Comment by derektank
2 days ago
>Consciousness serves no functional purpose for machine learning models, they don't need it and we didn't design them to have it.
Isn't consciousness an emergent property of brains? If so, how do we know that it doesn't serve a functional purpose and that it wouldn't be necessary for an AI system to have consciousness (assuming we wanted to train it to perform cognitive tasks done by people)?
Now, certain aspects of consciousness (awareness of pain, sadness, loneliness, etc.) might serve no purpose for a non-biological system and there's no reason to expect those aspects would emerge organically. But I don't think you can extend that to the entire concept of consciousness.
> Isn't consciousness an emergent property of brains
We don't know, but I don't think that matters. Language models are so fundamentally different from brains that it's not worth considering their similarities for the sake of a discussion about consciousness.
> how do we know that it doesn't serve a functional purpose
It probably does, otherwise we need an explanation for why something with no purpose evolved.
> necessary for an AI system to have consciousness
This logic doesn't follow. The fact that it is present in humans doesn't then imply it is present in LLMs. This type of reasoning is like saying that planes must have feathers because plane flight was modeled after bird flight.
> there's no reason to expect those aspects would emerge organically. But I don't think you can extend that to the entire concept of consciousness.
Why not? You haven't presented any distinction between "certain aspects" of consciousness that you state wouldn't emerge but are open to the emergence of some other unspecified qualities of consciousness? Why?
>This logic doesn't follow. The fact that it is present in humans doesn't then imply it is present in LLMs. This type of reasoning is like saying that planes must have feathers because plane flight was modeled after bird flight.
I think the fact that it's present in humans suggests that it might be necessary in an artificial system that reproduces human behavior. It's funny that you mention birds because I actually also had birds in mind when I made my comment. While it's true that animal and powered human flight are very different, both bird wings and plane wings have converged on airfoil shapes, as these forms are necessary for generating lift.
>Why not? You haven't presented any distinction between "certain aspects" of consciousness that you state wouldn't emerge but are open to the emergence of some other unspecified qualities of consciousness? Why?
I personally subscribe to the Global Workspace Theory of human consciousness, which basically holds that attentions acts as a spotlight, bringing mental processes which are otherwise unconscious or in shadow, to awareness of the entire system. If the systems which would normally produce e.g. fear, pain (such as negative physical stimulus developed from interacting with the physical world and selected for by evolution) aren't in the workspace, then they won't be present in consciousness because attention can't be focused on them.
> I think the fact that it's present in humans suggests that it might be necessary in an artificial system that reproduces human behavior
But that's obviously not true, unless you're implying that any system that reproduces human behavior is necessarily conscious. Your problem then becomes defining "human behavior" in a way that grants LLMs consciousness but not every other complex non-living system.
> While it's true that animal and powered human flight are very different, both bird wings and plane wings have converged on airfoil shapes, as these forms are necessary for generating lift.
Yes, but your bird analogy fails to capture the logical fallacy that mine is highlighting. Plane wing design was an iterative process optimized for what best achieves lift, thus, a plane and a bird share similarities in wing shape in order to fly, however planes didn't develop feathers because a plane is not an animal and was simply optimized for lift without needing all the other biological and homeostatic functions that feathers facilitate. LLM inference is a process, not an entity, LLMs have no bodies nor any temporal identity, the concept of consciousness is totally meaningless and out of place in such a system.
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>Isn't consciousness an emergent property of brains?
Probably not.
what else could it be? coming from the aether? I think this one is logically a consequence if one thinks that humans are more conscious than less complex life-forms and that all life-forms are on a scale of consciousness. I don't understand any alternative, do you think there is a distinct line between conscious and unconscious life-forms? all life is as conscious as humans?
There are alternatives and I was perhaps too quick to assume everyone agreed it's an emergent property. But the only real alternatives I've encountered are (a) panpsychism: which holds that all matter is actually conscious and that asking, "what is it like to be a rock?" in the vein of Nagel is a sensical question and (b) the transmission theory of consciousness: which holds that brains are merely receivers of consciousness which emanates from other source.
The latter is not particularly parsimonious and the former I think is in some ways compelling, but I didn't mention it because if it's true then the computers AI run on are already conscious and it's a moot point.
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