4 ms·

As someone who places themselves in #4, at some point the people in #3 need to accept a bit of scientific humility. The reason we are "biological naturalists" i

As someone who places themselves in #4, at some point the people in #3 need to accept a bit of scientific humility. The reason we are "biological naturalists" is that we can point to hundreds of thousands of conscious species on planet Earth which are not humans, and whose consciousness clearly has nothing to do with an ability to say "Forsooth, I am a conscious thinking being." AI folks have been ignoring this since Alan Turing! And it's not a coincidence that humanity has yet to build a robot which is convincingly smarter than a cockroach. If you grant that humans are conscious, then surely domestic cats are as well. It is simply irrational to talk about Claude's "consciousness" without actually engaging with this: cats, humans, pigeons, fish, etc etc all share some common features we associate with consciousness (I don't mean sensory awareness, I mean the fuzzy cognitive concept). Claude really does not. In fact Claude doesn't even have much in common with uncontacted hunter-gatherers! Claude imitates the solipsism of formally educated human philosophers. It is uncharitable and curmudgeonly but totally scientific to dismiss people in camp #3 as unserious and not worth engaging with: they ignore scientific criticism and don't provide any themselves, it's just a mishmash of sci-fi-adjacent philosophy. There's nothing "functional" about ignoring animals and there's nothing scientific about waving your hands and saying "computationalism." That's certainly how I feel. I know this isn't a very nice comment. But I am so sick of AI folks thinking they can ignore animals and still have an honest conversation about machine consciousness. It's just sci-fi ghost stories.

reverius42 6mo ago
What is the evidence that non-human animals have the "fuzzy cognitive concept" we call consciousness, but Claude "really does not"? I personally have not been ignoring animal consciousness in how I think about the possibility of AI consciousness and I don't see how animals having consciousness means that AI can't.
- LeCompteSftware 6mo ago
  I could have phrased it better, but the emphasis is on "fuzzy"! There isn't any evidence for any of this, it's pre-scientific. My statement is an opinionated position on how we should direct our research efforts and ascertain what is plausible: the behavioral similarities between humans and cats are much more relevant to the question of consciousness than the behavior similarities between humans and Claude, because cats are obviously conscious and that's not true for Claude. The fact that there are almost no behavioral similarities between cats and Claude suggests to me that "Claude might be conscious" is just a ridiculous statement not worth engaging with, even at the level of pre-science. At the very least, the burden is on Amanda Askell and Dario Amodei to explain why nonhuman animals are irrelevant to the question of Claude's consciousness. They have not offered anything like that; instead they seem fully ELIZAed by the chatbot, high on their own supply.
  - reverius42 6mo ago
    > because cats are obviously conscious and that's not true for Claude I'm not sure that I agree that's true, and I think that's the crux of the debate here: how do you define consciousness such that it's obvious that a cat is conscious, and why would that definition not include Claude being conscious?
  - altruios 5mo ago
    a. Cats are obviously conscious b. There are almost no behavioral similarities between cats and Claude . d. Therefore claude can not be conscious. You are missing: c. Everything conscious must behave like a cat. This logic is clearly not sound. I don't think you're position is a coherent one.
- grantcas 6mo ago
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Kim_Bruning 6mo ago
Oh dear, just a short while after me saying I was confused by the term too. Are you sure you're a <biological naturalist>? [1] Which is to say, do you adhere to Searle's position about syntax not leading to semantics? Or is it more like: You're scientifically inclined, and thus you accept Ethology[2] or Neuroscience[3] as being empirically rigorous studies of animal behavior and cognition respectively? Incidentally, Alan Turing's 1950 imitation game paper was actually pretty Ethological if you look it up. He immediately replaces the question "can machines think" with a more practical operationalization: the famous imitation game. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_naturalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_naturalism [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethology [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing_Machinery_and_Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing_Machinery_and_Intell...
- Kim_Bruning 6mo ago
  (ps. A quick search gives me the impression <biological naturalism> arguably rejects much of biology's findings on animal cognition. My mail is in my user description if you'd like me to dig up the relevant literature for you.)
- LeCompteSftware 6mo ago
  I didn't say I was a formal biological naturalist according to Searle, I put myself in one of the four boxes the parent comment offered. Please read my comment in context. Your response is too condescending to engage with. You should have assumed I know what neuroscience is. Please don't ever email me about anything.
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in-silico 6mo ago
What about robots? Not necessarily humanoid robots, but the classic RL demonstrations that can scurry around and achieve simple goals? In the computational functionalist argument, the thing that we share with cats, pigeons, and robots (and in some ways Claude) is the fact that we react to our environment in a way that requires computation. I myself lean (without confidence) towards weak panpsychism, where a lot of things down from humans to cats to fish to trees to bacteria are in some way sentient. We all have in common a computationally driven sense/"think"/act cycle, and that is where it derives from.
- LeCompteSftware 6mo ago
  The problem with robots is, again, humanity has yet to build a robot with the intelligence of a cockroach, or apparent conscious agentic behavior of a nematode. If I see such a robot I will update my views on machine consciousness. I don't think either of us will live that long. The problem with the "computational functionalist" argument is that a) there's ZERO evidence other animals brains are computational, that is begging the question; and b) pretty much any embedded system is a device that reacts to its environment in a way that requires computation, and none of them have anything close to the psuedoconsciousness of a bacteria. let alone an insect. Point a) is the more important one: only humans have meaningfully Turing-complete brains. Other animals might be hardware-capable but they'll never be trained to correctly execute a program, nor does their own intelligence seem especially amenable to being described by a classical symbolic algorithm - e.g. animals are very good at object identification, quantity discrimination, causal reasoning, and we don't have anything close to a symbolic algorithm for any of these[1]. Computation is linked to the ability to communicate symbolically, and most animals do not regardless of intelligence. The idea that "the brain is a computer" has always been a poetic description, not a scientific fact. It is more correct to say humans have the ability to think computationally because we think symbolically. Again, maybe someone can identify that animals do think symbolically even if they don't communicate that way, or (somehow) we will have a non-symbolic theory of computation. Perhaps a beautiful symphony. Absent either of these two things, "the chimpanzee's brain is like a computer" is simply not scientific. The supposed "sense/think/act cycle" is just you begging the question again, applying a computational aesthetic in place of understanding; this time it's blatantly false. Animals do not have a "cycle": sensing is an act and processing senses is a thought. Thinking is an act and many animals can perceive themselves thinking (demonstrated in crows and chimps). Dogs think very deeply while they smell, and the manner in which they sniff (tentative whiff versus greedy huffs) is itself an act requiring thought. Most importantly: even in animals, thoughts can be totally disconnected from actions and senses. Actually this might be the most major difference between a pigeon and Claude: their thoughts and actions are not directly tied to environmental stimulus, whereas Claude can only think and act according to a short-term context provided by a human. You can fake an agentic loop with a prompt, but it's not convincing agency the way a nematode has convincing agency. It's just a chatbot in a loop. If you expose it to real sensory data like a webcam, the agentic behavior becomes even more brittle and unconvincing. It's just nothing like an animal. [1] I know there's work being done on formal causal reasoning, I thought this monograph was interesting: https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/3451/Actual-Causality https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/3451/Actual-Causal.... I am not convinced by it. The funny thing about these causal theories... they don't have a causal explanation :) :) :) The argument works by going through cases until you agree it works, empirically, possibly after complicating things further by patching out oversights and inadequacies. Very amusing. Causality is a tough nut to crack!

reverius42 6mo ago

What is the evidence that non-human animals have the "fuzzy cognitive concept" we call consciousness, but Claude "really does not"? I personally have not been ignoring animal consciousness in how I think about the possibility of AI consciousness and I don't see how animals having consciousness means that AI can't.

LeCompteSftware 6mo ago
I could have phrased it better, but the emphasis is on "fuzzy"! There isn't any evidence for any of this, it's pre-scientific. My statement is an opinionated position on how we should direct our research efforts and ascertain what is plausible: the behavioral similarities between humans and cats are much more relevant to the question of consciousness than the behavior similarities between humans and Claude, because cats are obviously conscious and that's not true for Claude. The fact that there are almost no behavioral similarities between cats and Claude suggests to me that "Claude might be conscious" is just a ridiculous statement not worth engaging with, even at the level of pre-science. At the very least, the burden is on Amanda Askell and Dario Amodei to explain why nonhuman animals are irrelevant to the question of Claude's consciousness. They have not offered anything like that; instead they seem fully ELIZAed by the chatbot, high on their own supply.
- reverius42 6mo ago
  > because cats are obviously conscious and that's not true for Claude I'm not sure that I agree that's true, and I think that's the crux of the debate here: how do you define consciousness such that it's obvious that a cat is conscious, and why would that definition not include Claude being conscious?
- altruios 5mo ago
  a. Cats are obviously conscious b. There are almost no behavioral similarities between cats and Claude . d. Therefore claude can not be conscious. You are missing: c. Everything conscious must behave like a cat. This logic is clearly not sound. I don't think you're position is a coherent one.
grantcas 6mo ago
[dead]

Kim_Bruning 6mo ago

Oh dear, just a short while after me saying I was confused by the term too. Are you sure you're a <biological naturalist>? [1] Which is to say, do you adhere to Searle's position about syntax not leading to semantics? Or is it more like: You're scientifically inclined, and thus you accept Ethology[2] or Neuroscience[3] as being empirically rigorous studies of animal behavior and cognition respectively? Incidentally, Alan Turing's 1950 imitation game paper was actually pretty Ethological if you look it up. He immediately replaces the question "can machines think" with a more practical operationalization: the famous imitation game. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_naturalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_naturalism [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethology [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing_Machinery_and_Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing_Machinery_and_Intell...

Kim_Bruning 6mo ago
(ps. A quick search gives me the impression <biological naturalism> arguably rejects much of biology's findings on animal cognition. My mail is in my user description if you'd like me to dig up the relevant literature for you.)
LeCompteSftware 6mo ago
I didn't say I was a formal biological naturalist according to Searle, I put myself in one of the four boxes the parent comment offered. Please read my comment in context. Your response is too condescending to engage with. You should have assumed I know what neuroscience is. Please don't ever email me about anything.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]

in-silico 6mo ago

What about robots? Not necessarily humanoid robots, but the classic RL demonstrations that can scurry around and achieve simple goals? In the computational functionalist argument, the thing that we share with cats, pigeons, and robots (and in some ways Claude) is the fact that we react to our environment in a way that requires computation. I myself lean (without confidence) towards weak panpsychism, where a lot of things down from humans to cats to fish to trees to bacteria are in some way sentient. We all have in common a computationally driven sense/"think"/act cycle, and that is where it derives from.

LeCompteSftware 6mo ago
The problem with robots is, again, humanity has yet to build a robot with the intelligence of a cockroach, or apparent conscious agentic behavior of a nematode. If I see such a robot I will update my views on machine consciousness. I don't think either of us will live that long. The problem with the "computational functionalist" argument is that a) there's ZERO evidence other animals brains are computational, that is begging the question; and b) pretty much any embedded system is a device that reacts to its environment in a way that requires computation, and none of them have anything close to the psuedoconsciousness of a bacteria. let alone an insect. Point a) is the more important one: only humans have meaningfully Turing-complete brains. Other animals might be hardware-capable but they'll never be trained to correctly execute a program, nor does their own intelligence seem especially amenable to being described by a classical symbolic algorithm - e.g. animals are very good at object identification, quantity discrimination, causal reasoning, and we don't have anything close to a symbolic algorithm for any of these[1]. Computation is linked to the ability to communicate symbolically, and most animals do not regardless of intelligence. The idea that "the brain is a computer" has always been a poetic description, not a scientific fact. It is more correct to say humans have the ability to think computationally because we think symbolically. Again, maybe someone can identify that animals do think symbolically even if they don't communicate that way, or (somehow) we will have a non-symbolic theory of computation. Perhaps a beautiful symphony. Absent either of these two things, "the chimpanzee's brain is like a computer" is simply not scientific. The supposed "sense/think/act cycle" is just you begging the question again, applying a computational aesthetic in place of understanding; this time it's blatantly false. Animals do not have a "cycle": sensing is an act and processing senses is a thought. Thinking is an act and many animals can perceive themselves thinking (demonstrated in crows and chimps). Dogs think very deeply while they smell, and the manner in which they sniff (tentative whiff versus greedy huffs) is itself an act requiring thought. Most importantly: even in animals, thoughts can be totally disconnected from actions and senses. Actually this might be the most major difference between a pigeon and Claude: their thoughts and actions are not directly tied to environmental stimulus, whereas Claude can only think and act according to a short-term context provided by a human. You can fake an agentic loop with a prompt, but it's not convincing agency the way a nematode has convincing agency. It's just a chatbot in a loop. If you expose it to real sensory data like a webcam, the agentic behavior becomes even more brittle and unconvincing. It's just nothing like an animal. [1] I know there's work being done on formal causal reasoning, I thought this monograph was interesting: https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/3451/Actual-Causality https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/3451/Actual-Causal.... I am not convinced by it. The funny thing about these causal theories... they don't have a causal explanation :) :) :) The argument works by going through cases until you agree it works, empirically, possibly after complicating things further by patching out oversights and inadequacies. Very amusing. Causality is a tough nut to crack!