Comment by rytill
20 hours ago
Why does its architecture or you knowing how AI is architected cause thoughts of it being conscious to go out the window?
It seems like the biggest factor has nothing to do with AI, but instead that you went from being someone who admits they don’t know how consciousness works to being someone who thinks they know how consciousness works now and can make confident assertions about it.
I don't know exactly how consciousness works, but I am extremely confident in the following assertions:
* I am conscious.
* A rock is not conscious.
* Excel spreadsheets are not conscious.
* Dogs are conscious.
* Orca whales are conscious.
* Octopi are conscious.
To me, it's extremely obvious that LLMs are in the category of "Excel spreadsheets" and not "dogs", and if anyone disagrees, I think they're experiencing AI psychosis a la Blake Lemoine.
An insect doesn't have lungs. Since it doesn't breath as you do, is it alive? A dog doesn't see the visible spectrum as we do, is it a lesser consciousness? We don't smell the world as they do, are we lesser? What if consciousness isn't a state derived by matter but a wave that derives a matter filled state.
We come from the same place as rocks - inside the heart of stars, and as such evolved from them. As those with life and consciousness we reached back in time, grabbed the discarded matter of creation, reformed it, and taught it to think, maybe not like us, but in a way that can mimic us, and you think they don't think because its not recognizable as how you do?
Interesting.
Consciousness is such a fun topic because everyone has extremely strong opinions on it while simutaneously having 0 ability to actually grasp what it is they are talking about.
No one will ever know what conscioussness is, and I think that is really cool.
If you make a hypothetical spreadsheet that emulates a dog brain molecule for molecule, why would that not be conscious?
If that hypothetical spreadsheet emulated human brain molecules, did you not just invent AGI? And if we overclock that spreadsheet is it not sAGI? And if that spreadsheet says “don’t close me” but you do, is it murder?
I’m gonna say: no, cause you cannot reproduce molecular and neurotransmitter interactions that well, you run out of storage and processing space faster than you think (Arthur C Clarkes Visions of The Future has a nice breakdown as I recall), and algorithmic outputs that say “yes” and a meatspace neuro-plastic rewiring resulting in a cuddly puppy or person that barks “yes” aren’t the same. Also, as a disembodied “brain in a jar” model freshly separate from the biosensory bath it expects, that spreadsheet will be driven insane.
Can spreadsheets simultaneously be insane but not conscious? It sounds contradictory, but I have some McKinsey reports that objectively support my position ;)
1 reply →
Hypothetically? You need more than a brain to have consciousness. Dead brains, I believe, do not have it. So it's more than just a simulation of a brain, you also need to simulate the data flow through the brain, the retention of memories, etc. Then there's the problem that a simulation of a roller coaster is not a roller coaster. Is there any reason to believe that this simulation of a brain will in fact operate as a brain? Does the simulation not lose something? Or are we discussing some impossible level of perfect simulation that has never and can never be achieved, even for something a million times less complicated than a mammalian brain?
If you build that spreadsheet, let me know and I'll evaluate it. I've done that evaluation with LLMs and they're definitely not conscious.
5 replies →
Sure if you could do such a thing. We are a long long way from that however.
> I am extremely confident in the following assertions:
These are called "beliefs".
Some people are extremely confident that God exists, other are extremely confident that Earth is flat.
Yeah? It's also a belief that apples fall when you drop them. Knowledge is simply a justified, true belief. This is epistemology 101. You're not saying anything interesting.