5 ms·

AI Is Not About to Become Sentient

12 points by measurablefunc 6mo ago

simianwords 6mo ago
Can I say something? In the cusp of civilisational scale of technological revolution, it may be important to seriously consider and explore ideas that may seem outlandish. Every single such revolution probably involved so called level headed people calling out the hype bro's. Just take a look at this: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times/1903/10/9/Flying_Machines_Which_Do_Not_Fly https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times/1903/10/9/... (people really thought Aeroplanes were never going to happen). I don't disagree that we need some level-headedness to counteract some outrageous predictions but please remember that it is more or less given that every step change in technology involves a level headed person dismissing the technology. Since it happens so unfrequently, there are obvious incentives to take the role of a levelheaded person instead of a hype-bro because you will be right dismiss 100 hypes that don't materialise.
chuckadams 6mo ago
Because we have such solid and airtight definitions of "consciousness" and "sentience".
- rileymat2 6mo ago
  Yeah, that’s my main beef with this article. There is not even an attempt, just waving hands and saying they are not. Decades and decades of “turing test” talk until they can pass it.
  - Kim_Bruning 6mo ago
    Mind: Turing test doesn't test for actual thinking though, just functional indistinguishability. Turing sidestepped the problem way back when.
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BugsJustFindMe 6mo ago
Nearly every sentence of this is a logical fallacy.
- measurablefunc 6mo ago
  You should provide evidence & examples for your claims if you want to be taken seriously.
  - Kim_Bruning 6mo ago
    Precisely! No need to engage with an article that makes naked assertions with little backing. Ok, fine then...: "But they have no more consciousness, sensitivity, and sentience than a hammer. " -- naked assertion, no backing, no definition, no ope rationalization, no scientific or philosophical work shown (and this is a spicy one, because there's been philosophical turf wars on this for half a century, you can't just ASSERT that) "Every device made by man has an off switch. We can use it sometimes." -- I have stories. Semi-Explosive near death stories. At any rate... uh, not quite? Look, at very least he's sloppy here. Mostly just a raw opinion piece I guess, but not really backed by much that is real. Just so you know, this cost me more time than the text even deserves.
rileymat2 6mo ago
> are trained on what we told them we do. They don’t “think” at all. They’re a mixmaster of other people’s ideas, cleverly packaged in a way that we perceive as natural. Sometimes I wonder how this is different from most of my education. Or my creativity, mixing ideas together to see if they still make sense with other things I have been told.
- Kim_Bruning 6mo ago
  "what is 16929481231+22312333222?" is an easy way to test this claim. Pick large enough numbers and there's no way all the sums of that size would fit into the dataset (you don't need to stick to + either, but it's the simplest thing that works)
  - rileymat2 6mo ago
    But if you were to ask that same question to a human with no specific math training there are exceedingly low odds they would get the right answer. We spend hours and hours over reinforced over years to have humans that can do it.
    - Kim_Bruning 6mo ago
      Indeed! So, where are you going with this? For my contribution to the conversation: Earlier/cheaper models can't do it either, they make mistakes, they need a calculator/jupiter kernel/what have you. 'Medium' models will put the numbers underneath each other and do it 'properly' in a table, checking themselves after. Claude Opus 4.6 (the current rolls royce today) just says the answer in one go sometimes (it's a monster). But all of them end up spending many seconds and thousands of tokens on a task that takes a calculator or an ALU fractions of a second.

Can I say something? In the cusp of civilisational scale of technological revolution, it may be important to seriously consider and explore ideas that may seem outlandish. Every single such revolution probably involved so called level headed people calling out the hype bro's. Just take a look at this: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times/1903/10/9/Flying_Machines_Which_Do_Not_Fly https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times/1903/10/9/... (people really thought Aeroplanes were never going to happen). I don't disagree that we need some level-headedness to counteract some outrageous predictions but please remember that it is more or less given that every step change in technology involves a level headed person dismissing the technology. Since it happens so unfrequently, there are obvious incentives to take the role of a levelheaded person instead of a hype-bro because you will be right dismiss 100 hypes that don't materialise.

chuckadams 6mo ago

Because we have such solid and airtight definitions of "consciousness" and "sentience".

rileymat2 6mo ago
Yeah, that’s my main beef with this article. There is not even an attempt, just waving hands and saying they are not. Decades and decades of “turing test” talk until they can pass it.
- Kim_Bruning 6mo ago
  Mind: Turing test doesn't test for actual thinking though, just functional indistinguishability. Turing sidestepped the problem way back when.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
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  [deleted]

BugsJustFindMe 6mo ago

Nearly every sentence of this is a logical fallacy.

measurablefunc 6mo ago
You should provide evidence & examples for your claims if you want to be taken seriously.
- Kim_Bruning 6mo ago
  Precisely! No need to engage with an article that makes naked assertions with little backing. Ok, fine then...: "But they have no more consciousness, sensitivity, and sentience than a hammer. " -- naked assertion, no backing, no definition, no ope rationalization, no scientific or philosophical work shown (and this is a spicy one, because there's been philosophical turf wars on this for half a century, you can't just ASSERT that) "Every device made by man has an off switch. We can use it sometimes." -- I have stories. Semi-Explosive near death stories. At any rate... uh, not quite? Look, at very least he's sloppy here. Mostly just a raw opinion piece I guess, but not really backed by much that is real. Just so you know, this cost me more time than the text even deserves.

rileymat2 6mo ago

> are trained on what we told them we do. They don’t “think” at all. They’re a mixmaster of other people’s ideas, cleverly packaged in a way that we perceive as natural. Sometimes I wonder how this is different from most of my education. Or my creativity, mixing ideas together to see if they still make sense with other things I have been told.

Kim_Bruning 6mo ago
"what is 16929481231+22312333222?" is an easy way to test this claim. Pick large enough numbers and there's no way all the sums of that size would fit into the dataset (you don't need to stick to + either, but it's the simplest thing that works)
- rileymat2 6mo ago
  But if you were to ask that same question to a human with no specific math training there are exceedingly low odds they would get the right answer. We spend hours and hours over reinforced over years to have humans that can do it.
  - Kim_Bruning 6mo ago
    Indeed! So, where are you going with this? For my contribution to the conversation: Earlier/cheaper models can't do it either, they make mistakes, they need a calculator/jupiter kernel/what have you. 'Medium' models will put the numbers underneath each other and do it 'properly' in a table, checking themselves after. Claude Opus 4.6 (the current rolls royce today) just says the answer in one go sometimes (it's a monster). But all of them end up spending many seconds and thousands of tokens on a task that takes a calculator or an ALU fractions of a second.