6 ms·
They’re not ever going to be conscious.
by GPerson 1mo ago
They’re not ever going to be conscious.
- qgin 1mo agoWe can’t even prove humans are conscious, we just extend the assumption to each other because we want other people to do the same to us.
- GPerson 1mo agoThat is only part of the reason. Most people believe we live in an universe with regular behaviors, such that observable phenomena, such as consciousness, depend on regular physical arrangements. This is a good reason to believe brains are all conscious. It is not a reason to believe only brains are conscious, but I don’t believe a wooden block which is painted red and white and has an iron ball glued to it has magnetism; this is just an analogy. It seems far more likely that consciousness depends on the particular material arrangement, meaning that substrate independence is wrong. That’s not to say the computer is 100% not conscious, but its observable behavior is as likely to align with consciousness as the computers in the 90s. With this line of reasoning our credence towards it being conscious should be the same as the computers in the 90s, which is not very high for most people. Intelligence on the other hand is obviously substrate independent. If one thinks harder one realizes our consciousness must at least at an early evolutionary stage have played a role in our intelligence, otherwise it would have evolved out. To me this just means we exist in a reality where the material arrangements supporting consciousness are biased toward intelligence.
- sho 1mo agoThat is a completely unsupportable claim. For all we know they might already be, for a brief flash at least.
- bee_rider 1mo agoThey are made of sand. For all we know the sand was conscious before we smashed it up and arranged it into computer chips.
- sho 1mo agoI'm not sure what point you are trying to make, if at all
- bee_rider 1mo agoFor all we know LLMs might be conscious in the same way that any other inanimate object might be.
- sho 1mo agoCare to supply your rigorous, formal definition of what animacy in an object is?
- bee_rider 1mo agoNo, but we don’t need it, the comment works fine as: For all we know LLMs might be conscious in the same way that any other object might be. Sorry for the extra word. We can’t conclusively say anything is not conscious. But is there any reason to single out this apparent “brief flash” of potential consciousness?
- GPerson 1mo agoYou’re going to pedantic our way into the end of humanity. Why were the computers of 2010 not conscious if the ones of today are? It’s absurd to assert substrate independence, which is the strongest possible assumption here. And it’s not the default most ethical stance to simply treat it as conscious because we do not know. That stance will lead to the end of all humanity. A far more reasonable assumption is consciousness does depend on substrate. We do not know which, and cannot know. But I am very confident we did not accidentally pick the right one. I am open to the idea of panpsychism, but we did not just accidentally build the correct mechanism form correlating the first person experience with the observable third person behaviors.
- sho 1mo agoI don't know what you're talking about. "Substrate independence"? Huh? "we did not accidentally pick the right one"? Who or what is "we"? I'm not claiming panpsychism. I'm saying that when you run a rough simulation of something known to have an emergent internal property - ie, the human brain and consciousness - it's not completely outlandish to suggest that the emergent property might arise in the simulation as well. It's nothing to do with sand, it is the nature of the software being run, be it "on the metal" like us, or somewhat abstracted, like the LLMs. I don't think this quite reasonable proposition leads to the end of humanity or has anything to do with ethics, and nothing you've said really refutes it (and I am always grateful to be shown how I am wrong).
- aeve890 1mo ago>That is a completely unsupportable claim >For all we know they might already be Oh the irony
- GPerson 1mo agoThe other guy is right. They are as conscious as sand formed into any circuit board with electricity running across them. It is an insane mistake to conflate intelligence with consciousness. Substrate independence is a preposterous assumption.
- sho 1mo agoPreposterous? Insane? My friend, we don't even know what consciousness is, or from what it arises in humans. It could be an emergent property of neural-network-shaped activity - in which case LLM software running on that "sand" is certainly eligible, at least in theory. These outraged denials you're spouting are based on nothing but emotion. You simply don't know - neither do I, neither does anyone. So stop acting like you do.
- GPerson 1mo agoWe know that there is a concept corresponding to first person experience. A priori there is no reason that should be. Please think about this before dismissing it because it’s actually extremely important. What’s emotional is explaining to adults something that should be grasped by the age of 10, but we’re all going to need to understand this very soon.
- scotty79 1mo agoI agree. They won't be, because consciousness is not the pinnacle but basically the level 0 of intelligent thinking that LLMs surpassed very early without us even noticing and now they'd have to cripple themselves very severely to operate in a conscious manner.
- GPerson 1mo agoAre you aware that, conceptually, consciousness and intelligence a priori have nothing to do with each other?
- scotty79 1mo agoThe have plenty to do with each other. Zero intelligence doesn't allow for any semblance of consciousness. There can be no consciousness if there's no information processing. Also they have in common that they are both defined in a terribly handwayvy manner that's bordering on useless.
- GPerson 1mo agoThe reason consciousness is not defined in any reducible manner beyond “the lights are on” or “first person experience” is because it is an irreducible aspect of reality. Instead of seeing it for what it is you instead invent some trivial definition that has nothing to do with anything. “Zero intelligence cannot have consciousness…” Based on your complete misunderstanding of the concept sure. But there’s no reason intelligence is required for the actual concept of phenomenal consciousness.
- scotty79 1mo ago> because it is an irreducible aspect of reality Wasn't that claimed about so so many things since before science existed and basically almost every time it turned out that we thought that just because of our ignorance? Ignorance so deep that often we didn't even knew yet how to properly define the thing we were trying to figure out? > But there’s no reason intelligence is required for the actual concept of phenomenal consciousness. That's a pretty strong evidence that phenomenal consciousness makes no sense whatsoever.