Artificial Consciousness Is Impossible

[AIkonoklazt]

4 hours ago, Endy0816 said:

Could be set up where it manages a Corporation. Would then, by way of the Corporation, have certain rights.

 

What would convince you AI consciousness was possible?

An individual manager of a corporation isn't the same as a corporation (i.e. a robot manager is still a robot, not a corporation). Even corporations themselves don't have a full set of natural personal rights, nor could even be considered an individual entity for moral consideration and thus any moral right (corporations are collections of people, and not just one person)

I would have to evaluate arguments that I haven't seen before. I've built up the section "responses to counterarguments" over about 6 years of discussion, and the bases are pretty much covered. I've even tried to find a loophole in my own argumentation myself (it's doubly difficult to find loopholes to an argument you've constructed yourself) but nope, someone I spoke with reminded me that loophole basically collapsed to another form of functionalism.

[dimreepr]

9 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

Physical damage isn't the only type of legal claim. Financial and even claimed "emotional damages" can end up in civil proceedings. It's absurd to process claims from an inanimate object, since a claim involves a linguistic referent.

And?

9 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

The only claims involved should be property rights, by the human owners of the tools, and not any purported moral rights of the tools "themselves."

That sounds awfully familiar, slaves weren't considered sentient either; so we're back to simple fear over justice.

It's a strange position that you're failing to support; machines can never be conscious, so let's waist our time legislating against that possibility... 😣 

2 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

I would have to evaluate arguments that I haven't seen before. I've built up the section "responses to counterarguments" over about 6 years of discussion, and the bases are pretty much covered. I've even tried to find a loophole in my own argumentation myself (it's doubly difficult to find loopholes to an argument you've constructed yourself) but nope, someone I spoke with reminded me that loophole basically collapsed to another form of functionalism.

There are no shortcuts or loophole's to understanding, you need rigor; adding an 'ism' to a word without understanding it, just creates a schism... 😉

[AIkonoklazt]

Good grief, you don't even know what loophole I'm talking about. You're just taking any opportunity for shots.

Blocked.

[StringJunky]

57 minutes ago, AIkonoklazt said:

Good grief, you don't even know what loophole I'm talking about. You're just taking any opportunity for shots.

Blocked.

If you are narked because nobody's playing ball with you... welcome to presenting ideas in a science forum.

Edited November 29, 2023 by StringJunky

[Alysdexic]

On 5/30/2022 at 12:14 PM, TheVat said:

I think he tried to preserve his earlier position by saying that if you have to mimick biological structures and dynamics so much to engineer a truly sentient machine, then you have admitted that purely syntactical processing never will.

If conscioseness is a material (biologhic, not "biologically," redundant) state, arising from a fýsic stem, pop scientists would say that solid, liquid, gas, and plasma are the relevant states of matter, but the problem with that is those are really groups of states. Then there are also fluid, ionic, and populations that other scientists mistake for states like spin condensates, Boltzmann inversion, spin glasses. So instead I will introduce here a complete distinction between the states that I wrote up many years ago:

wetstuff matrix, 11 of 66 states
k_4 (i, ionic) seth, split: ZYX ΘΩΔ
7 (r, radical) dreft, fitt: zyx δ
6 (d, dissociate) loof, splint: zyx ωδ Z
5 (g, gaseose) welk, blast: zyx θωδ Z
4 (v, vapid) steam, gust: zyx θωδ ZY
3 (l, liqvid) dew, burst: zyx ωδ ZY Θ
2 (lc, l. crýstallic) slush, spit: yx ωδ ZY ΘΩ
1 (m, maghmatic) snow, clot: x δ ZYX ΘΩΔ
0 (a, amorfic) ise, brunt: [ZYX] [ΘΩΔ]
i (f, fibrillar) hoarf, straiht: Z[YX] Θ[ΩΔ]
j (hx, hecsaghònic) frost, dint: ZY[X] ΘΩ[Δ]
k_3 (c, cubic) quenk, splat: ZYX ΘΩΔ
n_6 nuclea, protonium-meside
n_5 nuclei, fissilium-meside
n_4 plasmata, nuclium-elèctride
n_3 molecula, compostium-elèctride
n_2 neutria, neutronium-neutrinide
n_1 neutra, pentaquarkonium-neutrinide

The solid states are usually called allotropes, but I combined the several allotropes into the few primitives. Tetragonal and orthorhombic are really polýcubic. Monoclinic I renamed fibrillar. The variables after the states represent linear and angular free and bound dimensions, degrees of freedom, that I think each state has. Note that I distinguish between gas and vapor, where the latter is bound by gravity and van der Waals fields. The name for the dust or powder state, mag[h]matic, I found on Dictionary.com, not the colloid or suspension it lists alongside for magma. The conventional solid-fluid-plasma divisions they teach in high school are somewhat useful but they aren’t unique or modern (nor do the kingdoms of life perfectly work)—the conduction band of metals can be called a plasma, as can the solvated-to-free iòns of a solution. Solidity and fluidity arbitrarily depend on spatial and temporal scale.

The mind, when in the brain, depends on dew-salt-wax sap in flesh-dye-fat skin quickened by wax-dye-breath blood. The active bodies trace 0D (radical), 1D (dissociate, liqvid, fibrillar), 2D (hecsaghònic, l. crýstallic), and 3D (maghmatic) molecular shapes and 0D, 1D, and 2D plasmatic shapes, at least. Which stage is active depends on whether the charges are bound or free. All of the nonmolecular stage names repeat; ionic and cubic are equivalent 3D names for the same state. The wax includes sterols and amines—neurotransmitters. The salt shifts and steers these neurotransmitters. Awareness is afforded by the neural anharmonic-current pilot-wave reservoir as in OrchOR and de Broglie-Bohm theory.

The mind, when umbe the brain, depends on the same matter but displaced yesterward and afterward by its bipolar-complex mass, vis, charge, and celerity in TIQM. (1D: on:off, 2D: at:out, 3D: in:umbe.) This matter when time-shifted also redshifts and blueshifts such that it usually interacts only in the DC-limit—that is, by touch—but may overload camera equipment that relies on semiconductors too in the UV. Maybe brains that aren’t fully myelinized like of toddlers, kids, and livestock thus easilier see and remember gosts and past lives—as they report—than of adults. This lack of insulator increases the induced dipole moments and the range of signal reception. A similar experiment you can do is wet your trackpad then see you can control the cursor inches above it, but this relies on more of the capacitative-inductive conductor.

Humans are consciose because they are material and animals (sentient and sapient; remember that sapiens means man, a being with a mind). Animal by definition as well is a being with a soul (animus). Spirit is material, whether it means breath or booze. It was a Vulgate mistranslation of pneýma which in Latin is vis and English wit; pneýma itself was the reflex or counterpart of ŕuax which means wind and should be understanden as a female god (actually the mother and wife of the heavenly father). This animative material of the mind, as it's still material, was supplanted in medieval times by humors and in modern times by hormones and neurotransmitters. Hormone itself is cognate with serum.

[TheVat]

What?

[AIkonoklazt]

9 hours ago, StringJunky said:

If you are narked because nobody's playing ball with you... welcome to presenting ideas in a science forum.

Right. I was talking about trying to find holes in my own argumentation, and someone decides to talk that down, including you.

This is what I get from an anonymous forum.

Oh, and someone who forgot to take their meds chiming in after your reply.

[Eise]

6 hours ago, Alysdexic said:

If conscioseness is a material (biologhic, not "biologically," redundant) state, arising from a fýsic stem, pop scientists would say that solid, liquid, gas, and plasma are the relevant states of matter, but the problem with that is those are really groups of states. Then there are also ...

No philosophy here. Neither science. Just a list of crackpot ideas, completely detached from reality and the discussion in this thread.

[AIkonoklazt]

1 minute ago, Eise said:

No philosophy here. Neither science. Just a list of crackpot ideas, completely detached from reality and the discussion in this thread.

For a moment there I actually thought it was stolen from the Copypasta subreddit

(maybe I should copy-pasta THAT onto r/copypasta...)

[dimreepr]

8 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

Right. I was talking about trying to find holes in my own argumentation, and someone decides to talk that down, including you.

This is what I get from an anonymous forum.

Nope, this is what you get when you can't defend your position, or even answer direct questions; if you want my name and address just DM me... 😉

You can block me if you want but you're only hindering your own 'loophole to understanding', not bc of my outstanding teaching ability, but bc you don't listen to reasoned arguments. 

[Alysdexic]

On 11/30/2023 at 12:34 AM, AIkonoklazt said:

(maybe I should copy-pasta THAT onto r/copypasta...)

If you knew the names I use on the internet (Alysdexic) and my activity you'd know I argue how wrong the world is. So populism can't support itself for propriety.

I'm already posted on /r/copypasta, /r/badlinguistics, /r/iamverysmart, etc.; libelled, misrepresented, abused where I can't defend myself, since Reddit has banned me without reason eight or nine times now after mass false reporting.

I'v also received a warning here for that comment for no reason at all except the admin didn't like it and wants to ban me. Pet peeve: "Admins" who like to use power and are very rude and arrogant to users who don't post the exact kind of ideas and arguments they would like in the pool, or users who don't discuss the way the admins order them to, and when a person can insult another and get away with it because the other person is and does controversial and dispopular.

Nothing I'v done calls for banning me anywhere; in deed, every incident that I'v been in was caused by someone ignorant, irrational, and uncouth reporting me to authorities because I had done something to correct or improve a space that they did not understand. Here I'm met with rashness and insults like "autistic" ("on the spectrum") or "mentally ill" for commenting when I'v not insulted anyone, and the administrators threaten the victim rather than the offenders. I'm not even allowed to defend myself against false claims and insults without being further censored and abused.

People would prefer to gang up on someone who onely "bothers" them for a cause so that they can keep living in a merry, carefree fantasy. Not onely do the authorities here and everywhere else not care about others insulting me with ableist libel, the admins themselvs make up claims against my sanity without being able to back up any bit of it. I know my attackers are disturbed by how they talk to and insult me; I know this of anyone (disturbed, irrelevant, escapist, demented) whose temper would be riled by someone who just tells them what they should know. But I never report them, or any other user who give me problems, because I don't waste the right to talk and not ignore like an ignoramus. I can disprove any complaint against me in the forum or any thread that bickering starts in, yet others would ignore such. Because they're immature tattletales, they go tell on me because they don't know what to say or do on their part; they think of me as a pest rather than a guide because they are too young or inexperienced to handle what I hav to say about everyone and everything, which has never been shown wrong.

Look at the claims from other threads on this site and Reddit: How am I mentally ill? What is the diagnosis? If people bothered reading my comments on Reddit, they'd know that I don't hav Asperger's Syndrome or autism but just the opposite: deep insight into the minds of people, which is how I understand them. It is how I'v made a connection with a few people I was interested in online, having learnt very little about them, yet was able to mention just the song, show, or subject that they were most into; and in each case they were awed, and asked how I knew. I hav many talents that others cannot pierce, so they're mocked and twisted to make me look bad to give everyone else none of the blame.

I'm here because I got distracted from reading and chatting elsewhere, distracted from researching elsewhere, distracted from playing elsewhere. My speech is no more free than soap and I can't go all out on what I hate, because that would take a chapter, or several, and get me banned. An admin will probably warn me again for defending myself here. I hate both free speech and censorship, because neither depends on truth determining the law or rule.

Also, a thing is not incoherent for others' lack of understanding, as the admin accused. The comments I'm replying to now are bullying me and threatening to harass me, even off-site, yet the admin do nothing. I need action taken against "AIkonoklazt" for threatening me. He and others like him are the ones disrupting the forum, but the admins would rather abuse their power against me and let the users insult me with diagnoses that they don't even know or grasp the meanings of.

Edited December 4, 2023 by Alysdexic

[Phi for All]

43 minutes ago, Alysdexic said:

I'v also received a warning here for that comment for no reason at all except the admin didn't like it and wants to ban me.

Did you read what you wrote in that post? It was garbage from one end to the other, got reported multiple times, so you got a warning point for it, and an admonition to argue in good faith rather than insult us with word salad. Humans are conscious because they're material?! Give me a break.

46 minutes ago, Alysdexic said:

Pet peeve: "Admins" who like to use power and are very rude and arrogant to users who don't post the exact kind of ideas and arguments they would like in the pool, or users who don't discuss the way the admins order them to, and when a person can insult another and get away with it because the other person is and does controversial and dispopular.

I'm a moderator who enforces the rules the site owners have. Your post was reported as spamming the Philosophy boards. You broke a rule, and now you think it was rude, arrogant, and insulting to hold you to the same standards as other members. It's not up to me to judge popularity or controversial topics. I just enforce the rules, which you broke. Take some responsibility, please.

51 minutes ago, Alysdexic said:

Nothing I'v done calls for banning me anywhere; in deed, every incident that I'v been in was caused by someone ignorant, irrational, and uncouth reporting me to authorities because I had done something to correct or improve a space that they did not understand.

Who is calling for you to be banned? Objecting to your breaking the rules is NOT calling for a ban. 

Also, please be aware you just claimed you've always behaved perfectly, and it's always others who are wrong.

55 minutes ago, Alysdexic said:

Here I'm met with rashness and insults like "autistic" ("on the spectrum") or "mentally ill" for commenting when I'v not insulted anyone, and the administrators threaten the victim rather than the offenders. I'm not even allowed to defend myself against false claims and insults without being further censored and abused.

Why didn't you report the person who used "autistic" as an insult, or called you "mentally ill"? Report it now, and I'll deal with the problem, since that's unacceptable.

And where were you censored? Staff can see when posts have been edited and who did the edits. All your words seem to be intact. Can you point to where you've been censored?

[Alysdexic]

On 11/29/2023 at 5:37 AM, AIkonoklazt said:

An individual manager of a corporation isn't the same as a corporation (i.e. a robot manager is still a robot, not a corporation). Even corporations themselves don't have a full set of natural personal rights, nor could even be considered an individual entity for moral consideration and thus any moral right (corporations are collections of people, and not just one person)

I would have to evaluate arguments that I haven't seen before. I've built up the section "responses to counterarguments" over about 6 years of discussion, and the bases are pretty much covered. I've even tried to find a loophole in my own argumentation myself (it's doubly difficult to find loopholes to an argument you've constructed yourself) but nope, someone I spoke with reminded me that loophole basically collapsed to another form of functionalism.

You conflate unrelated ideas and makes ambiguous or controversial assertions. You distinguish wrihtly between an individual manager and a corporation but err in the robot-manager analoghy. You note wrihtly that corporations lack full personal rights but ignore their legal rights. You assert in absolute corporations cannot be considered individuals morally (not shown or proven, up for debate). Corporations can face moral/ethical consequences (moral and ethical [and thewly] are the same word). You claim to hav considered all counterarguments and loopholes but already failed to consider a few in this post, unless you think you are immune to rebuttal.

Also (a few):

"An individual manager of a corporation isn't the same as a corporation" -> An individual manager of a corporation differs from the corporation itself.
"Even corporations themselves don't have a full set of natural personal rights" -> Corporations lack a full set of natural personal rights.
"nor could even be considered an individual entity for moral consideration" -> Nor can they be considered individual entities for moral consideration.
"I've built up the section 'responses to counterarguments' over about 6 years of discussion" -> I constructed the 'responses to counterarguments' section over six years of discussion.
"I've even tried to find a loophole in my own argumentation myself" -> I attempted to find a loophole in my argumentation.
"but nope, someone I spoke with reminded me that loophole basically collapsed to another form of functionalism" -> Yet, a discussion reminded me that a perceived loophole collapsed into another form of functionalism.

Maybe if you could write that would help.

1 hour ago, Phi for All said:

Did you read what you wrote in that post? It was garbage from one end to the other, got reported multiple times, so you got a warning point for it, and an admonition to argue in good faith rather than insult us with word salad. Humans are conscious because they're material?! Give me a break.

I'll give you a brain instead.

Neuroscience shows a clear link between brain (material) processes and consciose experience. Brain damage (do you know about that?) can cause alterations or loss of conscioseness; neuroimaging studies associate brain regions with distinct experiences (maybe you are a localisationist who denies plasticity, or believe in some supernatural, supermental crap?). The theòry of emergence argues conscioseness, a complex property (and all properties are of nature, so material), arises from simpler components throuh their interactions, suggesting a material basis for conscioseness. Physicalism (fýsicalism), supported by many philosophers of mind (I don't care about popularity fallacies but I can see you do), argues mental states, including conscioseness, originate from fýsic (physic[al]) brain processes. Acknowledging or arguing conscioseness has a material foundation does not trivialise its complexity or nature, and should not warrant a warning or "spam" reports.

1 hour ago, Phi for All said:

I'm a moderator who enforces the rules the site owners have. Your post was reported as spamming the Philosophy boards. You broke a rule, and now you think it was rude, arrogant, and insulting to hold you to the same standards as other members. It's not up to me to judge popularity or controversial topics. I just enforce the rules, which you broke. Take some responsibility, please.

I am not responisibil for others' lack of understanding or unwillingness to try to understand a thing. These standards are prejudicial, preconceived, inbred, dishonest, dogmatic, manipulative, hýpocritic. You cannot (Hmm, some people ignorant of English might see that as a misspelling with the way writing now goes—I shudder!) justify how a single post is "spam." I expect users on a scienty and philosophy forum to be able to imagine something that isn't real beyond their weak and flaky constitutions. (You should know what I expect doesn't make a thing good or bad, or wriht or wrong, neither does what anyone else expects.) People's actions or reactions, no matter how many and many people they come from, are no reasons in and by themselvs to establish a community standard. If users cannot back themselvs up with reason, they hav nothing.

Conformity is an arbitrary standard. It is met by whoever sets the metes and bounds for each case. So there are many instances of people here conforming, and many not. But I do not subscribe to this groundless sham, when others insult and threaten and attack, and many others don't get what they deserve because no one is mass and fraudulently reporting them.

1 hour ago, Phi for All said:

Who is calling for you to be banned? Objecting to your breaking the rules is NOT calling for a ban. 

Also, please be aware you just claimed you've always behaved perfectly, and it's always others who are wrong.

What rule did I break? How is my comment spam? The many who would and do speak up against me are so poorly-articulated that they cannot even back their grievances, and can't even try. They cannot even show the least bit how my comments are off-topic, spam, or wrong.

Something I promise is that if everyone thouht and behaved like me, the world would be perfect, someday. This is because I try to take advantage of everything I hav to hav more, and so I get what I want. Others do not so they're not getting what they want. This group looks like it's divided between people who would choose either fight or flight, but not both. You prefer not to take advantage of the fact that we are both living, reading, and talking beings and so do not fulfil the means to the end by using like for like. As if I were a weed that's grown too much you go behind and cut me out, instead of telling me what you want and fear of me, why, and how, if you can. Your approach has many qualifications. What about nonbilious arrogance, variably correcting, or specifically being? If you do not give the limits, there are none, and whatever you'v planted will go and grow forever. And it will hav no idea what you say if you say you meant otherwise. So what hav I done wrong, beyond post something some tattletales didn't like? Do you accept how you and other people make up stuff about me, like "mentally ill," "incoherent" (implying mental disorder), "on the spectrum"? Did you not even read my appeal? Is it because you hate feelings or meanings or anything put eloquently?

1 hour ago, Phi for All said:

Why didn't you report the person who used "autistic" as an insult, or called you "mentally ill"? Report it now, and I'll deal with the problem, since that's unacceptable.

I already said why I didn't report it. A better question: why do people report me for expressing myself but don't report the insults and threats against me? (See how folk get irritated when they hav to learn something or thenk for themselvs or at all.) I hav gone on unchecked in many places, and gone against many lowly authorities like yourself who had varying amounts of moderating power, and I hav silenced and parted them because I exposed and destroyed their specious lies that they no doubt learned under an emotional screen, if they did not block and ban me first. I hav stopped many a controversial thread and question with my sheer, open, relentless thouht.

1 hour ago, Phi for All said:

And where were you censored? Staff can see when posts have been edited and who did the edits. All your words seem to be intact. Can you point to where you've been censored?

Your warning is threatening the victim rather than the offenders. I am censored by its insidiose implication. I spammed nothing. Users report me because they are corrupt, abusive and liars and censors. Every one of my comments is a correction or improvement, and others would rather not be corrected when they see what a great difference lies between their kenth and the truthe (or sooth). Admins are regularly allowed to break policies and rules that they enforce, and which I wraid, and their ilk don't mind because it's for their side.

I hav to deal with illiterates, malliterates, and mindlesses every day over the internet, who criticize and badmouth others and me because they can't see how they slipped up. They can't support their attacks, and they use a host of fallacies to defend themselvs whilst doing nothing to expose whatever wrongness was in the claim, or they report and duck. And often the victims get punished, but they don't; they get to keep running around thinking that they got the best. And no one watching, including you, is the more competent to switch back the harm.

So I'm wronged everyday by the rubbish people say and do, and can't stand them. I could preface every comment I write with: "You might not like this!" to soften it for softer heads, but any preface put in my comments would be a waste of time, obvious to me by the sheer lot I must always do (maybe I should also add: "Nobody's better than anybody." "Be yourself." "Love everyone." "It makes me so angry that people don't accept people for who they are." "Don't be mean." to every comment I write, since saving peoples' feelings is more important than wrihtness and sooth). Any comment I make that improves a space that is reported or downvoted or removed by another user or admin is vandalism and abuse. The users and admins here and elsewhere who do not understand this simple and universal rule should be reprimanded and removed of their posting and admin privileges until they do.

Regardless, I hav known everything your ilk could tell me, and expected such a sorry solution. Not that I'm not used to being abused like this, by people who hav no idea what they do and who don't care. There are more important rules than those a few people here hav thought of, which I should and must uphold.

Edited December 4, 2023 by Alysdexic

[AIkonoklazt]

(Think I spoke too soon when I said I will only need to block one person...)

Got handed multiple papers to read by contacts. Two of them here:

1. "Inruption theory" of consciousness (given to me in response to me mentioning underdetermination. The theory proposes making use of increasing and decreasing amount of underdetermination detected in future experiments)

https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/25/5/748

My summary conclusion is that the theory is useful for advancing the science. It does, however, admit that it still doesn't provide a specific modeling of the mechanism. This fits George E. P. Box's aphorism "All models are wrong, some are useful."

The paper's author happens to be in the thread, and agreed.

 

2. A about meaning and whether current LLMs are capable of understanding the meaning of words and language https://www.academia.edu/86274770/Dumb_Meaning_Machine_Learning_and_Artificial_Semantics

The paper is very well written in its exposition of the grounding problem, which makes some of the same point I did in my article.

However... I completely disagree with the solution that's being presented, namely:
a. It accepts subsymbolic/connectionist systems as "not programmed" when in fact they are STILL programmed (e.g. neural nets have algorithms which of course are programmed and thus still not actually learning (this is basically a major quibble of mine, and not actually his "solution" or anything as much as the treatment of the issue, but thought I'd mention)
b. It seeks to branch out the meaning of the term "meaning" itself which is a complete no-no, especially when the author already mentioned the warning that were given by experts regarding terms like "intelligence". Okay, noting the effects of correspondence is fine, but please please PLEASE don't call it "meaning." It's the whole "intelligence" and "learning" obfuscation disasters all over again, with most people just misinterpreting those technical terms (neglecting or flat out ignorant of their technical meanings) when mixed with venacular usage.

If anyone has a paper they want to refer me to in support of whatever point they want to make, feel free to give me a link but please state what particular point(s) I'm supposed to take from it.

[TheVat]

I remain highly skeptical that LLMs can skirt the symbol grounding problem.  They are handling semantically empty signifiers and this won't change unless their deepest architecture could somehow become self-renovating and reactive to the world in a manner that....well then they would not really still be LLMs in any meaningful sense.  

I am not saying an artificial semantics is flat out impossible, but it seems to me something that arises when an entity must survive and adapt to the world (though not necessarily in our particular human ways of doing so) and exist in an evolutionary relationship to other entities.  But I'll read Bajohr's paper, beyond the intro, and see what is meant by "dumb meaning."  It sounds pretty fuzzy.

Thanks for keeping the  thread going btw.  

[AIkonoklazt]

On 12/5/2023 at 4:53 PM, TheVat said:

I remain highly skeptical that LLMs can skirt the symbol grounding problem.  They are handling semantically empty signifiers and this won't change unless their deepest architecture could somehow become self-renovating and reactive to the world in a manner that....well then they would not really still be LLMs in any meaningful sense.  

I am not saying an artificial semantics is flat out impossible, but it seems to me something that arises when an entity must survive and adapt to the world (though not necessarily in our particular human ways of doing so) and exist in an evolutionary relationship to other entities.  But I'll read Bajohr's paper, beyond the intro, and see what is meant by "dumb meaning."  It sounds pretty fuzzy.

Thanks for keeping the  thread going btw.  

I know there are many of us who are waiting for the LLM hype cycle to blow over so the AI field can finally move forward again. Yes, LLMs are "empty calories" as far as the substance of their mechanisms are concerned.

I see AGI and AI consciousness as two completely separate topics, because the "AI" in "AGI" is a technical denotation with a performative meaning. While conscious machines are impossible, AGI to me as inevitable; It's just a matter of getting all the behaviors in. If behaviors is all people look for, then sooner or later they're just going to get those behaviors. Some people equate behaviors with consciousness, and that's bad.

It also bothers me that basically all the literature out there frames the problem as a problem with understanding minds, instead of understanding what a machine fundamentally is and does (...hello? We're building a machine, right? These things don't build themselves you know...)

p.s. Someone please do something about Anthis and his crackpot "Institute" https://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/3914567-we-need-an-ai-rights-movement/

[AIkonoklazt]

Saw this paper referenced in a CS professor's LinkedIn post:
 

Are Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models a Mirage? https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.15004.pdf

 It is listed as one of the 13 Biggest AI Stories of 2023 reported by Stanford HAI https://hai.stanford.edu/news/13-biggest-ai-stories-2023

NeurIPS selected that paper as one of the two Best Papers https://blog.neurips.cc/2023/12/11/announcing-the-neurips-2023-paper-awards/

The point made is pretty straightforward: it is the metrics used in experiments that make LLM behaviors that aren't really emergent seem emergent:
 

Quote

How might smooth, continuous, predictable changes in model family performance appear sharp and unpredictable? The answer is that the researcher’s choice of a nonlinear or discontinuous metric can distort the model family’s performance to appear sharp and unpredictable.

 

Then again, as I've said before, emergence as forward-looking statements are vacuous and content free; You can't make any predictions with those "something will happen and we have no idea how" statements: https://ykulbashian.medium.com/emergence-isnt-an-explanation-it-s-a-prayer-ef239d3687bf

[AIkonoklazt]

Let's talk quantum computing, since that's been in the news recently https://newsroom.ibm.com/2023-12-04-IBM-Debuts-Next-Generation-Quantum-Processor-IBM-Quantum-System-Two,-Extends-Roadmap-to-Advance-Era-of-Quantum-Utility

We'll start by being LUDICROUSLY generous and optimistic with the ability for quantum computers to straight up bypass computability issues, meaning if I even see one instance of quantum computers being able to solve something classical computers can't, regardless of how long it takes any computer to solve anything, then I'll just assume that it applies to ALL POSSIBLE CASES.

Here's one case so okay! https://www.quantamagazine.org/finally-a-problem-that-only-quantum-computers-will-ever-be-able-to-solve-20180621/

Case closed, right? Quantum computer computes consciousness, consciousness computable according to this (ludicrous) interpretation, end of story.

........Not so fast.

Quantum computers don't make algorithms go away. They're just doing different operations instead of NOT doing them. You'd still need a computational model. This sends everything back to functionalism, and how it falls flat on its face.

This means even if you change Asimov's random-buzzword-inspired "Positronic brain" (yes, I did "read Asimov," more than 30 years ago.......) to a more realistic "Quantum mechanical brain," it isn't going to make a dent in anything.

 

[iNow]

3 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

the ability for quantum computers to straight up bypass computability issues, meaning if I even see one instance of quantum computers being able to solve something classical computers can't, regardless of how long it takes any computer to solve anything, then I'll just assume that it applies to ALL POSSIBLE CASES.

Nice strawman. The idea is they can be linked indefinitely allowing nearly unrestricted processing power. The limits are financial and resource based, not technical… and nobody is saying there won’t be exceptions. 

3 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

it isn't going to make a dent in anything.

You are so confident about your predictions regarding the future, practically dogmatic and preachy and soapboxxing. Maybe use your powers for something more rewarding like buying lotto tickets (since you can see the future and all).

[dimreepr]

34 minutes ago, iNow said:

Nice strawman. The idea is they can be linked indefinitely allowing nearly unrestricted processing power. The limits are financial and resource based, not technical… and nobody is saying there won’t be exceptions. 

You are so confident about your predictions regarding the future, practically dogmatic and preachy and soapboxxing. Maybe use your powers for something more rewarding like buying lotto tickets (since you can see the future and all).

I would have answered, but apparently he doesn't like or listen to my discourse, whatever... 

[iNow]

He’s been soapboxxing for a long time now. Chip on shoulder. Axe to grind. Seems to have an agenda… 

[StringJunky]

1 hour ago, iNow said:

He’s been soapboxxing for a long time now. Chip on shoulder. Axe to grind. Seems to have an agenda… 

Over-confidence is antithetical to a good scientific approach.

[Phi for All]

6 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

Let's talk quantum computing, since that's been in the news recently

!

Moderator Note

OK, 17 pages into this discussion, and I'd like to know if any of the input you've gotten has persuaded you to soften your position, or if it's been of no value and you stand by it adamantly. Nobody wants to discuss any subject with a preacher, someone who has no intention of being persuaded by any argument. Please give a brief summary of what, if anything, you've taken on board wrt this discussion. 

 

[TheVat]

I went back and read the Chomsky interview, at an MIT symposium about ten years ago, where he talks about cognitive science and AI.  I think he has a lot to say to this thread.  I will try to find a PW free screenshot if possible.

Quote

Noam Chomsky, speaking in the symposium, wasn't so enthused. Chomsky critiqued the field of AI for adopting an approach reminiscent of behaviorism, except in more modern, computationally sophisticated form. Chomsky argued that the field's heavy use of statistical techniques to pick regularities in masses of data is unlikely to yield the explanatory insight that science ought to offer. For Chomsky, the "new AI"—focused on using statistical learning techniques to better mine and predict data— is unlikely to yield general principles about the nature of intelligent beings or about cognition.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/noam-chomsky-on-where-artificial-intelligence-went-wrong/261637/

Ah!  Found a nice clean archive screenshot....

https://archive.is/2023.10.18-114835/https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/noam-chomsky-on-where-artificial-intelligence-went-wrong/261637/

 

This interview uncovers an important ongoing debate in the philosophy of science, as to how best to get at the deeper workings of things.  I don't think you will regret reading it.

[iNow]

Thanks for the interesting link, Vat. 

When I hear claims like those above, they sound to my ear like someone 100 years ago similarly proclaiming loudly that planes will NEVER go supersonic or get us to the moon.