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> Note that none of this tells us whether language models actually feel anything or have subjective experiences. You’ll never find that in the human brain eith
by Chance-Device 6mo ago
> Note that none of this tells us whether language models actually feel anything or have subjective experiences.
You’ll never find that in the human brain either. There’s the machinery of neural correlates to experience, we never see the experience itself. That’s likely because the distinction is vacuous: they’re the same thing.
- bigyabai 6mo ago> That’s likely because the distinction is vacuous: they’re the same thing. The Chinese Room would like a word.
- Chance-Device 6mo agoThe Chinese room is nonsense though. How did it get every conceivable reply to every conceivable question? Presumably because people thought of and answered everything conceivable. Meaning that you’re actually talking to a Chinese room plus multiple people composite system. You would not argue that the human part of that system isn’t conscious. But this distraction aside, my point is this: there is only mechanism. If someone’s demand to accept consciousness in some other entity is to experience those experiences for themselves, then that’s a nonsensical demand. You might just as well assume everyone and everything else is a philosophical zombie.
- bigyabai 6mo ago> You would not argue that the human part of that system isn’t conscious. Sure I would. The human part is not being inferenced, the data is. LLM output in this circumstance is no more conscious than a book that you read by flipping to random pages. > You might just as well assume everyone and everything else is a philosophical zombie. I don't assume anything about everyone or everything's intelligence. I have a healthy distrust of all claims.
- Chance-Device 6mo agoThe CR is equivalent to a human being asked a question, thinking about it and answering. The setup is the same thing, it’s just framed in a way that obfuscates that. And sure, you can assume that nobody and nothing else is conscious (I think we’re talking about this rather than intelligence) and I won’t try to stop you, I just don’t think it’s a very useful stance. It kind of means that assuming consciousness or not means nothing, since it changes nothing, which is more or less what I’m saying.
- the8472 6mo agohttps://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf
- Fraterkes 6mo agoDo you think these llm's have subjective experiences? (by "subjective experience" I mean the thing that makes stepping on an ant worse than kicking a pebble) And if so, do you still use them? Additionaly: when do you think that subjectivity started? Was there a "there" there with gpt2?
- Chance-Device 6mo agoYes, I think they probably are conscious, though what their qualia are like might be incomprehensible to me. I don’t think that being conscious means being identical to human experience. Philosophically I don’t think there is a point where consciousness arises. I think there is a point where a system starts to be structured in such a way that it can do language and reasoning, but I don’t think these are any different than any other mechanisms, like opening and closing a door. Differences of scale, not kind. Experience and what it is to be are just the same thing. And yes, I use them. I try not to mistreat them in a human-relatable sense, in case that means anything.
- Fraterkes 6mo agoDo you think there are "scales" of consciousness? As in, is there some quality that makes killing a frog worse than killing an ant, and killing a human worse than killing a frog? If so, do the llm models exist across this scale, or are gpt-3 and gpt-2 conscious at the same "scale" as gpt-4? I ask because if your view of consciousness is mechanistic, this is fairly cut and dry: gpt-2 has 4 orders of magnitude less parameters/complexity than gpt-4. But both gpt-2 and gpt-4 are very fluent at a language level (both moreso than a human 6 year old for example), so in your view they might both be roughly equally conscious, just expressed differently?
- Chance-Device 6mo agoThis is really a different question, what makes an entity a “moral patient”, something worthy of moral consideration. This is separate from the question of whether or not an entity experiences anything at all. There are different ways of answering this, but for me it comes down to nociception, which is the ability to feel pain. We should try to build systems that cannot feel pain, where I also mean other “negative valence” states which we may not understand. We currently don’t understand what pain is in humans, let alone AIs, so we may have built systems that are capable of suffering without knowing it. As an aside, most people seem to think that intelligence is what makes entities eligible for moral consideration, probably because of how we routinely treat animals, and this is a convenient self-serving justification. I eat meat by the way, in case you’re wondering. But I do think the way we treat animals is immoral, and there is the possibility that it may be thought of by future generations as being some sort of high crime.
- suddenlybananas 6mo agoI know I feel experience. I don't know for sure if you do, but it seems a very reasonable extension to other people. LLMs are a radical jump though that needs a greater degree of justification.
- Chance-Device 6mo agoAnd what kind of evidence would convince you? What experiment would ever bridge this gap? You’re relying entirely on similarity between yourself and other humans. This doesn’t extend very well to anything, even animals, though more so than machines. By framing it this way have you baked in the conclusion that nothing else can be conscious on an a priori basis?
- suddenlybananas 6mo agoI'm not sure what evidence would convince me, but I don't think the way LLMs act is convincing enough. The kinds of errors they make and the fact they operate in very clear discrete chunks makes it seem hard to me to attribute them subjective experience.
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 6mo agoConsciousness: do you believe plants are conscious? Ants? Jellyfish? Rabbits? Wolves? Monkeys? Humans? Even fungi demonstrate “different communication behaviors when under resource constraint”, for example. What we anthropomorphize is one thing, but demonstrable patterns of behavior are another.
- suddenlybananas 6mo agoI just don't know. I'm certain other humans are, everything beyond that I'm less certain. Monkeys wolves and rabbits, probably.
- brap 6mo ago
- BoredPositron 6mo ago[dead]
- thrance 6mo agoSee also: Functionalism [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_%28philosophy_of_mind%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_%28philosophy_of...
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 6mo agoSee also: Process Philosphy [0] [0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-philosophy/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-philosophy/
- felipeerias 6mo agoLLMs are disembodied and exist outside of time. Bundle of tokens comes in, bundle of tokens comes out. If there is any trace of consciousness or subjectivity in there, it exists only while matrices are being multiplied.
- Chance-Device 6mo agoThat’s true by definition. They’re only on when they’re on. Are you making a broader point that I’m missing?
- thrance 6mo agoSomething similar could be said of a the brain? Bundles of inputs come in, bundle of output comes out. It only exists while information is being processed. A brain cut from its body and frozen exists in a similar state to an LLM in ROM.
- felipeerias 6mo agoA living brain exists physically, changes over time, and never stops working. A brain cut from its body and frozen its a dead brain.
- staticassertion 6mo agoWhat do you mean exist outside of time? They definitely don't exist outside of any causal chain - tokens follow other tokens in order. Gaps in which no processing occurs seems sort of irrelevant to me. The main limitation I'd point to if I wanted to reject LLMs being conscious is that they're minimally recurrent if at all.
- felipeerias 6mo agoA LLM is not intrinsically affected by time. The model rests completely inert until a query comes in, regardless of whether that happens once per second, per minute, or per day. The model is not even aware of these gaps unless that information is provided externally. It is like a crystal that shows beautiful colours when you shine a light through it. You can play with different kinds of lights and patterns, or you can put it in a drawer and forget about it: the crystal doesn’t care anyway.