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I see a lot of arguments on this website where people passionately project the term consciousness onto LLMs. From my perspective, the disconnect you describe i
by andrei_says_ 11mo ago
I see a lot of arguments on this website where people passionately project the term consciousness onto LLMs.
From my perspective, the disconnect you describe is one of the main reasons this term cannot be applied.
Another reason is that the argument for calling LLMs conscious arises from the perspective of thinking and reasoning grounded in language.
But in my personal experience, thinking in language is just a small emerging quality of human consciousness. It is just that the intellectuals making these arguments happen to be fully identified with the “I think therefore I am” aspect of it and not the vastness of the rest.
- estearum 11mo agoI don’t know about others, but this is definitely not why I question whether LLMs are conscious or not. I don’t think you should presume to know the reason people raise this idea.
- gizajob 11mo agoI come to an identical conclusion over and over again, and couldn't have put it better myself.
- andrei_says_ 11mo agoYou’re right of course, I can only presume, deduct, or, project others’ experiences. Do you hypothesize LLMs to be conscious? Could you expand?
- gizajob 11mo agoYou've read Wittgenstein haven't you?
- spectralista 11mo agoI have and to quote Wittgenstein all this is like saying the machine has a toothache. It is just complete nonsense. No one believes a pocket calculator is thinking just because it produces the correct output. To believe the LLM is thinking you have to find the demarcation between the pocket calculator and the LLM. Good luck with that.
- estearum 11mo agoActually there are people who believe that a calculator is "thinking" just a tiny bit, and that LLMs are thinking a bit more. To believe that a human is thinking, you have to find the demarcation between a brain and a neuron. Then between a neuron and a cell. Then between a cell and a protein. Then between a protein and a molecule. Good luck with that.
- gizajob 11mo agoProof is nevertheless in the pudding
- estearum 11mo agoAlas, I cannot even prove there is any conscious being in the universe at all besides myself. Obviously proof is the goal, but our existing "self-evidently true" understanding of this problem space also has effectively zero proven foundation.
- yannyu 11mo agoProof isn't the goal here. Centuries of thought and experimentation have made it clear that we currently have no ability to decisively determine whether something is conscious. However, as humans we intuitively build projections of what we believe is the internal world of other beings. We also clearly believe there is a continuum of complexity of thought among all the beings that we have observed. The question then becomes, what behaviors of computer programs match up with what we consider conscious behaviors of other beings we have observed? This is a necessary question because we don't have access into the internal states of others, so we have to interrogate the full complexity of what we believe represents consciousness, and whether these beings match those behaviors.
- andrei_says_ 11mo agoNot really. Meditation + other experiences.
- gizajob 11mo agoYeah. Understandable.
- kashyapc 11mo ago> where people passionately project the term consciousness onto LLMs They have all drunk too much AI cool-aid. I doubt these people have any meaningul education in fields such as biology, neuroscience and related life sciences. Quite simply, we don't yet understand how consciousness arises. There are a lot of theories, but they are just that—theories. Related reading: Antonio Damasio wrote a book in 1994 with the spicy title, Descartes' Error[1] to rebut his famous quote that you cite. Also look up "Somatic Marker Hypothesis" by Damasio. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes%27_Error https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes%27_Error