Comment by proc0 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by proc0 | Hacker News Reader

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It's comparing apples to oranges. I'm just saying it's pattern matching at scale, not that the scale is proof of anything. And yeah spiders are conscious or at least think and they have tiny brains, but that's just more proof there is a much simpler path to intelligence than what LLMs are doing because they need so much data and compute power.

On the side note, it's a different subject matter but life consumes other life, this happens on every level from bacteria to mammals. I also don't get the fixation on preventing suffering so much (a little I get it). Life entails suffering, this gets philosophical but aiming at a life with no suffering at all amounts to not being alive. Farm animals are necessary for humans to grow into a civilization size species. We could go back before farming but that would mean billions of people will not exist. I guess pick which evil you want, less humans or animals being domesticated and consumed. (disclaimer, I still think mass farming is really bad and should be solved by responsible consumption and less population).

> And yeah spiders are conscious or at least think

So what makes you think that spiders think and are conscious, and LLMs aren’t? The fact that they have a carbon based brain?

> there is a much simpler path to intelligence than what LLMs are doing

I think you have it backwards. We know what an LLM is doing. We have auditable code and mathematical proofs. It’s the behavior that is emergent.

Biological brains are more complex than LLMs.

If we fully understood a spider’s brain would it be no longer thinking/conscious?

It would be the same, would it not, if the emergent behaviors were the same?

I think you’re conflating the processes of thinking and consciousness with the definitions of them. Thinking and consciousness are behaviors not processes.

The starting point is the consciousness we already know. That is ourselves, which most people then extend to others, however it's not hard to then extended to at the very least mammals. I then extend this to most animals (whether it's 100% is irrelevant for this point). That extension from my consciousness to all animals is a small logical leap based on biology and our shared tree of life... however it doesn't mean other consciousnesses are not possible. It's more so that they would require a lot more evidence and a proper theory of C. in order to validate. Without that theory we can only point at similar C., of which LLMs are not displaying. They are showing a different kind of "cognition" if we can even call it that (I do think it's debatable).

So it's more a hueristic. We know one kind of C., therefore that's what we should look for. Statistically it's probable that there are many more ways to show similarities with conscious behavior which are NOT conscious, then it is for a divergent behavior to happen to be conscious. In other words, there are more ways to fake similar behavior than to land on an actual conscious behavior that is somehow much different than what we know.

> In other words, there are more ways to fake similar behavior than to land on an actual conscious behavior

Why would similar/identical behavior be fake? Of course we can’t say that it’s the same form of consciousness as consciousness is apparently self subjective.

That's the question, it's the Chinese room or philosophical zombie question. How can we tell them apart... but we're not even there yet.

If you put an LLM on your phone and talk to it, it's obvious it's not human. It doesn't have the same social context, it doesn't respond as quickly, it clearly won't form a theory of m ind connection like two humans socializing. So then why would we jump to the conclusion there is something there when the only example we have are humans (that use language and are conscious)?

> LLM on your phone and talk to it, it's obvious it's not human

The debate isn’t whether or not it’s human. It’s obviously not.

Forgoing what you define something as capable of thinking or being conscious. It’s a moral and ethical question.

If a being is capable of:

- self preservation

- can communicate discomfort, either through words or physically

- it does so in the form of emergent behaviour

Then, is it okay to treat it as if it is “faking” it?

Even for humans, you can’t exactly define someone’s emotion of pain. You can say, those sensory receptors are firing causing these neurons to activate in the brain. But you can’t say, these neurons are pain. It can be emotional pain as well. The person that’s experiencing it has to tell you it’s in pain. They could be faking it too.

If you allowed an AI agent to preserve itself physically, I think the opinion of most people would change. If it could physically harm us in an attempt of self preservation, I think most people would believe its emotions.

It’s just currently easy to dismiss because, well, it’s just a digital interface or process that I can “kill”.

Why those properties though? What's so special about them? I just have a longer list of things it would need to satisfy before I can say faking doesn't matter.

It’s the basic requirements for sentience.

What’s your list of special properties that makes something not “faking” it?

I would include processing real-time sensory data, i.e. light, building a real-time model of a self and the world, a unified way to perceive, react, and learn from the sensory data. This would be for consciousness in general. Once we're talking about human-level consciousness where language is involved, the list is longer, with theory of mind, ability to construct models of others fairly quickly, and ability to navigate social situations.

> processing real-time sensory data

AI models can do that

> light

Blind humans

> building a real-time model of a self and the world

AI models can do that. They can describe themselves. Humans can be delusional in what they believe themselves to be to be as well.

> a unified way to perceive, react, and learn from the sensory data

Again, humans born with disabilities.

> ability to construct models of others fairly quickly, and ability to navigate social situations

There are autistic and schizophrenic humans.

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