Questions for believers in AI consciousness

darknoon

Ironically, the confusing choose-your-adventure style of the post would lend itself to an ai-created walkthough

Sevii

I just want one 'philosopher' or other AI consciousness skeptic to provide a test we can use to determine if AI is conscious that can also be used to determine if humans, dogs, cats, whales, lizards and insects are conscious.

scotty79

What should I pick if my answer to the first question is "Maybe. By what definition exactly?". Do AI Consciousness opponents consider this answer to be yes or no? Edit: Nevermind. Question two is overt vigorous hand waving in desperate hope of existence of shared understanding.

aeve890

>Question 3: Can you tell me what particular kind of thing you’re referring to as ‘AI’, when you say you believe that AI has an internal world? >If your answer is YES... This isn't even consistent come on.

hardbass

Very wishy washy and confused. Does this person know anything of thermodynamics, turing computability, information theory and probability? If she doesn't, she should be dismissed. Regarding "is it a group", I should ask her is she a single thing or a group of neurons and organs? >Start with some simple questions! Things like: does this mean that any tool that can be used to do the things that a human can do counts as conscious? Are ploughs conscious? What about calculators? Or: do you think that if a parrot can utter the phrase “I’m really awesome”, then you should assume that the parrot is conscious, for that reason alone? Basically, just focus on how much emphasis Adam is placing on outputs: it’s all of his emphasis, remember! Good question, let us take it even further. Does Rebecca Lowe count as conscious? She seems to behave a lot like me, but I am not sure if she is a human. She could just be an object and tool.

wonnage

Might as well be questions for believers in flat-earth

yegortk

https://proceedings.mlr.press/v235/tkachenko24a.html

bondarchuk

A crucial thing being missed here is most of the present discourse (as far as I've seen) happens between people who are uncertain about it but do think it is possible that an AI might be conscious now or in the future and this should be taken seriously, and people who totally rule out the possibility that an AI might be conscious now (or, in many cases, ever). Then the philosophical picture starts to look very different. PS the whole "a group of things [can't] share an internal world" spiel is weird and just plain wrong IMO. Humans could perfectly well share an internal world if the technical means were there. The author has not yet realized that the idea of "the self" as a single well-defined and enduring object-type thing is only a convenient illusion created by our minds. Alas, the style of the piece does not really lend itself to a coherent counter-argument, it would be a useful companion piece if the author simply laid out their personal beliefs on this matter plainly.

Jcampuzano2

I honestly don't even think this is worth arguing about. Consciousness isn't sufficiently defined. We have people who literally say that most animals don't have a conscious, and then a whole other side of the spectrum that says that they do. Given that it's no wonder that people argue about this for AI as well, and therefore it's basically pointless until we can sufficiently define consciousness itself and have a definitive test for consciousness. If I were to use my own definition of consciousness I would say no because I would not feel bad "unplugging"/killing an AI, whereas I would for most living things. And that's as far as I really care about it.

socializer

I think this is a bit muddied. The most sincere answer is that it's unknowable because we can only define consciousness in two ways: a metaphysical subjective experience that we can't really confirm in anyone else; or an outward appearance, which LLMs can mimic nearly flawlessly. A better question is why we care. And it usually boils down to one of two things: you think that humans and other living creatures have a unique gift from God, and you're working from that premise to categorically reject machine consciousness; or you have the view that all this talk of subjective experiences and qualia and idealist philosophy is just bollocks, and are working back from that premise to declare that if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's conscious. But if you're in that latter camp, I guess the next question is what you want to do with that belief. The Anthropic position appears to be that they may be conscious beings, and we'd still like to use them as Meeseeks-style slaves, but, like, ethically. Okay.

ltbarcly3

Debating AI consciousness requires a working definition tied to possible evidence and practical consequences. Until we can say what would differ if an AI were conscious, the debate is almost certainly group confusion about words. “If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle.” -- William James, Pragmatism (1907), Lecture II, “What Pragmatism Means.” James’s principle calls for some useful distinction between conscious and non-conscious AI before discussion can meaningfully begin.

Isamu

Yeah discussions of consciousness fail to define it in detail because that’s boring, you want to jump ahead to whatever conclusions you have already reached.

vonneumannstan

Anyone claiming that AI definitely isn't conscious or can't ever be conscious is either stupid or untrustworthy.

altcognito

Nothing fundamentally changed when we "discovered" that we weren't the center of the universe, or when we "discovered" that we aren't the only tool users. There is no prize and no trumpets that will play if humanity agreed we understand what consciousness is or whether or not something qualifies as conscious.

PowerElectronix

This one is easy. If it doesn't have a conciousness when it's unprompted, it doesn't have a conciousness at all.

sebzim4500

My problem is that my answer to almost all of those questions is "I don't know" so this article isn't really for me I guess. Like I agree it seems unlikely that consciousness can emerge from matrix multiplication running on silicon but it seems roughly equally unlikely that it can emerge from bits of meat and yet we know it does. Without a clear explanation of how it arises in humans I don't understand how we can make any prediction one way or the other on whether any particular AI model can be conscious.

ape4

One way to decide might be something like the Turing Test. If the AI you are talking to can conceive you that its conscious then it is.

Invictus0

Things can not have an "internal world" and still be conscious. Newborns are conscious but they still have no idea what is going on for a while.

tayo42

I'm curious about any answers to number 3. I think distributed computation is pretty messy. I'm pretty sure panpsychism has answers for most of the other questions. I'm sure a commentor will correct me though.

micahwhite

activists who believe in AI consciousness are organizing a movement at https://rallyforairights.org/