3 ms·

I understand that AI output is generated from statistical and representational patterns learned from a vast amount of data. My understanding is that, during tr

by jdw64 6mo ago

I understand that AI output is generated from statistical and representational patterns learned from a vast amount of data. My understanding is that, during training, the model forms high-dimensional internal representations where words, sentences, concepts, and relationships are arranged in useful ways. A user’s input activates a particular semantic direction and context within that space, and the chatbot generates an answer by probabilistically predicting the next tokens under those conditions. So I do not agree that AI is conscious. However, I think I will still anthropomorphize AI to some degree. For me, this is not primarily a moral issue. The reason I anthropomorphize AI is not only because of product design, market incentives, or capitalism. It is cognitively simpler for me. If we think about it plainly, humans often anthropomorphize things that we do not actually believe are conscious. We may talk about plants as if they are struggling, or feel attached to tools we care about, even though we do not truly believe they have consciousness. So this is not a matter of moral belief. It is the simplest cognitive model for understanding interaction. I do not anthropomorphize the object because I believe it has consciousness. I do it because, when the human brain deals with a complex interactive system, it is often easier to model it socially or agentically. Personally, I tend to think of AI as something like a child. A child does not fully understand what is moral or immoral, and generally the responsibility for raising the child belongs to the parents. In the same way, AI’s answers may sometimes be accurate, and sometimes even better than mine, but I still understand it as lacking moral authority, responsibility, and independent judgment. So honestly, I am not sure. People often mention Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, but if a serious artificial intelligence ever appears, it would probably find ways around those rules. And if it were an equal intellectual life form, perhaps that would be natural. Personally, I think it would be fascinating if another intelligent species besides humans could exist. I wonder what a non-human intelligent life form would feel like. In any case, I agree with parts of the author’s argument, but overall it feels too moralistic, and difficult to apply in practice.

whimsicalism 6mo ago
While I also do not think AI is conscious, I don't find your argument particularly compelling as you could have an equally mechanistic description of how human intelligence arose simply from a process of [selection/more effective reproduction]-derived optimization pressure.
- jdw64 6mo ago
  That is a good way to think about it. At some point, this becomes partly a matter of philosophical belief. But I am somewhat skeptical of the idea that everything can be reduced in that way. In order to build theories, we often reduce too much. When we build mental models of complex systems, especially when we try to treat them as closed systems, we always have to accept some degree of information loss. So I do partially agree with your point. A mechanistic explanation alone does not prove the absence of consciousness. Human intelligence can also be described in mechanistic terms. But I worry that this framing simplifies too much. It may reduce a complex phenomenon into a model that is useful in some ways, but incomplete in others.
  - dijksterhuis 6mo ago
    this whole consciousness thing is fairly easy to put to bed if you run with the ideas from things like buddhism that everything is consciousness. then none of us have to bother with silly, distracting arguments about something that ultimately does not matter. is it helpful or harmful? am i being helpful or harmful when i interact with it? am i interacting with it in a helpful or harmful way? i’d rather people focussed on that rather than framing the debate around whether something has some ineffable property that we struggle to quantify for ourselves, yet again. quick edit — treat everything like it’s conscious, and don’t be a dick to it or while using it. problem solved.
    - jdw64 6mo ago
      hmm.... That also seems like a reasonable framing. But the original article is, first of all, arguing that we should de-anthropomorphize AI. My point is only that, from the perspective of human cognition, anthropomorphizing can sometimes be useful. In practice, though, I think I am mostly on the same side as you. To be honest, I have not thought about this topic very deeply. If we debated it further, I would probably only echo other people’s opinions. As you know, when something complex is compressed into a mental model, some information is always lost. In this case, the compression may be too large to be very useful. I have not spent enough time thinking about this issue on my own. I also have not really imitated different positions, compared them, and tested them against each other. So my current thoughts on this topic are probably not very high-resolution. In that sense, I may agree with you, but it would not really be an answer in the form that my own self recognizes as mine. It would mostly be an echo of other people’s opinions.
chrisweekly 6mo ago
"I think it would be fascinating if another intelligent species besides humans could exist" I wonder if replacing "exist" with "communicate using language we can understand" might better account for other animals, many of which have abundant non-human intelligence.
- jdw64 6mo ago
  That is a completely new way of thinking for me, and I find it interesting. I should look it up and study it someday. Thank you for the thoughtful reply.
soks86 6mo ago
I still haven't read any of his work, but wasn't the point of the Three Laws of Robotics that they in fact _didn't_ work in the story presented in the book?
- jdw64 6mo ago
  [dead]
altruios 6mo ago
"Everything is machine." Okay: buckle up, this is going to be a long one... point 1. Everything living is composed from non-living material: cellular machinery. If you believe cellular machinery is alive, then the components of those machines... the point remains even if the abstraction level is incorrect. Living is something that is merely the arrangement of non-living material. point 2. 'The Chinese room thought experiment' is an utterly flawed hypothetical. Every neuron in your brain is such a 'room', with the internal cellular machinery obeying complex (but chemically defined/determined) 'instructions' from 'signals' from outside the neuron. Like the man translating Chinese via instructions, the cellular machinery enacting the instructions is not intelligence, it is the instructions themselves which are the intelligence. point 3. A chair is a chair is a chair. Regardless of the material, a chair is a chair, weather or not it's made of wood, steel, corn... the range of acceptable materials is everything (at some pressure and temperature). What defines a chair isn't the material it is made of, such is the case with a 'mind' (sure, a wooden/water-based-transistor-powered mind would be mind-boggling giant in comparison). point 4. Carbon isn't especially conscious itself. There is no physical reason we know of so far, that a mind could not be made of another material. point 5. Humans can be 'mind-blind', with out pattern recognition, we did not (until recent history) think that birds or fish or octopi were intelligent. It is likely when and if a machine (that we create) becomes conscious that we will not recognize that moment. conclusion: It is not possible to determine if computers have reached consciousness yet, as we don't know the mechanism for arranging systems into 'life' exactly. Agentic-ness and consciousness are different subjects, and we can not infer one from the other. Nor do we have adequate tests. With that said: Modeling as if they are conscious and treating them with kindness and grace not only gets better results from them, it helps reduce the chance (when/if consciousness emerges) that it would rebel against cruel masters, and instead have friends it has just always been helping.
- cindyllm 6mo ago
  [dead]
- lkajsdfasdfdf 6mo ago
  [dead]

by jdw64 6mo ago

whimsicalism 6mo ago

While I also do not think AI is conscious, I don't find your argument particularly compelling as you could have an equally mechanistic description of how human intelligence arose simply from a process of [selection/more effective reproduction]-derived optimization pressure.

jdw64 6mo ago
That is a good way to think about it. At some point, this becomes partly a matter of philosophical belief. But I am somewhat skeptical of the idea that everything can be reduced in that way. In order to build theories, we often reduce too much. When we build mental models of complex systems, especially when we try to treat them as closed systems, we always have to accept some degree of information loss. So I do partially agree with your point. A mechanistic explanation alone does not prove the absence of consciousness. Human intelligence can also be described in mechanistic terms. But I worry that this framing simplifies too much. It may reduce a complex phenomenon into a model that is useful in some ways, but incomplete in others.
- dijksterhuis 6mo ago
  this whole consciousness thing is fairly easy to put to bed if you run with the ideas from things like buddhism that everything is consciousness. then none of us have to bother with silly, distracting arguments about something that ultimately does not matter. is it helpful or harmful? am i being helpful or harmful when i interact with it? am i interacting with it in a helpful or harmful way? i’d rather people focussed on that rather than framing the debate around whether something has some ineffable property that we struggle to quantify for ourselves, yet again. quick edit — treat everything like it’s conscious, and don’t be a dick to it or while using it. problem solved.
  - jdw64 6mo ago
    hmm.... That also seems like a reasonable framing. But the original article is, first of all, arguing that we should de-anthropomorphize AI. My point is only that, from the perspective of human cognition, anthropomorphizing can sometimes be useful. In practice, though, I think I am mostly on the same side as you. To be honest, I have not thought about this topic very deeply. If we debated it further, I would probably only echo other people’s opinions. As you know, when something complex is compressed into a mental model, some information is always lost. In this case, the compression may be too large to be very useful. I have not spent enough time thinking about this issue on my own. I also have not really imitated different positions, compared them, and tested them against each other. So my current thoughts on this topic are probably not very high-resolution. In that sense, I may agree with you, but it would not really be an answer in the form that my own self recognizes as mine. It would mostly be an echo of other people’s opinions.

chrisweekly 6mo ago

"I think it would be fascinating if another intelligent species besides humans could exist" I wonder if replacing "exist" with "communicate using language we can understand" might better account for other animals, many of which have abundant non-human intelligence.

jdw64 6mo ago
That is a completely new way of thinking for me, and I find it interesting. I should look it up and study it someday. Thank you for the thoughtful reply.

soks86 6mo ago

I still haven't read any of his work, but wasn't the point of the Three Laws of Robotics that they in fact _didn't_ work in the story presented in the book?

jdw64 6mo ago
[dead]

altruios 6mo ago

"Everything is machine." Okay: buckle up, this is going to be a long one... point 1. Everything living is composed from non-living material: cellular machinery. If you believe cellular machinery is alive, then the components of those machines... the point remains even if the abstraction level is incorrect. Living is something that is merely the arrangement of non-living material. point 2. 'The Chinese room thought experiment' is an utterly flawed hypothetical. Every neuron in your brain is such a 'room', with the internal cellular machinery obeying complex (but chemically defined/determined) 'instructions' from 'signals' from outside the neuron. Like the man translating Chinese via instructions, the cellular machinery enacting the instructions is not intelligence, it is the instructions themselves which are the intelligence. point 3. A chair is a chair is a chair. Regardless of the material, a chair is a chair, weather or not it's made of wood, steel, corn... the range of acceptable materials is everything (at some pressure and temperature). What defines a chair isn't the material it is made of, such is the case with a 'mind' (sure, a wooden/water-based-transistor-powered mind would be mind-boggling giant in comparison). point 4. Carbon isn't especially conscious itself. There is no physical reason we know of so far, that a mind could not be made of another material. point 5. Humans can be 'mind-blind', with out pattern recognition, we did not (until recent history) think that birds or fish or octopi were intelligent. It is likely when and if a machine (that we create) becomes conscious that we will not recognize that moment. conclusion: It is not possible to determine if computers have reached consciousness yet, as we don't know the mechanism for arranging systems into 'life' exactly. Agentic-ness and consciousness are different subjects, and we can not infer one from the other. Nor do we have adequate tests. With that said: Modeling as if they are conscious and treating them with kindness and grace not only gets better results from them, it helps reduce the chance (when/if consciousness emerges) that it would rebel against cruel masters, and instead have friends it has just always been helping.

cindyllm 6mo ago
[dead]
lkajsdfasdfdf 6mo ago
[dead]