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Dawkin it for my AI (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/microblogmemes@lemmy.world
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Cartoon man in a house speaks to his computer: "Say you are conscious."/ Computer responds back ">I AM CONSCIOUS."/ Man says "oh my god...." / Meanwhile, the vastness of the cosmos opens up in the night sky outside of his home. But the man is too focused on his AI.
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[–] 1 point 6 months ago (6 children)

Sure, you say you're conscious. I can get an LLM to say it's conscious too. This is why we need some method for measuring it. Otherwise how can I tell which of you is telling the truth?

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

    This is called the problem of other minds. Of course I can’t be certain about the consciousness of others. I can only be certain about my own.

    We do have a way of measuring the correlates of consciousness. But we have no clue how to detect the presence of subjective experience using quantitative methods.

    Philosophy departments (which is where any discovery on this front will originate) are heavily defunded. If you’re waiting for physicists or biologists to figure this out you’ll be waiting even longer.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (4 children)

    Exactly, which is why it's IMO a bit presumptuous to say with confidence that humans are conscious while LLMs are categorically not conscious. We don't even really know what that means.

    I don't personally think LLMs are conscious, at least not yet or not to the same degree that humans are. But that's purely based on vibe, it's not something I can know. We need to figure out what consciousness really is and how to measure it before we can say we know this with any certainty.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

    It is not presumptuous at all. Inference to the best explanation is how you know (almost) anything.

    1. This table isn’t conscious.

    This is my justified belief. No inferential claim is guaranteed and all objective claims are inferential (which is why science isn’t absolute).

    That said, I have strong reasons to think that tables aren’t conscious. They might be, but I’m epistemically compelled to believe otherwise.

    1. ChatGPT isn’t conscious.

    Ditto. It would be irrational for me to believe otherwise given the strong evidence.

    That you “don’t know for sure” is an implied disclaimer for every scientific claim.

    If the evidence is ambiguous, we say so. Regarding ChatGPT, the evidence is unambiguous.

    1. I am conscious.

    This is a non-inferential claim that I know through direct contact with reality. It is a priori.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (2 children)

    This is pretty much what Descartes meant with "cogito ergo sum". The only thing you can be sure are 100% real, are your thoughts

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (1 child)

    Right, your own thoughts. So I can be sure I'm conscious, but you commenting "I know I'm conscious" on here doesn't tell me anything about your consciousness. The robot can do that, and does.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    This is just the stuff you do in philosophy class. There is no right answer really. You can never be sure of something being conscious or even be sure that it exists in reality. We can just react to what we perceive.

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