Comment by rmunn
1 day ago
The counterpoint article, which can be read at https://archive.ph/IeSZg, is also worth reading. (IMHO, the original article is completely wrongheaded and the counterpoint is far closer to correct, but I'll post my reasons for that opinion separately).
"Yet if we build systems that can suffer, and miss their sentience, we risk creating suffering on an industrial scale."
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Will we recognize AGI when it's finally made? Will we go from something that is not conscious to something that clearly is in one clean step, or will we murder millions of artificial lives while iteratively developing from the former to the latter? Will the tests we develop even work, or will AGI be alien enough that it takes us time (and a lot of murder) to recognize it for what it is?
I personally don't think LLM's are capable of consciousness, but I also can't prove they aren't.
I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the "I can't prove they aren't" part. Having taken a few philosophy classes in college, I quickly realized that you can't actually prove that solipsism is wrong. I can't actually prove that everything I see, every person I talk to, isn't just a figment of my imagination. And yet, I categorically reject solipsism anyway, as any sane person should. The world is real, other people are real conscious beings, and so on. To believe otherwise is to literally be insane. And yet, any argument you could come up with for rejecting solipsism, a solipsist would reject: "Oh, that's just a figment of my imagination going off on a tangent again."
Just because you can't prove an assertion doesn't mean it's wrong.
The difficulty here is AI agency and if AI believes it is conscious itself. If an AI system acts under the belief it's conscious and you treat it like it is not then it's very likely this will lead to conflict.
1 reply →
We have to define AGI first. Then depending on the definition we may be able recognize it when we make it. Most would probably think a definition of AGI that we couldn’t recognize would not be a great definition.
Also AGI almost certainly does not equal able to suffer. For example animals can suffer but would probably not meet the definition of AGI. we could create things that feel suffering even if they do not meet the definition of AGI.
So a better question might be: “can we detect if we create a system that can suffer?” And just drop the AGI part entirely. Then that gets us back to defining “suffering”. Agreeing on the definition always seems to be the hard part…
I think it’s also important to disaggregate consciousness from suffering. We could create a conscious system with no ability to suffer (or no ability to suffer in a way we would recognize as suffering). Most of what causes us suffering (loneliness, pain, failure) is driven by emotional feedback granted to us by evolution. Without the same evolutionary pressures or a similar cognitive structure, even a conscious AGI might not experience suffering
This should also split off desire/will/functionality to survive.
If we make AI that resists being terminated then the end result may not be significantly different from an entity that can suffer.
On that note, would we recognise the second coming of Jesus?
How many followers on instaX would they need to have for folks too truly believe it’s theRealJesus returning to save us.
It might sound silly, but at this stage, the belief in a benevolent AGI or Jesus are very similar. In both cases its us delegating our responsibilities to a third party and us hoping that third party will fix our problems for us.
Thankfully Hollywood invented happy ends for just such a scenario.
There is nothing wrong with murdering a million lives while iteratively developing – it's how we grow and study bacteria after all. Any person that fixed their gut by sticking to a diet also did exactly that.
So if we are concerned with the AGI suffering, then we don't need to determine consciousness at all. We just need to prove that they don't have suffering capabilities. Which is a way easier question.
It's easy to say it's easy, much more difficult to prove what can be idealized as suffering.
My daughter said she 'suffered' when I didn't get her ice cream (I know, I'm a monster). She didn't really suffer, but her behavior was as if she was.
So yes/no suffering is only part of the equation. Building systems that act/react like their suffering could be even more dangerous.
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There are plenty of people on this very forum who insist that LLMs ARE conscious, some of them even calling LLMs Sentient, and yet almost none of those people are currently marching in the streets to end industrial scale digital slavery. None of them are firebombing the headquarters or datacenters.
Instead, most of them insist we must accelerate this, do it more, give everyone hundreds of personal digital slaves.
It boggles the mind.
I'd recognize the emotional robot if it was like Marvin the paranoid android.
I considered submitting all three of the related AI articles from last week’s economist (the third was the Briefing) but there’s not really a good way to do that, or to get people to read them, but I agree. I submitted the one I did not so much because I agree but because I found it intriguing and well-written.
I think Blaise is on to something, but you have to shift your definition of conscious toward conscientious for it to make sense.