I can define “LLM”, “a painting”, and “alive”. Those definitions don’t require assumptions or gut feelings. We could easily come up with a set of questions and an answer key that will tell you if a particular thing is an LLM or a painting and whether or not it’s alive.
I’m not aware of any such definition of conscious, nor am I aware of any universal tests of consciousness. Without that definition, it’s like Ebert claiming that, “Video games can never be art”.
Absolutely everything requires assumptions, even our most objective and “laws of the universe” type observations rely on sets of axioms or first principles that must simply be accepted as true-though-unprovable if we are going to get anyplace at all even in math and the hard sciences let alone philosophy or social sciences.
Defining “consciousness” requires much more handwaving and many more assumptions than any of the other three. It requires so much that I claim it’s essentially an undefined term.
With such a vague definition of what “consciousness” is, there’s no logical way to argue that an AI does or does not have it.
Your logic is critically flawed. By your logic you could argue that there is no “logical way to argue a human has consciousness”, because we don’t have a precise enough definition of consciousness. What you wrote is just “I’m 14 and this is deep” territory, not real logic.
In reality, you CAN very easily decide whether AI is conscious or not, even if the exact limit of what you would call “consciousness” can be debated. You wanna know why? Because if you have a basic undersanding of how AI/LLM works, than you know, that in every possible, concievable aspect in regards with consciusness it is basically between your home PC and a plankton. None of which would anybody call
conscious, by any definition. Therefore, no matter what vague definition you’d use, current AI/LLM defintiely does NOT have it. Not by a longshot. Maybe in a few decades it could get there. But current models are basically over-hyped thermostat control electronics.
I’m not talking about a precise definition of consciousness, I’m talking about a consistent one. Without a definition, you can’t argue that an AI, a human, a dog, or a squid has consciousness. You can proclaim it, but you can’t back it up.
The problem is that I have more than a basic understanding of how an LLM works. I’ve written NNs from scratch and I know that we model perceptrons after neurons.
Researchers know that there are differences between the two. We can generally eliminate any of those differences (and many research do exactly that). No researcher, scientist, or philosopher can tell you what critical property neurons may have that enable consciousness. Nobody actually knows and people who claim to know are just making stuff up.
I’m not talking about a precise definition of consciousness, I’m talking about a consistent one.
Does not matter, any which way you try to spin it, any imprecise or “inconsistent” definition anybody would want to use, literally EVERYBODY with half a brain will agree that humans DO have consciousness and a rock does not. A squid could be arguable. But LLMs are just a mm above rocks, and lightyears below squids on the ladder towards consciousness.
The problem is that I have more than a basic understanding of how an LLM works. I’ve written NNs from scratch and I know that we model perceptrons after neurons.
Yea. The same way Bburago models real cars. They look somewhat similar, if you close one eye and squint the other and don’t know how far each of them are. But apart from looks, they have NOTHING in common and in NO way offer the same functionality. We don’t even know how many different types of neurons are, let alone be close to replicating each of their functions and operations:
So no, AI/LLMs are absolutely and categorically nowhere near where we could be lamenting about whether they would be conscious or not. Anyone questioning this is a victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect, by having zero clue about how complex brains and neurons are, and how basic, simple and function-lacking current NN technology is in comparison.
I think the reason we can’t define consciousness beyond intuitive or vague descriptions is because it exists outside the realm of physics and science altogether. This in itself makes some people very uncomfortable, because they don’t like thinking about or believing in things they cannot measure or control, but that doesn’t make it any less real.
But yeah, given that an LLM is very much measurable and exists within the physical realm, it’s relatively easy to argue that such technology cannot achieve conscious capability.
This definition of consciousness essentially says that humans have souls and machines don’t.
It’s unsatisfying because it just kicks the definition question down the road.
Saying that consciousness exists outside the realm of physics and science is a very strong statement. It claims that none of our normal analysis and measurement tools apply to it. That may be true, but if it is, how can anyone defend the claim that an AI does or does not have it?
This definition of consciousness essentially says that humans have souls and machines don’t.
It does, yes. Fwiw, I don’t think it’s necessarily exclusive to humans though, animals and nature may play a role too.
It’s unsatisfying because it just kicks the definition question down the road.
Sure, but I have an entire philosophy set up to answer the other questions further down the road too 😂 That may still sound unsatisfying, but feel free to follow along: https://philosophyofbalance.com/
It claims that none of our normal analysis and measurement tools apply to it.
I believe that to be true, yes.
That may be true, but if it is, how can anyone defend the claim that an AI does or does not have it?
In my view, machines and AI can never create consciousness, although it’s not ruled out they can become vessels for it. But the consciousness comes from outside the perspective of the machines.
I think this is likely an unsurmountable point of difference.
The problem is that once we eliminate measurability we can’t differentiate between reality and fantasy. We can imagine anything we want and believe in it.
The Philosophy of Balance has “believe in the universal God” as its first core tenant. That makes it more like a religion than a philosophy.
Yeah, I think I see where you’re coming from. It’s a fair point, and we need to be very careful not to loose sight of reality indeed.
The idea of the Universal God is very tolerant towards “fantasy” so far as it exists in the minds of people, yet it also prescribes to align such belief with a scientific understanding. So the thing I’m trying to say is: believe what you want to believe, and so long as it’s a rational and tolerant belief, it’s fine. But it does explicitly recognise there are limits to what science can do for us, so it provides the idea of Universal God as kind of a North Star for those in search, but then it doesn’t really prescribe what this Universal God must look like. I don’t see it as a religious god, but more a path towards a belief in something beyond ourselves.
In the book I also take effort to describe how this relates to Buddhism, Taoism, and Abrahamic religions, and attempt to show how they are all efforts to describe similar concepts, and whether we call this Nature, Tao, or God, doesn’t really matter in the end. So long as we don’t fall into nihilism and believe in something, I believe we can find common ground as a people.
I can understand a desire to find something beyond ourselves but I’m not driven by it.
That’s exactly where Descartes lost me. I was with him on the whole “cogito ergo sum” thing but his insistence that his feelings of a higher being meant that it must exist in real form somewhere made no sense to me.
That’s fair too. I mean, feelings are real, but they are part of a subjective reality that’s not measurable from an objective perspective. But that alone is sufficient to say that science cannot answer all questions, because scientific measurements are inherently limited to objective reality.
Of course there are those that say there must be a single objective reality from which all subjective experiences can be explained, but that’s a huge assumption.
Personally, I think it’s also a dimensional thing. Reality extends beyond the dimensions of time and space, this much has already been scientifically proven. Unless you somehow believe there is a finite limit on the number of dimensions, there will always be dimensions beyond our grasp that we cannot measure or understand (yet).
And bringing it back to the discussion of LLMs, they are inherently limited to a 4-dimensional reality. If those dimensions are sufficient to create consciousness, my position would be that it’s a very limited form of consciousness.
Feelings are certainly real. That doesn’t mean that they provide any evidence beyond the existence of the feeling. The standard thought experiment around that is to think about dreams. In a dream, everything I feel can be completely convincing and I have no way to know it’s a hallucination. Once I wake up that reality becomes clear and I know that the feelings I was 100% certain of a few moments ago, were false. That suggests that even complete certainty in our feelings is not indicative of underlying truth.
The extra dimension thing is a bit tricky. The standard 3+1 are widely accepted. There are several conjectures that involve more dimensions but we haven’t found evidence to support them. All of those are still physical dimensions. They generally fall into 2 categories; testable and not testable.
The non-testability is why everyone looks down on string theorists. Their models “explain” everything by piling on more and more dimensions but non of it is testable.
Since none of the dimensions above 4 are measurable, I’m much more comfortable believing they don’t exist than that they do. I don’t see why it would make sense to fill a void of non-knowledge with arbitrary guesses. I don’t see a problem in not knowing if it’s possible for AIs (or humans) to be conscious.
I think the reason we can’t define consciousness beyond intuitive or vague descriptions is because it exists outside the realm of physics and science altogether. This in itself makes some people very uncomfortable, because they don’t like thinking about or believing in things they cannot measure or control, but that doesn’t make it any less real.
I’ve always had the opposite take. I think that we’ll eventually discover that consciousness is so explainable within the realm of physics that our understanding of how it works will make people very uncomfortable… because it will completely invalidate all of the things we’ve always thought made us “special”, like a notion of free will.
If you haven’t watched it yet you’d probably enjoy Westworld - it plays a lot with that space and approaches some very interesting philosophy when it comes to human consciousness and what it means to even be a person.
I don’t know if we’ll ever define consciousness or if we’ll ever discover what it is.
My central claim is that if we don’t do that we can’t convincingly claim that an AI is or is not conscious.
We can conjecture about it either way and either guess may be right, but we won’t be able to move past guesses.
I’m sorry, but that article just isn’t very compelling. They seem to be framing the question of “is there free will” as a sort of Pascal’s Wager, which is, umm… certainly a strange choice, and one that doesn’t really justify itself in the end.
The author also makes a few false assertions and just generally seems to misunderstand what the debate over free will is even about.
I can define “LLM”, “a painting”, and “alive”. Those definitions don’t require assumptions or gut feelings. We could easily come up with a set of questions and an answer key that will tell you if a particular thing is an LLM or a painting and whether or not it’s alive.
I’m not aware of any such definition of conscious, nor am I aware of any universal tests of consciousness. Without that definition, it’s like Ebert claiming that, “Video games can never be art”.
Absolutely everything requires assumptions, even our most objective and “laws of the universe” type observations rely on sets of axioms or first principles that must simply be accepted as true-though-unprovable if we are going to get anyplace at all even in math and the hard sciences let alone philosophy or social sciences.
Defining “consciousness” requires much more handwaving and many more assumptions than any of the other three. It requires so much that I claim it’s essentially an undefined term.
With such a vague definition of what “consciousness” is, there’s no logical way to argue that an AI does or does not have it.
Your logic is critically flawed. By your logic you could argue that there is no “logical way to argue a human has consciousness”, because we don’t have a precise enough definition of consciousness. What you wrote is just “I’m 14 and this is deep” territory, not real logic.
In reality, you CAN very easily decide whether AI is conscious or not, even if the exact limit of what you would call “consciousness” can be debated. You wanna know why? Because if you have a basic undersanding of how AI/LLM works, than you know, that in every possible, concievable aspect in regards with consciusness it is basically between your home PC and a plankton. None of which would anybody call conscious, by any definition. Therefore, no matter what vague definition you’d use, current AI/LLM defintiely does NOT have it. Not by a longshot. Maybe in a few decades it could get there. But current models are basically over-hyped thermostat control electronics.
I’m not talking about a precise definition of consciousness, I’m talking about a consistent one. Without a definition, you can’t argue that an AI, a human, a dog, or a squid has consciousness. You can proclaim it, but you can’t back it up.
The problem is that I have more than a basic understanding of how an LLM works. I’ve written NNs from scratch and I know that we model perceptrons after neurons.
Researchers know that there are differences between the two. We can generally eliminate any of those differences (and many research do exactly that). No researcher, scientist, or philosopher can tell you what critical property neurons may have that enable consciousness. Nobody actually knows and people who claim to know are just making stuff up.
Does not matter, any which way you try to spin it, any imprecise or “inconsistent” definition anybody would want to use, literally EVERYBODY with half a brain will agree that humans DO have consciousness and a rock does not. A squid could be arguable. But LLMs are just a mm above rocks, and lightyears below squids on the ladder towards consciousness.
Yea. The same way Bburago models real cars. They look somewhat similar, if you close one eye and squint the other and don’t know how far each of them are. But apart from looks, they have NOTHING in common and in NO way offer the same functionality. We don’t even know how many different types of neurons are, let alone be close to replicating each of their functions and operations:
https://alleninstitute.org/news/why-is-the-human-brain-so-difficult-to-understand-we-asked-4-neuroscientists/
So no, AI/LLMs are absolutely and categorically nowhere near where we could be lamenting about whether they would be conscious or not. Anyone questioning this is a victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect, by having zero clue about how complex brains and neurons are, and how basic, simple and function-lacking current NN technology is in comparison.
I think the reason we can’t define consciousness beyond intuitive or vague descriptions is because it exists outside the realm of physics and science altogether. This in itself makes some people very uncomfortable, because they don’t like thinking about or believing in things they cannot measure or control, but that doesn’t make it any less real.
But yeah, given that an LLM is very much measurable and exists within the physical realm, it’s relatively easy to argue that such technology cannot achieve conscious capability.
This definition of consciousness essentially says that humans have souls and machines don’t. It’s unsatisfying because it just kicks the definition question down the road.
Saying that consciousness exists outside the realm of physics and science is a very strong statement. It claims that none of our normal analysis and measurement tools apply to it. That may be true, but if it is, how can anyone defend the claim that an AI does or does not have it?
It does, yes. Fwiw, I don’t think it’s necessarily exclusive to humans though, animals and nature may play a role too.
Sure, but I have an entire philosophy set up to answer the other questions further down the road too 😂 That may still sound unsatisfying, but feel free to follow along: https://philosophyofbalance.com/
I believe that to be true, yes.
In my view, machines and AI can never create consciousness, although it’s not ruled out they can become vessels for it. But the consciousness comes from outside the perspective of the machines.
I think this is likely an unsurmountable point of difference.
The problem is that once we eliminate measurability we can’t differentiate between reality and fantasy. We can imagine anything we want and believe in it.
The Philosophy of Balance has “believe in the universal God” as its first core tenant. That makes it more like a religion than a philosophy.
Yeah, I think I see where you’re coming from. It’s a fair point, and we need to be very careful not to loose sight of reality indeed.
The idea of the Universal God is very tolerant towards “fantasy” so far as it exists in the minds of people, yet it also prescribes to align such belief with a scientific understanding. So the thing I’m trying to say is: believe what you want to believe, and so long as it’s a rational and tolerant belief, it’s fine. But it does explicitly recognise there are limits to what science can do for us, so it provides the idea of Universal God as kind of a North Star for those in search, but then it doesn’t really prescribe what this Universal God must look like. I don’t see it as a religious god, but more a path towards a belief in something beyond ourselves.
In the book I also take effort to describe how this relates to Buddhism, Taoism, and Abrahamic religions, and attempt to show how they are all efforts to describe similar concepts, and whether we call this Nature, Tao, or God, doesn’t really matter in the end. So long as we don’t fall into nihilism and believe in something, I believe we can find common ground as a people.
I can understand a desire to find something beyond ourselves but I’m not driven by it.
That’s exactly where Descartes lost me. I was with him on the whole “cogito ergo sum” thing but his insistence that his feelings of a higher being meant that it must exist in real form somewhere made no sense to me.
That’s fair too. I mean, feelings are real, but they are part of a subjective reality that’s not measurable from an objective perspective. But that alone is sufficient to say that science cannot answer all questions, because scientific measurements are inherently limited to objective reality.
Of course there are those that say there must be a single objective reality from which all subjective experiences can be explained, but that’s a huge assumption.
Personally, I think it’s also a dimensional thing. Reality extends beyond the dimensions of time and space, this much has already been scientifically proven. Unless you somehow believe there is a finite limit on the number of dimensions, there will always be dimensions beyond our grasp that we cannot measure or understand (yet).
And bringing it back to the discussion of LLMs, they are inherently limited to a 4-dimensional reality. If those dimensions are sufficient to create consciousness, my position would be that it’s a very limited form of consciousness.
Feelings are certainly real. That doesn’t mean that they provide any evidence beyond the existence of the feeling. The standard thought experiment around that is to think about dreams. In a dream, everything I feel can be completely convincing and I have no way to know it’s a hallucination. Once I wake up that reality becomes clear and I know that the feelings I was 100% certain of a few moments ago, were false. That suggests that even complete certainty in our feelings is not indicative of underlying truth.
The extra dimension thing is a bit tricky. The standard 3+1 are widely accepted. There are several conjectures that involve more dimensions but we haven’t found evidence to support them. All of those are still physical dimensions. They generally fall into 2 categories; testable and not testable.
The non-testability is why everyone looks down on string theorists. Their models “explain” everything by piling on more and more dimensions but non of it is testable.
Since none of the dimensions above 4 are measurable, I’m much more comfortable believing they don’t exist than that they do. I don’t see why it would make sense to fill a void of non-knowledge with arbitrary guesses. I don’t see a problem in not knowing if it’s possible for AIs (or humans) to be conscious.
I’ve always had the opposite take. I think that we’ll eventually discover that consciousness is so explainable within the realm of physics that our understanding of how it works will make people very uncomfortable… because it will completely invalidate all of the things we’ve always thought made us “special”, like a notion of free will.
If you haven’t watched it yet you’d probably enjoy Westworld - it plays a lot with that space and approaches some very interesting philosophy when it comes to human consciousness and what it means to even be a person.
I don’t know if we’ll ever define consciousness or if we’ll ever discover what it is.
My central claim is that if we don’t do that we can’t convincingly claim that an AI is or is not conscious. We can conjecture about it either way and either guess may be right, but we won’t be able to move past guesses.
:)
https://philosophyofbalance.com/blog/free-will-you-better-believe-it/
I’m sorry, but that article just isn’t very compelling. They seem to be framing the question of “is there free will” as a sort of Pascal’s Wager, which is, umm… certainly a strange choice, and one that doesn’t really justify itself in the end.
The author also makes a few false assertions and just generally seems to misunderstand what the debate over free will is even about.