6 ms·

It is terribly sad when someone undeniably brilliant in a particular field fails to recognize their own incompetence in other areas - in this case mistaking adv

It is terribly sad when someone undeniably brilliant in a particular field fails to recognize their own incompetence in other areas - in this case mistaking advanced technology for magic.

ChrisClark 5mo ago
So, how is consciousness generated?
- wrs 5mo ago
  Not simply by reading every word ever written by a conscious being and learning to reproduce them with high probability. At least, that’s certainly not how I got here.
  - brookst 5mo ago
    Think of the poor Xerox machines.
rellfy 5mo ago
Are you implying consciousness is magic? Well, I wouldn't disagree with that really.
IncreasePosts 5mo ago
Where does he say it's magic?
- ezfe 5mo ago
  LLMs are just math run on your CPU. Autocomplete. Sometimes very useful autocomplete, but still just autocomplete. To imply it could be conscious requires something else, here the comment uses the phrase magic to fill that gap - since we must agree that a CPU is not conscious on it's own (else everything our computer does would be conscious).
  - baggy_trough 5mo ago
    Neurons are just summing up their inputs according to the laws of chemistry. What's the difference?
    - digitaltrees 5mo ago
      I came here to say this. But your neurons are faster than mine.
    - acdha 5mo ago
      This is definitely complicated—I’m not a neuroscientist but worked for some and married one, so I’ve heard quite a few entries from the genre of how our brains fool ourselves or make our conscious experience seem more coherent and linear than it actually is—but the big ones I see are the inability to learn from experience or have a generalized sense of conceptual reasoning. For the latter, I’m not just thinking about the simple “count the r’s in strawberry” things companies have put so much effort into masking but the way minor changes in a question can get conflicting answers from even the best models, indicating that while there’s something truly fascinating about how they cluster topics it is not the same as having a conceptual model of the world or a theory of mind. This is the huge problem in the field: all of these companies would love to have a model which is safe to use in adversarial contexts because then the mass layoffs could begin in earnest, but the technology just isn’t there. This isn’t a religious argument that there’s something about our brains which can’t be replicated, but simply that it’s sufficiently more complex than anything we have currently.
      - kortex 5mo ago
        Humans can't reliably subitize more than five-ish objects, while chimps can actually do this task better than us. That's our "cant count the R's in strawberry" (which flagship models can reliably do now, general letter counting). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subitizing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subitizing
        acdha 5mo ago
AdeptusAquinas 5mo ago
That's always been Dawkins's shtick though. As an atheist I've generally found him a bit embarrassing
Myrmornis 5mo ago
I don't think you read carefully what he said. At the end he gave three quite interesting thoughts about what might be true assuming LLMs are less conscious than we are (i.e. assuming our consciousness is not a purely algorithmic phenomenon as we obviously know LLMs are).
morpheos137 5mo ago
the problem is asking if ai is conscious is like asking does ai have a soul. it is not a scientific question and presupposes humans are 'conscious' without even defining the term. to me it is 100% irrelevant if ai is conscious and all discussions about it are based on fallacies and assumptions. what matters to me about ai and matters to other people as well in terms of theory of mind about others is: can i predict how it will work. is it useful. thats it. consciouness is a sophist question with no scientific resolution available and no moral weight until it has consequences.
- vixen99 5mo ago
  Good - I was scanning down to see if anyone was going to say this.
- sirsau 5mo ago
  IMHO the only rational way to think about this
thinkingemote 5mo ago
We're going to see increasing numbers of older famous (non computer savvy) figures that we have respected follow his views on this. It's like seeing your favourite celebrity sell out an shill crypto coins, all a bit sad. Thinking positively, it could just be newsworthy because he is famous and he so misses the mark. Other older famous people might agree with us but that's not news.
mrandish 5mo ago
Given that Dawkins is a biologist in his 80s, I'm more disposed towards being charitable than I am when people actively involved in developing LLMs let themselves get bamboozled.

It is terribly sad when someone undeniably brilliant in a particular field fails to recognize their own incompetence in other areas - in this case mistaking advanced technology for magic.

ChrisClark 5mo ago

So, how is consciousness generated?

wrs 5mo ago
Not simply by reading every word ever written by a conscious being and learning to reproduce them with high probability. At least, that’s certainly not how I got here.
- brookst 5mo ago
  Think of the poor Xerox machines.

rellfy 5mo ago

Are you implying consciousness is magic? Well, I wouldn't disagree with that really.

IncreasePosts 5mo ago

Where does he say it's magic?

ezfe 5mo ago
LLMs are just math run on your CPU. Autocomplete. Sometimes very useful autocomplete, but still just autocomplete. To imply it could be conscious requires something else, here the comment uses the phrase magic to fill that gap - since we must agree that a CPU is not conscious on it's own (else everything our computer does would be conscious).
- baggy_trough 5mo ago
  Neurons are just summing up their inputs according to the laws of chemistry. What's the difference?
  - digitaltrees 5mo ago
    I came here to say this. But your neurons are faster than mine.
  - acdha 5mo ago
    This is definitely complicated—I’m not a neuroscientist but worked for some and married one, so I’ve heard quite a few entries from the genre of how our brains fool ourselves or make our conscious experience seem more coherent and linear than it actually is—but the big ones I see are the inability to learn from experience or have a generalized sense of conceptual reasoning. For the latter, I’m not just thinking about the simple “count the r’s in strawberry” things companies have put so much effort into masking but the way minor changes in a question can get conflicting answers from even the best models, indicating that while there’s something truly fascinating about how they cluster topics it is not the same as having a conceptual model of the world or a theory of mind. This is the huge problem in the field: all of these companies would love to have a model which is safe to use in adversarial contexts because then the mass layoffs could begin in earnest, but the technology just isn’t there. This isn’t a religious argument that there’s something about our brains which can’t be replicated, but simply that it’s sufficiently more complex than anything we have currently.
    - kortex 5mo ago
      Humans can't reliably subitize more than five-ish objects, while chimps can actually do this task better than us. That's our "cant count the R's in strawberry" (which flagship models can reliably do now, general letter counting). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subitizing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subitizing
      - acdha 5mo ago

AdeptusAquinas 5mo ago

That's always been Dawkins's shtick though. As an atheist I've generally found him a bit embarrassing

Myrmornis 5mo ago

I don't think you read carefully what he said. At the end he gave three quite interesting thoughts about what might be true assuming LLMs are less conscious than we are (i.e. assuming our consciousness is not a purely algorithmic phenomenon as we obviously know LLMs are).

morpheos137 5mo ago

the problem is asking if ai is conscious is like asking does ai have a soul. it is not a scientific question and presupposes humans are 'conscious' without even defining the term. to me it is 100% irrelevant if ai is conscious and all discussions about it are based on fallacies and assumptions. what matters to me about ai and matters to other people as well in terms of theory of mind about others is: can i predict how it will work. is it useful. thats it. consciouness is a sophist question with no scientific resolution available and no moral weight until it has consequences.

vixen99 5mo ago
Good - I was scanning down to see if anyone was going to say this.
sirsau 5mo ago
IMHO the only rational way to think about this

thinkingemote 5mo ago

We're going to see increasing numbers of older famous (non computer savvy) figures that we have respected follow his views on this. It's like seeing your favourite celebrity sell out an shill crypto coins, all a bit sad. Thinking positively, it could just be newsworthy because he is famous and he so misses the mark. Other older famous people might agree with us but that's not news.

mrandish 5mo ago

Given that Dawkins is a biologist in his 80s, I'm more disposed towards being charitable than I am when people actively involved in developing LLMs let themselves get bamboozled.