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Comment by vonneumannstan | Hacker News Reader

>AI might be conscious now or in the future and this should be taken seriously

This is the only defensible position. Anyone claiming a definite answer one way or the other should show us their Theory of Consciousness which shows why it is the case. Of course no such theory exists that can actually do this so...

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But we don't have to take all claims which may potentially be true one day equally seriously, or ascribe them equal weight (and thus, we are not required to act on all claims).

I actually do believe that it's quite possible that one day an artificial consciousness (for some value of "consciousness") could be created. I don't believe I've seen anything which makes me think it's going to spring, as an emergent property, from any of the current systems. I can't prove whether it will or won't; it is entirely subjective/intuitive, but then so are all of these claims.

So given that, how much time should I be required to spend debating what to do if the systems we currently have are unknowingly recreating slavery? Especially when all time spent has a cost as well as value, and we live in a society in which some people are only too willing to knowingly recreate (or perpetuate) slavery? Which one of those should seem more urgent? If I can only act on one of these, which really seems more defensible?

We don't wait for conclusive proof of the future before we act - we don't live in a world of definites, but we decide every second which things are probably important and which are not.

I think the point is that people are smuggling in assumptions which the other side may not agree about, hence the different conclusions. But people are bad at going up a level to examine that so they end up having unproductive disagreeements.

>But we don't have to take all claims which may potentially be true one day equally seriously, or ascribe them equal weight (and thus, we are not required to act on all claims).

No one is saying that. I am saying they deserve non zero consideration.

No, but I am arguing that - from my perspective - the appropriate weight for those claims, fantastical as they are, would be zero consideration.

>No, but I am arguing that - from my perspective - the appropriate weight for those claims, fantastical as they are, would be zero consideration.

This is an unsupported and imo crazy position to hold. Bordering on evil.

As much as Russell's teapot. I mean the teapot itself, not the analogy. Non zero for philosophers, priests or cognitive scientists, practically zero for the general public while conversations with AI always start with a human asking the AI and never the other way around.

>> AI might be conscious now or in the future and this should be taken seriously > This is the only defensible position.

No it's not. According to your own reasoning that position is defensible as much as any other is.

> Anyone claiming a definite answer one way or the other should show us their Theory of Consciousness which shows why it is the case.

Anyone claiming possibility of consciousness should do the same - show their Theory of Consciousness because without a convincing theory backing their claim, we can freely dispense with it. Otherwise, anyone can claim that anything is "possibly conscious" and we'll have to accept that position because, according to your thesis, without a Theory of Consciousness we can't be sure. Ergo, in that case "consciousness" loses all meaning. I'm not exaggerating, real example from yesterday - some religious figures argued that "floating point numbers are conscious".

My thesis is that the whole "Is AI conscious?" debate as a fat red herring - not the only one by any means, but there is no other rational reason to debate the consciousness of numbers before solving real human, social and economic problems which keep getting worse.

On the one hand given the current level of technology I agree with you. On the other hand if, say, an atom-level simulation of a human brain were created I would think it's reasonable to assume that it is conscious even if we don't have a theory of consciousness. And we can imagine different levels of detail in-between current LLMs and atom-level simulations, and different people would draw the line for worrying about consciousness in different places...

i agree. same with religion - the only defensible position is agnosticism. anyone claiming a definite answer one way or the other should show us their Theory of Religion which shows why it is the case. ff course no such theory exists that can actually do this so...

get rekt atheists/theists :P

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