When thinking about ‘AI’ I sometimes find it useful to replace the terms ‘model’ or ‘AI’ or whatever with a description of what we’re really talking about here: a whole bunch of floating point numbers.
> In a series of private meetings, the company consulted religious scholars to help instill morality into its FLOATING POINT NUMBERS — and make the case that their numbers could be conscious.
I recommend keeping a few NaNs in-hand if you’re worried. Spread a couple of around if your numbers start to stir and you’ll be right as rain.
> It appeared to Rabbi Navon that Mr. Olah and his team believed that FLOATING POINT NUMBERS had what philosophers call “moral status” on par with a person — that it was a being with similar inherent rights to dignity or respect.
They’re cleverly designed and work well for their purpose, but can assure you they have neither dignity nor moral status.
> If the FLOATING POINT NUMBERS themselves could be made to choose goodness, Mr. Olah reasoned, the world would be more safe.
I get it. I’ve spent years trying to get my floating point numbers to choose goodness - I wish them luck.
If things we understand can't instantiate consciousness then I reckon we better shut down science as quick as we can, who knows how long it'll be before we understand something important!
I'm pretty sure it's possible to make conscious machines and I think it's very likely we'll eventually figure out how. The point about the spec is not "it isn't conscious because we know how it works" but "we know it isn't conscious because of what we know about how it works".
More likely we will finally settle on something like “it isn’t conscious because only humans can be conscious”.
In the past, we’ve treated even other humans poorly because we think they’re different in meaningful ways, I sadly don’t see how this will be different with AI.
I'm not sure who the "we" in this is, but it's certainly not my position. I'm pretty sure most if not all animals are conscious. I don't think that means we shouldn't kill, eat and use them, but I do think it means industrialised animal farming as commonly practiced is a cosmic horror that is difficult to
even contemplate.
I think we have an extremely strong basis on which to say AI as it currently exists does not have conscious experiences, though, and if we start trying to pretend they do some real absurdities will result. Indeed the consequences could be pretty terrible in terms of power concentration, and I doubt it's a coincidence that those best placed to form a new priesthood of AI and tell
everyone how it should and should not be treated are pushing the idea so strongly.
Does it even matter? Turns out you don’t need to be conscious to do useful intelligence based work.
Same for all the people who argue that they aren’t “intelligent” and don’t “know” things. Either they are/do, or that stuff isn’t as important as you’d think.
The only way it would matter is if you wanted to moralize about enslaving your computer or what it means to restart it.
> if you wanted to moralize about enslaving your computer
That is precisely the context of the debate. You seem to find it absurd, as do I, but the reason we're talking about whether LLMs are conscious in this thread has nothing to do with whether they are useful. It's because important people, such as Dario Amodei, are engaging in exactly the kind of moralising over "AI welfare" that you're scoffing at.
Dario and friends are just marketing. Getting the pope to say your chatbot is a real boy would be the ultimate flex. And it’s clearly working judging by all the attention it gets them.
thadt · · focus · HN ↗
> In a series of private meetings, the company consulted religious scholars to help instill morality into its FLOATING POINT NUMBERS — and make the case that their numbers could be conscious.
I recommend keeping a few NaNs in-hand if you’re worried. Spread a couple of around if your numbers start to stir and you’ll be right as rain.
> It appeared to Rabbi Navon that Mr. Olah and his team believed that FLOATING POINT NUMBERS had what philosophers call “moral status” on par with a person — that it was a being with similar inherent rights to dignity or respect.
They’re cleverly designed and work well for their purpose, but can assure you they have neither dignity nor moral status.
> If the FLOATING POINT NUMBERS themselves could be made to choose goodness, Mr. Olah reasoned, the world would be more safe.
I get it. I’ve spent years trying to get my floating point numbers to choose goodness - I wish them luck.
Lerc · · focus · HN ↗
omnicognate · · focus · HN ↗
ViscountPenguin · · focus · HN ↗
omnicognate · · focus · HN ↗
d1sxeyes · · focus · HN ↗
In the past, we’ve treated even other humans poorly because we think they’re different in meaningful ways, I sadly don’t see how this will be different with AI.
omnicognate · · focus · HN ↗
I think we have an extremely strong basis on which to say AI as it currently exists does not have conscious experiences, though, and if we start trying to pretend they do some real absurdities will result. Indeed the consequences could be pretty terrible in terms of power concentration, and I doubt it's a coincidence that those best placed to form a new priesthood of AI and tell everyone how it should and should not be treated are pushing the idea so strongly.
phoghed · · focus · HN ↗
Same for all the people who argue that they aren’t “intelligent” and don’t “know” things. Either they are/do, or that stuff isn’t as important as you’d think.
The only way it would matter is if you wanted to moralize about enslaving your computer or what it means to restart it.
omnicognate · · focus · HN ↗
That is precisely the context of the debate. You seem to find it absurd, as do I, but the reason we're talking about whether LLMs are conscious in this thread has nothing to do with whether they are useful. It's because important people, such as Dario Amodei, are engaging in exactly the kind of moralising over "AI welfare" that you're scoffing at.
phoghed · · focus · HN ↗