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0 points5423542342359mo ago0 comments

>The question of consciousness is based on what is going on in the inside, how the reasoning happening and not the output.

But we don’t really understand how the reasoning is happening in humans. Tests show that our subconscious, completely outside out conscious understanding, makes decisions before we perceive that we consciously decide something [1]. Our consciousness is the output, but we don’t really know what is running in the subconscious. If something looked at it from an outside perspective, would they say that it was just unconscious programing, giving the appearance of conscious reasoning?

I’m not saying LLMs are conscious. But since we don’t really know what gives us the feeling of consciousness, and we didn’t build and don’t understand the underlying “programing”, it is hard to actually judge a non-organic mind that claims the feeling of consciousness. If you found out today that you were actually a computer program, would you say you weren’t conscious? Would you be able to convince “real” people that you were conscious?

[1] https://qz.com/1569158/neuroscientists-read-unconscious-brai...

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cardanome9mo ago

My point was we can can't prove that LLM's have consciousness. Yes, the reverse is also true. It is possible that we wouldn't really be able to tell if a AI gained consciousness as that might look very differently than we expect.

An important standard for any scientific theory or hypothesis is to be falsifiable . Good old Russell's teapot. We can't disprove that that a small teapot too small to be seen by telescopes, orbits the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars. So should we assume it is true? No the burden of proof lies on those that make the claim.

So yes, I could not 100 percent disprove that certain LLM's don't show signs of consciousness but that is reversing the burden of proof. Those that make the claims that LLM's are capable of suffering, that they show signs of consciousness need to deliver. If they can't, it is reasonable to assume they are full of shit.

People here accuse me to be scholastic and too philosophical but the the reverse is true. Yes, we barely know how human brains work and how consciousness evolved but whoever doesn't see the qualitative difference between a human being and an LLM really needs to touch grass.

542354234235OP9mo ago

I am not saying that LLMs are conscious. What I am saying is that since we don’t really understand what gives rise to our subjective feeling of consciousness, evaluating a non-organic mind is difficult.

For instance, say we had a Westworld type robot that perceived pain, pleasure, happiness, sadness, and reacted accordingly. But that we understood the underlying program, would we say it wasn’t conscious? If we understood our own underlying programing, would we not be “really conscious”?

We say we have LLMs “fake” empathy or feelings but at some point, digital minds will be faking it in a complex way that involves inner “thoughts”, motivations that they “perceive” internally as positive and negative, and various other subjective experiences. It gets very squishy trying to understand how our consciousness isn’t just a fake abstraction on top of the unconscious program, and a digital mind’s abstractions are fake.

Tadpole91819mo ago

In one breath: scientific vigor required for your opposition.

In the next breath: "anyone who disagrees with me is a loser."

> Those that make the claims that LLM's are capable of suffering, that they show signs of consciousness need to deliver. If they can't, it is reasonable to assume they are full of shit.

Replace LLM with any marginalized group. Black people, Jews, etc. I can easily just use this to excuse any heinous crime I want - because you cannot prove that you aren't a philosophical zombie to me.

Defaulting to cruelty in the face of unfalsifiablility is absurd.

suddenlybananas9mo ago

>Replace LLM with any marginalized group. Black people, Jews, etc. I can easily just use this to excuse any heinous crime I want - because you cannot prove that you aren't a philosophical zombie to me.

This is so flatly ridiculous of an analogy that it becomes racist itself. Maybe the bread I eat is conscious and feels pain (the ancient Manichaens thought so!). Are you know going to refrain from eating bread in case it causes suffering? You can't prove bread doesn't feel pain, you might be "defaulting to cruelty"!

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