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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 A
by 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 agoExcept 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 agoWe'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 agoMath 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 agoMath 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.
- anon373839 3y agoI’m not making that claim either. My point is that it just isn’t a very productive area of inquiry (unless one derives some enjoyment from it).
- herewego 3y agoThis is a bit of a reductionist viewpoint. Perhaps you’re disregarding the emergent properties of fitted functions at scale.
- js8 3y ago> should we also be considering if math textbooks are soul prisons? Why not? There are even philosophical theories that the reality itself is just a manifestation of mathematical laws.
- lm28469 3y agoYeah that's called arguments from authority, not so long ago the same people were mixing random crystals and dirt to make gold and trying to convince you that animals were automatons... It's a bunch of GPUs running code... simpletons get deceived because it is displayed through a chat.
- ethanbond 3y agoIf you have some defensible definition of when/where/how consciousness emerges, you should publish a paper and go win your Nobel. This is an unsolved problem.
- lm28469 3y agoRight, but then again the burden of proof isn't on my side
- CuriouslyC 3y agoTBF ChatGPT is more alive and has more soul than some humans I've met.
- lm28469 3y agoAnd Star Wars is more entertaining than my life, it doesn't make it a real story, if anything it's a testament to how alienating modern life became
- ethanbond 3y agoWhat about the burden of proof that you are conscious? After all, you’re just a bunch of neurons firing signals, and 100% of your behavior is readily explained as an automaton in a meat machine.
- lm28469 3y agoDo I need to prove my own consciousness to think that chatgpt isn't conscious ? I swear people defending this idea would argue a plane and a bird are the same thing because "hey look, they both fly and have wings"