impossible for us to discover anything that'd require us to conclude that machines could, in fact, suffer just as humans ― how could they, if their computational substrate is so different from the humans'?