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Self-awareness is not a very interesting property: a server that knows the domain name it is hosted on is arguably as self-aware as anything, qualitatively spea
by Kinrany 3y ago
Self-awareness is not a very interesting property: a server that knows the domain name it is hosted on is arguably as self-aware as anything, qualitatively speaking
- rthrfrd 3y agoI think it's useful to distinguish between self-awareness as mutable or immutable. In which sense I agree that both your server and this LLM have an immutable self-awareness which is indeed not very interesting. I'll only start taking any talk of self-awareness seriously once online learning is happening.
- MattPalmer1086 3y agoThen you have not understood what the term self awareness refers to. What is the self that is aware? Do you believe that the server is aware of its own existence?
- Kinrany 3y agoIn what sense would it not be aware of its own existence if it was telling users what to say to itself to retrieve a file?
- MattPalmer1086 3y agoIn what sense would it be?
- Kinrany 3y agoIt is capable of addressing and describing itself from the outside, of talking to itself while knowing that that is what it is doing, and of intentionally doing things that involve other entities being aware of it.
- MattPalmer1086 3y agoI think we have a very different definition of knowing, awareness and intention. But sure, if you define self awareness to mean such a small thing, then I guess there is no problem for you. Which in my view is a shame, because I think you are missing out on some bigger concepts.
- Kinrany 3y agoSo what's your definition?
- MattPalmer1086 3y agoWell, awareness implies that there is a conscious experience; that sense perceptions are being processed into some kind of model of the world. Self awareness is additionally awareness of the self as an actor in the world. For animals the mirror test is often used. This requires the animal to recognise that a reflection of them is actually themselves and not another animal. Intention involves the ability to formulate a plan to reach some goal that matters to the individual. I see none of those in a piece of software that reads data from files and network sockets and deterministically responds to them with fixed software.
- ben_w 3y agoThat it is poorly defined is a separate problem. If my brain were to be uploaded, it would matter very much to me how "self aware" it was in the vague and ill-defined sense that sort of corresponds to words like "consciousness" and "qualia" that we also can't test for yet. Either such an upload is a fork of my consciousness that I wish to be protected from harm and abuse, or it is an unfeeling book that can be used to solve any problem without having to worry about those issues.