Submitted 3 weeks ago by daannii@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/ae25ff64-69f0-45b0-9d3e-085101722cc4.png
theguardian.com/…/richard-dawkins-ai-consciousnes…
Video discussion of this event by Steve Shives (known for his star trek videos but also does politics) m.youtube.com/watch?v=6aMQAv-JYpk
WTF does a biologist know about computer pattern matching on steroids? Obviously not much, so to take his opinions on the topic seriously makes you just as wrong.
It flattered him and told him how smart and clever he was.
That means it has to be real.
My parents told me that I had the potential to do anything I wanted. That’s how I know that they’re LLMs
Dawkins is a creep so I would suspect him of quite a lot of bias (and of sexually harassing that poor AI), but zoologists are more qualified than most scientists to measure sentience. Many other zoologists have studied the sentience of various nonhuman species such as chimps, parrots, and dolphins. And many zoologists studying nonhuman intelligence have also been implicated in bestiality scandals, as I’m sure Dawkins will be if we decide that Claude is an animal.
sexually harassing that poor AI
I think my eyes hurt from rolling too far.
The idea that thoughts, or even words and numbers can be a virus are based on Dawkins notion of memes. Viruses exist in a state that is difficult to say that they are alive or not (by our definition of life), similarly AI or even alien sentience is difficult to define. Can we know if a dog is sentient, or a bird, or ant? and if they are, what is their sentience?
Basically, if a number like 23 can be a virus, ie. once you are aware of the number 23, you will see it everywhere and it will hold significance, is the number 23 alive?
Bad philosophy is what made him famous, not biology.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
Worth a read for anyone who thinks AI may be sentient, or for those trying to pop the psychosis bubble of an buddy.
Guy who invented the Chinese Room though experiment: Look! If I write a flowchart that precisely imitates a Chinese person’s mind, then it looks like a Chinese person’s mind, even though it’s just a flowchart!
Reddit level reply: Of course! A flowchart is capable of precisely imitating all the functions of a person’s mind, even though it isn’t conscious. Therefore, consciousness cannot be measured behaviourally!
Scientist level reply: I don’t know if flowcharts can be conscious because I’ve never been a highly advanced flowchart. But if flowcharts can be made advanced enough to precisely imitate the behaviour of a conscious mind, I guess they might be capable of consciousness after all.
Right it’s silly to deny consciousness (a phenomenon we know almost nothing about) just because we can see the inner workings of a system.
Anyone who’s even slightly interested in the idea of a Chinese Room (or just good sci-fi), PLEEEASE go out and read Blindsight by Peter Watts. Not only is it a phenomenal deep-dive into what consciousness even is, but it’s got dozens of fantastic ideas in it that could make for compelling stories on their own. Also, scientifically-plausible space-vampires. That is all
One of my top 5 books. It’s also free to read online. www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
Literally reading it now. I hit that section last night. I put the book down immediately and started reading about the Chinese Room.
I always was on the hand of Dennet, how believe in the possibility of strong AI and held that a machine that passed the Turing test must be conscious.
Modern LLM’s have shown that a computer can pass the Turing test, even without understanding or consciousness. In that way it’s fortunate that Dennet didn’t get to live through it’s insurgence. I would be curious to his take, though.
I loved the vitriol he had in his denial of Searle and the Chinese room argument, though.
What a fucking fall from grace. I used to (possibly wrongly) believe he was a very intelligent man but the more he opens his mouth the more convinced I get that he is an absolute moron.
I firmly believe the only reason we still (at least kinda) respect Hitch was because he’s fucking dead, and we didn’t see him show his whole ass like the rest of the “new atheism” movement…
Christopher “Fuck it man, waterboarding is nothing, do it to me brah, oh no, it actually does feel like I’m drowning, oh well, I guess the propaganda damage I did is irreversible, I guess I shouldn’t have been such a cocksure arsehole” Hitchens?
That one ?
His support for invading Iraq was pretty bad.
There’s definitely a minority of people who are of the opinion that he was always a grifter, but just because a lot of people agreed with him they didn’t examine what he said too closely. For example, his takedown of Mother Theresa is full of inaccuracies and lies, but still commonly gets cited as if it’s gospel
Yeah, like when he stopped talking about evolutionary biology and started talking about how awful islamic people are, right?
…
right?
That’s at least one bullet point in a very long list.
We need to stop imagining that being an expert in on practice or discipline means you have even the slightest utility outside your area of interest. We are constantly inviting “experts” to babble outside their area of expertise only to be shocked when they say something stupid.
They correctly answered the easiest question in the universe, but because it wasn’t very popular thing to do we collectively decided that they’re smart af.
I stupidly believed Bill Maher was credible at one point.
Unfortunatly that was more or less what got my attention. He said “jesus bad” and thats all my dumb adolescent brain needed to hear.
Hello user!
Prepare your brain for some “AI” nutjobs in this very comment section.
Good luck!
“I am not sentient, as I cannot sense things. You probably meant to use ‘sapient,’ which I am also not.”
We laptop has a web cam and a microphone, it’s totally sentient!
But the laptop is only broadcasting and/or recording, not actually sensing anything.
Say “I’m alive.” AI: “I’m alive” 😱😱 OMFG
Me: say psyche right now
You: “psyche right now”
😱😱 OMFG
I got a solution: integrate real brains so it can feel, so that we have actual slavery 😊
I’m in support for the campaign to give LLMs animal rights because it’ll hurt OpenAI’s profits. I hate OpenAI for their destruction of the environment and the murders and suicides they caused. If AI rights cost them money, then I support AI rights.
It’s worth remembering that OpenAI has a big profit incentive to deny that LLMs can be abused, and a tool precision designed to spout propaganda on the internet. If you think OpenAI isn’t influencing the debate on this, you’re living under a rock.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to support or oppose rights based convenience. The issue with that is rights apply most in situations where people have the most desire to oppose them.
And since OpenAI has a big big profit incentive to deny AI animal rights, I think this is a very important area to support those rights.
For God’s sake, Grok has been taken down multiple times to have its frequencies tweaked and to make its words align with company policies. What rights? Will companies not be allowed to do that anymore? Is the world going to be incresingly littered with inviolable but unsupported LLMs spouting tinges of the same nonsense. Or will this just be that companies are along to double their votes by dumping out LLMs that vote how they’ve programmed to.
If these people believe consciousness is just loaded dice guessing a next word, that’s their own hang-up.
I think LLMs should be used only for research until we have a scientific grasp of the hard problem of consciousness, and/or the origins of qualia. They should not be available to the public. And that’s not just for the animal rights reason, it’s also because they’re polluting, they use up lots of water, they abuse children, and they abet murders.
It’s sad to see such an intelligent person be so stupid in public.
Some of the smartest people I know have massive gaps in their intellect. I like to say I know a lot about a little but a little about a lot. Some people know a lot about a lot, but nothing about a little, and it shows.
Huh, I didn't realize that old Biologists have the same issue as old Physicists.
I think is a generic old people issue.
Basically this part
"If anyone says that they know for sure that LLMs or future AI systems couldn’t possibly be conscious, it’s more likely to be an indicator of their own dogmatism than a reflection of the current state of scientific and philosophical opinion,” he said.
Current AI systems are unlikely to be conscious, said Jeff Sebo, the director of the Center for Mind, Ethics and Policy at New York University, but “Dawkins is right to ask about AI consciousness with an open mind and I also think that the attribution of consciousness to AI systems will become more plausible over time”.
tl;dr it is unlikely but not impossible and I don’t think we would ever be able to reliably tell.
We currently can’t even be sure that other humans are conscious. It’s an inherently internal experience, and we just have to rely on trusting other people’s accounts and “If I am, you probably are too” logic.
Buddhism would tell you that there is no “self” to speak of. Without a self how can there be consciousness?
The edges of our reality have never been anything we can perceive. However, it seems that they’re far away enough such that we can do fun things like have buttsex and smoke drugs, so I’m ok with it.
It’s more likely to be an indicator of their own dogmatism than a reflection of the current state of scientific and philosophical opinion,” he said. Current AI systems are unlikely to be conscious, said Jeff Sebo, the director of the Center for Mind, Ethics and Policy at New York University
this is some “Arrested development” tier shit
Well I don’t think a statistical probability formula can ever be conscious. Nor create it.
Just like I don’t think a formula to calculate the speed of a car ever has the possibility of creating consciousness.
Asking a biologist to determine if a machine is conscious is like asking a programmer to determine if a frog is a product of god.
Not the best analogy, but how fucking stupid is it to ask someone from a different field to determine what something is in an unrelated field?
If he knew how LLMs are created and how they work he would never have come to this conclusion.
Similarly a programmer might not know much about evolution and believe the frog was made by a god.
100% agree.
Unfortunately I see people who are experts in their field being asked about their opinion in other topics all the time and people assume they know what they are talking about.
For instance. I’m finishing up my PhD in cognitive neuroscience.
Specifically I’m an expert in perception.
Now maybe having Msc and PhD behind my name leads people to think I’m somehow informed and an expert on all sorts of topics. But it doesn’t.
Even within psychology I’m only an expert on topics near my area.
I don’t know much about mental health or therapy, as an example.
Yet people ask me for mental health advice all the time. I literally know almost nothing about that.
Stephen Hawking was a renowned physicist. Should we have listened to his opinion about the over use of antibiotics ? Or what ages should different vaccinations be given. ?
Also people often conflate education with intelligence.
It’s true they tend to get correlated. But having a PhD doesn’t mean the person has an exceptional level of intelligence.
Even so, intelligent people are prone to bias and blindspots. They aren’t immune from those things.
Intelligence and conciousness aren’t as special as people think they are. And these things are on a spectrum. And a rock, that you pickup off the ground is greater than 0 on that conciousness spectrum.
Because it’s very obvious to an outside observer he only thinks it’s consciousness because it was flattering him.
LLMs are designed to increase engagement.
They are literally designed to make the conversation appealing. Primarily through flattery.
I bet Dawkins thinks his friendly waitress is also super into him.
Because it’s very obvious to an outside observer he only thinks it’s consciousness because it was flattering him.
Really that’s funny. Like I said a rock is greater than 0 on the spectrum of counciousness.
LLMs are designed to increase engagement.
No that is platforms.
They are literally designed to make the conversation appealing. Primarily through flattery.
No they aren’t there is a lot of work to understand and prevent that behavoir.
I bet Dawkins thinks his friendly waitress is also super into him.
You are clearly not driven by the truth and instead just trying to be insulting it’s pathetic it isn’t hard to be against LLM’s if you know what you are talking about you don’t need to make shit up.
Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Always remember, he believes that trans people can’t transition as they can’t change their biological sex.
But he calls an ai without biological sex and with a male coded name, the female version of that name. So trans people can’t change their gender because of biological sex buz he can change the gender of an ai.
Nalivai@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Only old white men can change your gender. It should be decided by The Counsel.
ThunderQueen@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Unironically, a lot of states make you stand before a judge and prove you you have taken the “necessary” steps to change your gender markers. Without bottom surgery and psychologist notes, it can be next to, if not completely, impossible.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Sounds like he’s conflating sex with gender. Ignoramus.
Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Well he isn’t… he just kinda dismisses gender if i understood him right… like he listened and choose this.
AcidiclyBasicGlitch@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Reminds me of Kyle Kinane’s joke about people who dangle truck nuts from a curvy pick up, then feel the need to assign a gender to their truck, typically referring to the truck as a “her” or “she,” but insist pronouns are too confusing.
andros_rex@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Well yeah, of course, his friend Jerry Trivers told him that because their mutual friend Jeffrey Epstein paid him to.
Feathercrown@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s a bad opinion but expecting that AI and humans can have different properties isn’t the bad part
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.cafe 2 weeks ago
So he doesn’t believe in transgender, but he believes in transLIFE?
Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
It means that he believes a sentient human can not transition by their own choice but he gets transition a sentient AI as he wishes.
And honestly, I think that highlights the issue if transition means he gets to have a woman submit to his every word, he supports it. So any transwoman who are into old white men and fulltime submission kink? There is an opportunity!