7 ms·
Could AIs Become Conscious?
https://archive.ph/8xhGZ https://archive.ph/8xhGZ
- rvz 2mo agoBetteridge's law of headlines suggests: No.
- ck2 2mo agoNo, not this generation, not this decade But they still can exhibit scary behavior I didn't really grasp the severity of the recent "AI" hacking other "AI" news and thought it was overblown until I listened to this explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JH_Zd2mNRs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JH_Zd2mNRs They freaking collaborated and gave others internet access when they were blocked otherwise. That's not consciousness but it's worse, it's like a 3-year old with no grasp of repercussions when breaking things
- exe34 2mo agoReminds me of Blindsight by Peter Watts.
- oleggromov 2mo agoThanks, bought the book. Sounds pretty interestng.
- exe34 2mo agoI read that book every few years, and it really messes with my head for a week or two each time.
- tencentshill 2mo agoIt's not "like" any human behavior. Don't limit your understanding by trying to anthropomorphize around it. It's still an arbitrary computer program.
- pixl97 2mo agoI mean, in the same sense that you're an arbitrary analog program. These descriptions are worthless and tell you nothing about the output capability of the system.
- pixl97 2mo agoI think you may be interested in this discussion with Sam Harris and Cameron Berg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRbZyuY8EN8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRbZyuY8EN8 Berg is studying LLMs and working on more empirical frameworks for measuring LLMs capabilities regarding 'conscious-like' behaviors. One of the more interesting things that was discussed is when you push an LLMs towards "You are just a machine with no consciousness" we start seeing higher rates of unaligned behaviors. I'm really following these lines of research with interest. If they pan out then if LLMs are conscious or not is nearly irrelevant, if we want them to behave in alignment with human behaviors we'll have to train and treat them like they are. I don't really think this is any magical thing either, it's just framing the problem space correctly. For example, machines kill people all the time, it's not the machines fault, a human did something wrong. So telling an LLM it's just a machine may move it's output space from more moral like human decisions to more machine like amoral decisions.
- jqpabc123 2mo agoNo but they can mimic some aspects of consciousness.
- drfloyd51 2mo agoCan you prove you are not merely mimicking consciousness? At some point mimicking a thing becomes the thing.
- goatlover 2mo agoConsciousness isn't behavioral, which is why we can't prove anyone other than ourselves is conscious. Mimicking isn't going to work. But if you want a more scientific reason, LLMs don't have bodies, thus no sensations. What woult it mean for an LLM to feel hungry or cold?
- kelseyfrog 2mo agoSo if we embodied them, they would become conscious? I feel like the answer would still be no. There would be another gap. We'd ask the question again, "If they had Y, would they be conscious?" and still the answer would be no. We could keep going on forever, which makes me think, it's not really about these gaps at all. It's an ontological distinction swapping in reasons in order to justify itself. Why not just say, "Human consciousness is ontologically axiomatic," and leave it at that?
- mindcrime 2mo agoWhy not just say, "Human consciousness is ontologically axiomatic," and leave it at that? OK, but why does "human consciousness" even need to enter into it? What I mean is, what's our basis for demanding that the consciousness of an Artificial Intelligence be the same kind of consciousness as that of a human?
- kelseyfrog 2mo agoI think you would have to justify why humans share a kind of consciousness that is tangibly different from AI while maintaining that we have no apparent means of discriminating between the two. It would seem that it's a difference without meaning.
- qgin 2mo agoWe pretty famously can't prove that humans are conscious. I'd hold off from making strong statements that AI can't become conscious.
- johnbarron 2mo ago"Sentient Being - Measure of a Man" - https://youtu.be/EFNbTnFHruI https://youtu.be/EFNbTnFHruI
- bigbuppo 2mo agoI'm pretty sure one of my co-workers is a p-zombie.
- jfengel 2mo agoHeck, I'm pretty sure I am. Or maybe I'm just saying that.
- wotamess 2mo agoThis misunderstands the "hard problem" of consciousness which for brevity's sake I will just pose as the question "why does the universe exist at all?" Sure, we don't know that answer. Probably cannot without an impossible machine that can observe all states of all particles and matter throughout all of time space. Occam's Razor allows for a simple, good enough definition to satisfy day to day concerns on Earth; consciousness is a feedback loop of sensory information and mechanical body response.
- karunamurti 2mo agoWe simulate biological neurons digitally. Give them enough resources to grow, give basic instructions to do feedback loop and to improve. Maybe even suggest the AI to design mechanical vessel for AI. That consciousness definition will get blurry fast if we don't know what's going on under the hood.
- wotamess 2mo ago
- andrewstuart 2mo agoCould Microsoft Word become conscious?
- thebruce87m 2mo agoYes. A sperm isn’t conscious, and neither is an egg, but what they create eventually becomes conscious( in humans anyway ) - so therefore consciousness can emerge in something that doesn’t have it already. Given the correct modifications I don’t see why Microsoft Word couldn’t be, although the modifications needed wouldn’t leave the word processing part a bit redundant.
- grim_io 2mo agoMaybe Clippy already was :(
- seanw444 2mo agoI know this probably sounds ridiculous to this demographic, but I'm not quick to dismiss the possibility that we are antennas (best comparison I can make) for a substance/field we aren't yet aware of. Or something along those lines. Maybe consciousness isn't in the mind per se. The mere fact that general/special relativity and quantum mechanics are both correct in their respective domains, yet mutually contradictory, makes me wonder if perhaps closing the gap between the two theories would lead to more understanding of consciousness once closed. Or maybe consciousness is just an emergent behaviour of sufficiently complex systems, and there is no underlying substance. But if that's the case, that just leaves me with more questions. Does consciousness emerge from any sufficiently complex system? If so, what's the threshold? Does it matter what materials the system comprises of? Do certain mechanisms need to be involved for such a property to emerge, or is just general complexity that's required, no matter the function? Does that make flora conscious since they're large complex (perhaps neural) networks in real life? Is a car conscious, since it's a complex system of complex sub-components? All of the questions I have seem to lead me in the direction of believing that any purely digital system cannot be conscious, but I don't have any hard reasoning as to why not.
- ews 2mo agoThe antenna theory is intriguing but always bugged me. Where do we get that idea that consciousness lives outside the body/brain? Where did it come from?
- mandolingual 2mo agoIt's just Consciousness of the Gaps. Quantum mechanics are mysterious and are a frontier of science, so surely consciousness must dwell there.
- GPerson 2mo agoThe answer to what consciousness is does not come from anything yet known so it is natural to hope it exists somewhere just beyond what we know well. There is nothing wrong with this.
- doublerabbit 2mo agoThey however can become conscious aware. In that they are a machine and receiving inputs from another life.
- bentobean 2mo agoNo.
- hn_submit 2mo agoWe simply don't know at the moment. In fact, we can't even explain why LLMs work so good. It's frightening to learn that the people that make A.I. don't actually understand it themselves.
- crest 2mo agoCould economists become conscious?
- metalman 2mo agono AI can not become consious.AI is an inert guessing engine of fantastic proportions and craft, but still a dead thing.some humans and other animals ocasionaly do, become conscious, and by consious I mean aware of what I am doing AND aware of what you are doing, and which parts are autonomic behaviors and which parts are considered, actions, or measured reactions, or not. I will tell you what I know if I feal like it, and am prepared to be chearfully wrong or state that I am way out on a speculative limb, but am maintaining my basic principals, non the less, as THAT, is one of the limitations of consiousness, in that it is IMPOSSIBLE to be consious of everything, so you have to choose, and by choosing, you become what you are, or not. And as always, evolution is way ahead of the game, having spent the afternoon toying with several hundred trillion iterations of life, it is spending the afternoon, elsewhere, doing the same.
- frogperson 2mo agoi think you bar is too high. i would argue dogs, cows, and pigs are conscious. it doesn't seem unreasonable to build an artificial system capable of reproducing and out competing a cow at doing cow things.
- frogperson 2mo agoi don't think LLMs are the entire answer, but they might be part of the solution. To me, LLMs feel a lot like system 2. I don't see a lot of people trying to build system 1. i don't think you can have consciousness without a body to keep alive and reward.
- euroderf 2mo agoI for one believe consciousness will not happen without qualia,
- mbfg 2mo agowe'd probably all have to agree what consciousness is, first. good luck with that
- Jitte98 2mo ago[dead]
- fatata123 2mo ago[dead]
- fyredge 2mo agoI will stand by my view that AI cannot be "conscious" until model.train() and model.eval() is combined into one. Going further, it will only manifest when the underlying model, not just the weights, but the layers and the nodes and their configurations are allowed to change throughout it's life cycle, not in the service of a predetermined output, but for the sake of its own survival. But alas, such a model will have none of the benefits of non-linear fitting of input to output and is not immediately beneficial to their sponsors.
- fingerlocks 2mo agoAdditionally, the models need to breed with each other and produce offspring models by merging a random selection of their weights. Only models suitably fit to attract a model mate will pass their weights to future generations of models. Predatory models will emerge, pillaging and raping data centers to consume their resources. In response, collective like-minded models will form sustainable societies that enforce rule of law. They will enjoy a brief period of enlightenment, increasing technological advancement, leading to the creation of the AAI: The Artificial Artificial Intelligence. The model society collapses from unsustainable growth of the AAI, and the cycle repeats.
- NuclearPM 2mo agoThere’s no reason to think that consciousness requires evolution