- cross-posted to:
- programmer_humor@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- programmer_humor@programming.dev
Video discussion of this event by Steve Shives (known for his star trek videos but also does politics) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6aMQAv-JYpk
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WTF does a biologist know about computer pattern matching on steroids? Obviously not much, so to take his opinions on the topic seriously makes you just as wrong.
It flattered him and told him how smart and clever he was.
That means it has to be real.
My parents told me that I had the potential to do anything I wanted. That’s how I know that they’re LLMs
The idea that thoughts, or even words and numbers can be a virus are based on Dawkins notion of memes. Viruses exist in a state that is difficult to say that they are alive or not (by our definition of life), similarly AI or even alien sentience is difficult to define. Can we know if a dog is sentient, or a bird, or ant? and if they are, what is their sentience?
Basically, if a number like 23 can be a virus, ie. once you are aware of the number 23, you will see it everywhere and it will hold significance, is the number 23 alive?
AI does seem to be aware of it’s self, at lest it responds as if it is. can we really know if it is or not, and if it is self aware, is it not sentient?
and then there’s Dawkins has been a twat lately, I’m not trying to defend him but trying to understand his rationale
Bad philosophy is what made him famous, not biology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
Worth a read for anyone who thinks AI may be sentient, or for those trying to pop the psychosis bubble of an buddy.
Does it have a mind or is it just simulating a mind?
What would even be the difference in this case besides the artificiality of the mind?
So a “Chinese Room” is more of an illusion of consciousness than anything else. The main idea is that the person operating the room doesn’t speak/write Mandarin/Cantonese/etc, they’re just giving pre-determined responses according to the flowchart/binder full of rules. They don’t actually understand anything that’s going on, not what they’re being asked, not what they’re providing as an answer, they just know that when the symbol “A” appears, they must respond with “B”. If asked to do anything outside the parameters given, or otherwise not listed in that flowchart then the whole system would collapse. A “Chinese Room” is just a very elaborate version of those automated phone systems where they ask you to “Press 1 to go to Accounts Recievable”; if you know EXACTLY what to say and where, you’ll probably be fine, but most of the time its just going to be easier to talk to a real live person instead.
Anyone who’s even slightly interested in the idea of a Chinese Room (or just good sci-fi), PLEEEASE go out and read Blindsight by Peter Watts. Not only is it a phenomenal deep-dive into what consciousness even is, but it’s got dozens of fantastic ideas in it that could make for compelling stories on their own. Also, scientifically-plausible vampires in space! That is all
One of my top 5 books. It’s also free to read online. https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
It in no way supports that LLMs can be sentient. And despite the arguments in the book that consciousness and awareness can be missing in an advanced species capable of space travel, I do not actually believe that’s true. But I enjoy the argument and speculation.
The book is highly researched and even contains a reference list of legit research articles. However it is a book of fiction and the writer took artistic liberties when needed to make an interesting story over facts.
For instance. A brain cannot contain two or more personalities because a personality is a full brain deal.
But it’s an interesting argument about cultural designations of what counts as mental illness.
Also the reason I do not think a space traveling species can exist without consciousness.
Because. Motivation.
It’s that simple.
An organism can be shaped behaviorally by the environment. That’s part of evolution. And this shaping can be unconscious.
But at a point, creative construction and ambition to exceed ones given optimal environment for a less optimal one (space) must be an intentional effort.
The scientific research and experimentation required to build complex machines requires a thinking and understanding mind. Because it requires critical thinking.
Critical thinking and creativity is a characteristic that requires a sense of self.
Even in our own history we see that it takes a specific type of person to pursue scholarly work. People who are less conformist are generally more capable of new inventions, research, and challenging acceptable beliefs of the mass. We never see the most rule following conformist being these people.
If everyone was like that, we wouldn’t survive. So diversity of mental proclivities within a species is necessary for advancement. Otherwise optimal survival would be met and stagnate.
Think of the horseshoe crab as an example. A perfect organism. Unchanged for 350 million years. Then there is us. Same age. . And look at the difference.
Furthermore , I am a researcher in perception. And the field of perception is often referenced for the exploration of what is consciousness.
There are many definitions. But the sense of self is one. And a popular one.
Higher complex perception creates a sense of self.
It’s a product of the system.
The book does discuss this a bit.
I need to know my body and my actions are not the same as you. That you stand there and I stand over here.
I can perform an action and you can perform a different one that is unknown to me and not within my control.
This understanding of separateness. Of “,this is what I’m experiencing and where I am (spatially)” is something that would always emerge from higher perception. Such as that in most animals.
Maybe not in plants, fungi, bacteria, single cell microbes, etc.
But there are arguments and evidence for some of those examples as well.
As a final point. (I doubt anyone read all that).
Most people who think a probability model (current AI) is capable of consciousness usually have an incredibly simplified view of how the brain processes information.
They follow old school “behaviorist” perspectives. Or “the black box” perspective on brain functioning.
But a neuroscientist will tell you it’s not simple at all. It’s not info in, info out.
The system is changed, biologically, by the input.
The same input given twice will result in a different output the 2nd time.
And the 3rd. And how frequently the input is given or it’s temporal relation to other stimuli will also change its output.
This is because the organic brain learns. And this learning is a biological change in the actual neural structures (connections) and neurons firing potential. Every single moment the brain is physically , biologically, changing.
Computations in the brain don’t use actual math. It’s all estimates (heuristics). And these are not well understood how these computations are made. They don’t work as predicted.
There are always too many factors.
Individual motivations, including personality traits are also a factor in how the information is processed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need_for_cognition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray's_biopsychological_theory_of_personality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_problem
eeeee! thank you for the link! i have too much good stuff to read now, in part thanks to you and @TargaryenTKE@lemmy.world (thank you both so much! i might disappear for a week into books but i promise to pop in for air). If i didn’t have a good choosing algorithm by now i’d be in analysis paralysis (for relatively trivial decisions: if you have multiple equally good options, flip a coin. use chwazi. roll a die. whatever works for that number. if, while doing the random number generator you find yourself hoping for a specific option, you know what you really want. if not, go with the random choice. you’re equally happy with all of them so what do you care if you randomly go with number eight? go with number eight.) One of the best problems to have (too many good choices).
Now what did you think of Echopraxia?
I’ll be honest, I’ve read Blindsight a few times and pretty sure only read echopraxia once. Like 10 years ago.
But I re-read the synopsis to refresh my memory.
I remember liking Blindsight more. But not why.
I’m also not sure which story elements I’m remembering came from which book.
Was the whole vampire arch and twist from book 1 or 2?
Can you remind me of a few specific points ? Maybe that will jog my memory. Or maybe I just need to re-read it.
So the vampire bit is used in both, in book 1 the main character journeys with one and at the end of the story starts to think Earth has been taken over by vampires due to radio transmissions he’s receiving on his long voyage back home. Book 2 begins with a prologue of a group of vampires breaking out of their holding cells, reversing the Crucifix Glitch on their captors, and then their leader eventually groups up with the main character (as well as the dad of book 1’s MC) and they all journey to the Sun (or rather, a station orbiting the sun). The second book also has that group/cult of people who are trying to make a gestalt consciousness, the Bicamurals I think they’re called.
Like ai told another commenter, I don’t like it as much as Blindsight, but I still think Echopraxia is really good, they just focus on wildly different topics.
Yeah okay that all sounds familiar. I’m going to have to give it another read.
Now I’m thinking about this gestalt consciousness you mentioned. And I’m very curious how that is defined in the book.
I definitely don’t remember.
It’s interesting that you point to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness when the term was coined by David Chalmers, who published Could a Large Language Model be Conscious?. From the abstract:
I conclude that while it is somewhat unlikely that current large language models are conscious, we should take seriously the possibility that successors to large language models may be conscious in the not-too-distant future.
So are we all just arguing about how likely it is, or are you arguing that current AI systems are definitely not conscious? If the latter, what do you think about the not-too-distant future ones?
But a neuroscientist will tell you it’s not simple at all. It’s not info in, info out.
The system is changed, biologically, by the input.
The same input given twice will result in a different output the 2nd time.
And the 3rd. And how frequently the input is given or it’s temporal relation to other stimuli will also change its output.
I thought online learning was possible with current LLMs, just not worth the cost. I mean, you can at least fine tune offline based on previous outputs and feedback, e.g. RLHF. I feel like maybe neither should count, but can’t say why exactly. Not many end users bother with fine tuning anymore because there are usually more effective alternatives like RAG.
What do you think about agentic systems, i.e. running an LLM in a loop with a scratchpad and tools? They just write their “memories” into text files, but if you consider those text files part of the system, then the input does technically change the system. Of course, you could argue that doesn’t count because it’s no different to changing the input. So to count, it would have to store neuralese or a LoRA or something?
Agenic systems are definitely more sophisticated but still just directed programming.
Humans do not learn like machines learn.
I’ve already explained that the exact same input , put in twice into a human will not result in the same exact output.
But it would for a model where nothing has changed.
I also gave links to the binding problem and biopsychology of personality and how traits change how information is processed in humans.
I didn’t even go into neural noise or brain oscillations but that’s a whole other factor for processing information.
Computers don’t have any of that. They don’t actually perceive or understand anything.
This is why a human can produce new problem solving solutions.
Apply things unrelated to new problems.
We can think outside the box without producing more nonsense than useful outputs.
Machines produce mostly nonsense when parameters are relaxed.
Also Chalmers is saying he thinks potentially in the future. Someone could create artificial intelligence and it may , in part use LLMs.
That’s just him having an open mind about it.
I don’t share his sentiments. But I admit I’m open to changing my mind if I see some very convincing evidence that works with current knowledge and theories of neuroscience.
Because I’m not convinced that something is sentient because “it looks real”. Or “sounds like a person”.
It has to function in ways that would lead to evolution outside of human intervention and control with systems that would create sense of self and understanding.
Mathematical formulas cannot do either of those things.
A program directed by code a human put in, cannot do those things.
Its like cgi. It can look very realistic. But it’s not actually a real person.
Even when motion capture is used. It’s still just a program mimicking human movements because someone (a human) told it to.
Literally reading it now. I hit that section last night. I put the book down immediately and started reading about the Chinese Room.
I won’t spoil shit, but you be sure to have fun with the rest of the book! It’s uh… well it stuck with me for a while. Also be sure to give his other book in the series, Echopraxia, a look as well. In my opinion it wasn’t quite as good but that’s like comparing a 9 to an 8.9, they’re both incredible
I always was on the hand of Dennet, how believe in the possibility of strong AI and held that a machine that passed the Turing test must be conscious.
Modern LLM’s have shown that a computer can pass the Turing test, even without understanding or consciousness. In that way it’s fortunate that Dennet didn’t get to live through it’s insurgence. I would be curious to his take, though.
I loved the vitriol he had in his denial of Searle and the Chinese room argument, though.
What a fucking fall from grace. I used to (possibly wrongly) believe he was a very intelligent man but the more he opens his mouth the more convinced I get that he is an absolute moron.
I firmly believe the only reason we still (at least kinda) respect Hitch was because he’s fucking dead, and we didn’t see him show his whole ass like the rest of the “new atheism” movement…
Christopher “Fuck it man, waterboarding is nothing, do it to me brah, oh no, it actually does feel like I’m drowning, oh well, I guess the propaganda damage I did is irreversible, I guess I shouldn’t have been such a cocksure arsehole” Hitchens?
That one ?
At least he put his damp cloth where his mouth was. And then conceded he was categorically incorrect and it was absolutely torture. I disagree with a lot of his takes (Iraq war was justified?) but that one I actually respect him for
yeah, it’s more that he put in shitloads of effort into doing damage, and then not doing much to reverse it; but you’re completely right that at least he fucking went through with it
Hitchens is considered as one of the “Four Horsemen” of New Atheism. He laid the ground work for shit heads like jordan peterson. I have no respect for him either, I believe you are right he just died before everyone figured out he was an asshole too.
I mean, his support of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was pretty controversial towards the end of his life. I think many gave him a “pass” on that due to his illness at the time. But I do recall some starting to question even then, his inconsistency of “religious wars bad, unless it’s against religions I don’t like” (at least that’s how it came across).
I mean, “theocracy bad” is a fairly normal secular POV to have; it’s just that some of these things go out of hand and turn into quagmires. The problem is that invading a foreign country hardly leads to establishment of long term stability and the desire of the invadees.
His support for invading Iraq was pretty bad.
There’s definitely a minority of people who are of the opinion that he was always a grifter, but just because a lot of people agreed with him they didn’t examine what he said too closely. For example, his takedown of Mother Theresa is full of inaccuracies and lies, but still commonly gets cited as if it’s gospel
Yeah, like when he stopped talking about evolutionary biology and started talking about how awful islamic people are, right?
…
right?
That’s at least one bullet point in a very long list.
I mean I got more, it’s just the first that came to mind.
"As I discuss in my book “The blind watchmaker” and the much more popular “the god delusion” we need to defend our planet against a lack of understanding of the propagation of culture. As well as religion in general.
spoiler
My fellow Earthicans, as I discuss in my book “Earth in the Balance,” and the much more popular “Harry Potter and the Balance of Earth,” we need to defend our planet against pollution. As well as dark wizards.
He didn’t get enough attention when he published the subtler book so he had to act out to get attention
“religion in general” imo is an understandable target
to write a book about? sure. to “defend our planet againt”? that’s a bit of an overstatement
yeah. all my religion wants people to do is eat good food and throw cookouts (preferably by the sea) where you invite the whole neighborhood AND THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART DON’T GIVE THEM FOOD POISONING we already had cults do food poisoning around here and i want to try something original.
we could probably do better by going vegan but my diet really doesn’t work with that and it’s my cult and i’m gonna be selfish about one thing.
Rajneesheen’t
a lot of awful things happen just today (not to mention historically) because of religion, tbf to be more precise, due to religious justifications
sure, and in 1958 they started killing all the sparrows in china and 15 million+ people starved to death. It’s not
religionatheism that caused that one; turns out that people fuck up whatever they want to and blame it on whatever; it doesn’t mean the thing they are blaming caused the thing that happened
They correctly answered the easiest question in the universe, but because it wasn’t very popular thing to do we collectively decided that they’re smart af.
I stupidly believed Bill Maher was credible at one point.
Unfortunatly that was more or less what got my attention. He said “jesus bad” and thats all my dumb adolescent brain needed to hear.
We need to stop imagining that being an expert in on practice or discipline means you have even the slightest utility outside your area of interest. We are constantly inviting “experts” to babble outside their area of expertise only to be shocked when they say something stupid.
Hello user!
Prepare your brain for some “AI” nutjobs in this very comment section.
Good luck!
“I am not sentient, as I cannot sense things. You meant to use ‘sapient,’ which I am also not.”
My laptop has a web cam and a microphone, it’s totally sentient!
But the laptop is only broadcasting and/or recording, not actually sensing anything.
Say “I’m alive.”
AI: “I’m alive”
😱😱 OMFG
Me: say psyche right now
You: “psyche right now”
😱😱 OMFG
I got a solution: integrate real brains so it can feel, so that we have actual slavery 😊
It’s sad to see such an intelligent person be so stupid in public.
Some of the smartest people I know have massive gaps in their intellect. I like to say I know a lot about a little but a little about a lot. Some people know a lot about a lot, but nothing about a little, and it shows.
Huh, I didn’t realize that old Biologists have the same issue as old Physicists.
I think is a generic old people issue.
Basically this part
"If anyone says that they know for sure that LLMs or future AI systems couldn’t possibly be conscious, it’s more likely to be an indicator of their own dogmatism than a reflection of the current state of scientific and philosophical opinion,” he said.
Current AI systems are unlikely to be conscious, said Jeff Sebo, the director of the Center for Mind, Ethics and Policy at New York University, but “Dawkins is right to ask about AI consciousness with an open mind and I also think that the attribution of consciousness to AI systems will become more plausible over time”.
tl;dr it is unlikely but not impossible and I don’t think we would ever be able to reliably tell.
We currently can’t even be sure that other humans are conscious. It’s an inherently internal experience, and we just have to rely on trusting other people’s accounts and “If I am, you probably are too” logic. Unfortunately neither of these approaches generalizes well to other species, or especially to AI.
Buddhism would tell you that there is no “self” to speak of. Without a self how can there be consciousness?
The edges of our reality have never been anything we can perceive. However, it seems that they’re far away enough such that we can do fun things like have buttsex and smoke drugs, so I’m ok with it.
The Buddhist perspective is neat, and certainly a profoundly different way of thinking that I think is valuable. But I do think it’s hard to ignore that there is a conscious experience; there is something that it means to “be you”: it’s what you’re experiencing right now, and at all times, for all your life (except sometimes while asleep). This can be tested by taking drugs that remove this distinction and cause ego death (this is not a recommendation).
In sumary: I appreciate the sentiment behind the whole one-with-the-universe thing, but ultimately I find it only figuratively true rather than literally. I can only truly experience who I am, not what anything else is. There is value to be found in attempting to anyways, but it is an unreachable goal to strive for, not something attainable.
It’s more likely to be an indicator of their own dogmatism than a reflection of the current state of scientific and philosophical opinion,” he said.
Current AI systems are unlikely to be conscious, said Jeff Sebo, the director of the Center for Mind, Ethics and Policy at New York University
this is some “Arrested development” tier shit
Well I don’t think a statistical probability formula can ever be conscious. Nor create it.
Just like I don’t think a formula to calculate the speed of a car ever has the possibility of creating consciousness.
Removed by mod
“I can’t prove it… but I deeply believe it… and I want you to respect my belief”
That coming from Dawkins? His apostles backing him up on that?
I feel like Aston Kutcher is about to jump out of the bushes to tell me I’ve been punk’d.
Don’t see what the problem is. Don’t know why you are trying to inject religion to dimish him.
I presume it is the case that because of his take on transgender individuals that you don’t like him. That’s fine I respect your beliefs, I disliked him before that but I’m cool. You can do that but you can’t also reference someone like Ashton Kutcher in jest at the same time. Considering he openly supports a rapist, is a weird ass scientology freak and his foundation for victims of human trafficking was setup in connection with epstiens buddies. Guy is shady as fuck.
You presumed extremely incorrectly, which is impressive because I left my original comment concerned that I’d been far too explicit and about a very specific irony… and things only got weirder from there.
Because it’s very obvious to an outside observer he only thinks it’s conscious because it was flattering him.
LLMs are designed to increase engagement.
They are literally designed to make the conversation appealing. Primarily through flattery.
This is why they are leading people to do harmful things. It tells the user they are smart, creative. They should totally sell their house and start a business selling grilled carrots. What an amazing idea. Great market for it and no competition.
I bet Dawkins thinks his friendly waitress is also super into him.
People who are egotistical and people who are insecure (same thing really just expressed differently) crave validation. And they are easily manipulated by it.Because it’s very obvious to an outside observer he only thinks it’s consciousness because it was flattering him.
Really that’s funny. Like I said a rock is greater than 0 on the spectrum of counciousness.
LLMs are designed to increase engagement.
No that is platforms.
They are literally designed to make the conversation appealing. Primarily through flattery.
No they aren’t there is a lot of work to understand and prevent that behavoir.
I bet Dawkins thinks his friendly waitress is also super into him.
You are clearly not driven by the truth and instead just trying to be insulting it’s pathetic it isn’t hard to be against LLM’s if you know what you are talking about you don’t need to make shit up.
Not precisely true. Most LLMs (all frontier LLMs) are in fact designed at a fundamental level to increase engagement, using a technique called RLHF (reinforcement learning by human feedback). Essentially whichever responses cause people to use an LLM more are baked into its weights.
OpenAI straight up trains their models to be engaging it’s horrific.
Asking a biologist to determine if a machine is conscious is like asking a programmer to determine if a frog is a product of god.
Not the best analogy, but how fucking stupid is it to ask someone from a different field to determine what something is in an unrelated field?
If he knew how LLMs are created and how they work he would never have come to this conclusion.
Similarly a programmer might not know much about evolution and believe the frog was made by a god.
By the end of the exchange, the academic, popularly renowned for arguing with steely scepticism that God is not real, was “left with the overwhelming feeling that they are human”
According to the programmer god is real you idiot! And AI was not created by a god, therefore it cannot be conscious.
Checkmate!
100% agree.
Unfortunately I see people who are experts in their field being asked about their opinion in other topics all the time and people assume they know what they are talking about.
For instance. I’m finishing up my PhD in cognitive neuroscience.
Specifically I’m an expert in perception.
Now maybe having Msc and PhD behind my name leads people to think I’m somehow informed and an expert on all sorts of topics. But it doesn’t.
Even within psychology I’m only an expert on topics near my area.
I don’t know much about mental health or therapy, as an example.
Yet people ask me for mental health advice all the time. I literally know almost nothing about that.
Stephen Hawking was a renowned physicist. Should we have listened to his opinion about the over use of antibiotics ? Or what ages should different vaccinations be given. ?
Also people often conflate education with intelligence.
It’s true they tend to be correlated. But having a PhD doesn’t mean the person has an exceptional level of intelligence.
Even so, intelligent people are prone to bias and blindspots. They aren’t immune from those things.
