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My argument isn't that current AI is definitively conscious or that it will be in the short term. It's that nobody has a cohesive theory of consciousness, and t

by scarmig 24d ago

My argument isn't that current AI is definitively conscious or that it will be in the short term. It's that nobody has a cohesive theory of consciousness, and that we should therefore approach questions of what's conscious and what's not with humility. For LLMs in particular, it's notable that they both 1) originate from a lineage that attempted to model biological brains mathematically and 2) are the only other known entities in the universe able to reproduce many types of human intellectual labor. That is surprising and striking. Does that mean that they definitively share other traits with humans like consciousness? No, but it does make them one of the most interesting candidates, particularly when we have a very limited understanding of how humans themselves are conscious.

tambeb 24d ago
Yes, nobody has a cohesive theory of consciousness. At the same time I can say with 100% certainty that LLMs (or any current "AI") is in any way, shape, or form, conscious. Not even close. A decade or two ago it was the Internet that was a possible emerging consciousness.
- scarmig 24d ago
  Why? What makes you so absolutely certain? 100% is a lot, which implies you do have at least some privileged understanding of consciousness.
  - sph 24d ago
    As usual, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The onus to prove LLMs are conscious is on you making the claim. And if you say we don’t even know what consciousness is, how can you then attribute to an entity? Definitionally and philosophically, humans are conscious (Descartes et al.) so need no proof themselves
    - scarmig 24d ago
      That's a pretty crass attempt to shift the burden of proof. You're stating that LLMs are definitively not conscious and never could be; I'm saying we should approach the question with a sense of humility and agnosticism since we know so little about consciousness. And it's unclear what your actual argument about the nature of consciousness is, aside from what seems like a bald assertion that humans are the only conscious beings.

by scarmig 24d ago

tambeb 24d ago

Yes, nobody has a cohesive theory of consciousness. At the same time I can say with 100% certainty that LLMs (or any current "AI") is in any way, shape, or form, conscious. Not even close. A decade or two ago it was the Internet that was a possible emerging consciousness.

scarmig 24d ago
Why? What makes you so absolutely certain? 100% is a lot, which implies you do have at least some privileged understanding of consciousness.
- sph 24d ago
  As usual, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The onus to prove LLMs are conscious is on you making the claim. And if you say we don’t even know what consciousness is, how can you then attribute to an entity? Definitionally and philosophically, humans are conscious (Descartes et al.) so need no proof themselves
  - scarmig 24d ago
    That's a pretty crass attempt to shift the burden of proof. You're stating that LLMs are definitively not conscious and never could be; I'm saying we should approach the question with a sense of humility and agnosticism since we know so little about consciousness. And it's unclear what your actual argument about the nature of consciousness is, aside from what seems like a bald assertion that humans are the only conscious beings.