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Perhaps you misunderstand. I'm saying that a computer (RAM sticks, registers, etc) is extremely unlikely to have actual conscious experience. At best, a comput
by poikroequ 2y ago
Perhaps you misunderstand. I'm saying that a computer (RAM sticks, registers, etc) is extremely unlikely to have actual conscious experience. At best, a computer can be a philosophical zombie. The point is, consciousness doesn't emerge purely from computation alone. You need the right physical process/activity/properties/whatever, which the brain has and computers do not.
You can construct a computer using purely mechanical parts - gears, cams, springs, etc. The first calculators were purely mechanical.
So imagine you built an absolutely massive computer, made purely out of mechanical parts, that was capable of performing matrix multiplication and therefore running LLMs. It's technically computation, but should we seriously expect real consciousness to emerge from a purely mechanical computer just because it performed the right computations? Of course not, that would literally be a miracle.
- seba_dos1 2y ago> I'm saying that a computer (RAM sticks, registers, etc) is extremely unlikely to have actual conscious experience. And yet a bag of proteins, mitochondria, water etc. somehow isn't? > The point is, consciousness doesn't emerge purely from computation alone. [citation needed] > It's technically computation, but should we seriously expect real consciousness to emerge from a purely mechanical computer just because it performed the right computations? Of course yes. I don't see why consciousness couldn't theoretically emerge even from computations made by a really bored human placing stones on an endless beach, or in an anthill with any single ant being completely oblivious of what's going on. Such consciousness will only be conscious of data that's provided to it as its input, but conscious nevertheless - just like we are only conscious of a specific representation of the real world as perceived by our flawed senses. I don't expect any meaningful difference there, other than our minds being at least a few steps ahead of anything we can build at this moment, which is hardly surprising given how little we know about brains and bodies even today.