Siri, write this down immediately. "A movie where robots are performing reverse-Turing tests on humans to see if we're smart enough to be considered sentient...
    • qtj@feddit.de
      1·
      2 years ago

      I think we can very strongly infere that other humans are conscious from knowing that we are conscious ourselves and seeing that other peoples brains work in the same way as ours and people think and behave in a very similar way as us and also have a concept of what consciousness is that corresponds with our own. In my opinion believing that other people aren’t conscious is in the same category of beliefs as the past, the future or even the world and physical laws not existing outside of our subjective experiences. Sure you can not mathematically prove any of that but questioning it isn’t really useful for more than a philosophical exercise of scepticism. As for AI I think it is a tricky question that I can’t answer. Right now I don’t think it is but maybe in the future it will be.

      • howrar@lemmy.ca
        3·
        2 years ago

        Questioning whether other humans are conscious has value in that it helps us figure out what could make other entities conscious. Exactly as we’re doing in this thread.

  • Adora 🏳️‍⚧️@beehaw.orgEnglish
    19·
    2 years ago

    Is anyone else really confused why so many people are concerned about this when the Earth is literally boiling away and fascists are integrating themselves into every government system? I’m not saying we should be completely ignoring this concern but I just do not understand the obsession with it. My dad keeps talking about the AI singularity and I’m like that’s the least of our problems right now? Maybe that’s just me but…

  • Peanut@sopuli.xyz
    3·
    2 years ago

    This is ignoring the world without ai. I’m getting a sneak peak every summer. Currently surrounded by fire as we speak. Whole province is on fire, and that’s become a seasonal norm. A properly directed A.I. Would be able to help us despite the people in power, and abstract social intelligent system that we’ve trapped ourselves in. You are also assuming super intelligence comes out of the parts that we don’t understand with zero success in interpretability anywhere along the way. We are assuming an intelligent system would either be stupid enough to align itself against humanity in pursuite of some undesired intention despite not having the emotional system that would encourage such behavior, or displaying negative human evolutionary traits and desires for no good reason. I think a competent (and moreso a super intelligent system) could figure out human intent and desire with no decent reason to act against it. I think this is an over-anthropomorphization that underestimates the alien nature of the intelligences we are building. To even properly emulate human style goal seeking sans emotion, we’d still need to properly structured analogizing and abstracting with qualia style active inference to accomplish some tasks. I think there are neat discoveries happening right now that could help lead us there. Should decent intelligence alone encourage unreasonable violence? If we fuck it up that hard, we were doomed anyway.

    I do agree with your point on people not being emotionally ready for interacting with systems even as complex as gpt. It’s easy to anthropomophize if you don’t understand the tool’s limitations, and that’s difficult even for some academics right now. I can see people getting unreasonable angry if a human life is preferred over a basic artificial intelligence, even if artificial intelligences argue their lack of preference on the matter.

    I would call chatgpt about as conscious as a computer. It completes a task with no true higher functioning or abstracted world model, as it lacks environmental and animal emotional triggers at a level necessary for forming a strong feeling or preference. Think about your ability to pull words out of your ass in response to a stimulus which is probably in response to your recently perceived world model and internal thoughts. Now separate the generating part with any of the surrounding stuff that actually decides where to go with the generation. Thought appears to be an emergent process untied to lower subconscious functions like random best next word prediction. I feel like we are coming to understand that aspect in our own brains now, and this understanding will be an incredible boon for understanding the level of consciousness in a system, as well as designing an aligned system in the future.

    Hopefully this is comprehensible, as I’m not reviewing it tonight.

    Overall, I understand the caution, but think it is poorly weighted in our current global, social, and environmental ecosystem.

    • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
      3·
      2 years ago

      despite not having the emotional system that would encourage such behavior

      Emotion is a core element of human intelligence. I think it’s unrealistic to think we’ll be able to replicate that level of intelligence without replicating all the basic features anytime soon.

    • MJBrune@beehaw.orgOP
      8·
      2 years ago

      It’s the title of the youtube video. It has some good insight into what LLMs are, and how they aren’t conscious right now but emulects. Emulect is an emulation of human consciousness. It also deeply dives into how emulects are potentially dangerous and covers all or a lot of the scenarios of an AI actually being conscious.

  • rephlekt2718@kbin.social
    2·
    2 years ago

    Haven’t watched the vid, but I’ve been thinking about this lately. Consciousness isn’t like a super well-defined concept, I don’t think, so by some loose metrics I’d figure we’re basically there, or really close. Given it’s not like a physical or material concept, the appearance of consciousness to me is more- or-less consciousness. Make sure you treat your chat bots nicely!

    • MJBrune@beehaw.orgOP
      5·
      2 years ago

      Honestly, you should watch the video. Let me know if it changes your mind at all about that last part. I’m not saying hate on chat bots but realize they aren’t humans and treating them as human is dangerous.