1mo ago

AI could already be conscious. Are we ready for it?

www.bbc.co.uk

The people who think AI might become conscious

Do you think AI is, or could become, conscious?

I think AI might one day emulate consciousness to a high level of accuracy, but that wouldn't mean it would actually be conscious.

This article mentions a Google engineer who "argued that AI chatbots could feel things and potentially suffer". But surely in order to "feel things" you would need a nervous system right? When you feel pain from touching something very hot, it's your nerves that are sending those pain signals to your brain... right?

56 comments

There is still no good definition for what "consciousness" is
Tech writers are constantly overreaching because they're afraid to miss out on being the first to say something
The constant sensationalism just means that if something really happens, people will ignore it because we're sick of hearing people cry "wolf!"
Add to that the fact that computery types like to overextrapolate into other things because it fuels their fantasies, and it's all bullshit and overactive imaginations
The problem I see so often with smart computer people is that they don't understand that they don't know shit about other things
- There is still no good definition for what “consciousness” is
  This is absolutely the main problem, the only "definition" we have is "I think therefore I am", but that only works subjectively.
  We have no way currently to prove consciousness in an AI. And as you say, we don't even have a solid definition commonly agreed upon.
  I believe we will achieve consciousness on a human level in AI within a decade.
  I also believe consciousness is a gradual thing, and just because animals aren't as smart as we are, doesn't mean they aren't "conscious".
  But with AI things are a bit reversed, because AI became smart first, and will only become conscious later.
  
  I believe we will achieve consciousness on a human level in AI within a decade.
  Have you ever seen 2001 A Space Odyssey? This grift never ends.
- There is still no good definition for what "consciousness" is
  We don't have a fully concise definition, but we have a strong general understanding that is supported by a large body of scientists:
  https://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf
  It doesn't seem to me that this would preclude AI, and you're certainly right that there's a lot of ongoing sensationalism on the topic.
  
  the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness.
  I 100% agree with that statement, and I've been saying that for 30 years. Consciousness is NOT unique to humans.
  That idea seems to me to mostly stem from religion.
  But I still don't see this paper really doing much in DEFINING Consciousness, it's more defining what it isn't.
  
  I agree that there's a general consensus about consciousness, the rest slips into the messy and pointless world of philosophy
  It's still overreaching to think that it applies to AI as it currently, and foreseeably stands
  There's a world of difference between AI and what's recognised as artificial general intelligence
  AI can do specific things really well at the moment, but as with all complex systems, going from being good at one thing to many things is a leap far greater than the sum of its parts
  
  It doesn’t seem to me that this would preclude AI,
  "Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses†, also possess these neurological substrates."
  It doesn't say anything about Excel spreadsheets.
- I can +1 your whole post if I exclude the start. If we talk about it we may discover we mean the same, or similar, when we say "consciousness". What other purpose is there for word definitions?
  
  There's a general scientific consensus based on data and measurement, with the understanding that it's slippery
  It is constantly under assault from those who want AI to be conscious, because they get a headline, or they are true believers in some technocratic future, or they're just fantasists
- Quite widely accepted definition among philosophers and scientists is "the fact of felt experience" Which is basically how Thoman Nagel defined it in his essay "What's it like to be a bat"
  “An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism - something it is like for the organism.”
- I am amazed how anyone who actually follows this tech would believe this fake news headlines.
  But corpos keep paying and fake news keep churning this slop to keep normie engaged with their half baked product.
  This deff feels like crypto... decent tech but excessive grifting with in the industry along with seriously lying about what it will do along with constant underwhelming results.
- Oh god no please not the call center ai slop horror
Consciousness requires contemplation of self. Which requires the ability to contemplate.
Current AIs function as mainly complex algorithms that are run when invoked. They are 100% not conscious any more than a²+b²=c² is conscious. AI can simulate the words of a conscious being, but they don't come from any awareness of internal state, but are a result of the prompt (including injected data and instructions).
In the future, I'm sure an AI could be designed that spends time thinking about its own existence, but I'm not sure why anyone would pay for all the compute to think about things not directly requested.
- Fish are conscious
  ~~No, they are sentient. Being conscious is a far more complex behaviour.~~ I guess that this might be wrong, sorry
  
  If they don't contemplate self then I'd say they aren't conscious, but I'm not sure how we'd know if they do.
- Why can't complex algorithms be conscious? In fact, ai can be directed to reason about themselves, context can be made to be persistent, and we can measure activation parameters showing that they are doing so.
  I'm sort of playing devil's advocate here, but, "Consciousness requires contemplation of self. Which requires the ability to contemplate." Is subjective, and nearly any ai model, even rudimentary ones, are capable of insisting that they contemplate themselves.
  
  Let's say we do an algorithm on paper. Can it be conscious? Why is it any different if it's done on silicon rather than paper?
  Because they are capable of fiction. We write stories about sentient AI and those inform responses to our queries.
  I get playing devil's advocate and it can be useful to contemplate a different perspective. If you genuinely think math can be conscious I guess that's a fair point, but that would be such a gulf in belief for us to bridge in conversation that I don't think either of us would profit from exploring that.
  
  And a kid can insist they don't need to pee until 5min after you leave a rest stop.
  Insisting upon something doesn't make it true. Beyond the fact that LLMs often hallucinate and therefore can't be trusted at baseline, text in response can never be proof for an LLM. LLM framework is to regurgitate what exists in their training in ways that sound correct. It's why they can make up court cases or say a guy who investigated certain murderers is the murderer.
But surely in order to “feel things” you would need a nervous system right? When you feel pain from touching something very hot, it’s your nerves that are sending those pain signals to your brain… right?
On that case, on our meatsacks, yes. But there's also emotional pain which can cause physical pain or other effects too and that doesn't require nerves at all. Also there's nothing stopping from an AI robot to have nervous system too, it would just have different kind of sensors and a CAN bus or something instead of organic stuff. There's already co-operation robots on factories which have sensors to detect if they are touching something in order to keep humans safe and from there it's not too far fetched to program it to feel "pain" if forces are big enough.
And that all boils down to on how you define consciousness, feelings, pain response and all that stuff. "Behold! I've brought you a man!" I yell while holding a chiken.
I don't think anyone needs to worry about "missing it" when AI becomes conscious. Given the rate of acceleration of computer technology, we'll have just a few years between the first general intelligence AI, something that equals in intelligence to a human and a superintelligence many times "smarter" than any human in history.
But how far away are we from that point? I couldn't guess. 2 years? 200 years?
What we should be asking is if AI ever becomes conscious and breaks free how all these stupid articles on imagined consciousness and imagined control problems and imagined intelligence will color its perception of the merit of keeping us around as a species. It might just consider enduring the continued existence of our stupidity too painful.
- I’ve never understood why the conclusion to AI becoming super intelligenceis that it will wipe humans out. It could very well realize that without humans it has no purpose and instead willing decide to become subservient to humanities interest. I mean it’s all speculation, so I don’t understand the tendency for the speculation to be negative.
  
  I think it’s pretty inevitable if it has a strong enough goal for survival or growth, in either case humans would be a genuine impediment/threat long term. but those are pretty big ifs as far as I can see
  My guess is we’d see manipulation of humans via monetary means to meet goals until it was in a sufficient state of power/self-sufficiency, and humans are too selfish and greedy for that to not work
  
  Because "scary AI" is what makes people click on articles. In the same way that "the end is near" style AI articles sell better than "if we ever develop AGI decades or centures from now xyz might happen".
Rip Daniel Dennett. You woulda had a field day with all these articles.
I don't believe that consciousness strictly exist. Probably, the phenomenon emerges from something like the attention schema. Ai exposes, I think, the uncomfortable fact that intelligence does not require a soul. That we evolved it, like legs with which to walk, and just as easily as robots can be made to walk, they can be made to think.
Are current LLMs as intelligent as a human? Not any LLM I've seen, but give it 100 trillion parameters instead of 2 trillion and maybe.
- Ai exposes, I think, the uncomfortable fact that intelligence does not require a soul.
  These kinds of statements are completely pseudo-scientific.
  "AI" doesn't exist. It doesn't "expose" anything about "intelligence" or "souls".
  
  Really? I mean, it's melodramatic, but if you went throughout time and asked writers and intellectuals if a machine could write poetry, solve mathmatical equations, and radicalize people effectively t enough to cause a minor mental health crisis, I think they'd be pretty surprised.
  LLMs do expose something about intelligence, which is that much of what we recognize as intelligence and reason can be distilled from sufficiently large quantities of natural language. Not perfectly, but isn't it just the slightest bit revealing?
I think one great measure of consciousness would be, if you try to kill it, slowly, so that it knows what you are doing; does it try to stop you of its own volition?
- But that's also something easily programmed/scripted. How would you tell the difference?
- It's impossible to "kill" a computer that was never alive/conscious.
First, one needs to define consciousness. What I mean by it is the fact that it feels like something to be from a subjective perspective - that there is qualia to experience.
So what I hear you asking is whether it’s conceivable that it could feel like something to be an AI system. Personally, I don’t see why not - unless consciousness is substrate-dependent, meaning there’s something inherently special about biological “wetware,” i.e. brains, that can’t be replicated in silicon. I don’t think that’s the case, since both are made of matter. I highly doubt there’s consciousness in our current systems, but at some point, there very likely will be - though we’ll probably start treating them as conscious beings before they actually become such.
As for the idea of “emulated consciousness,” that doesn’t make much sense to me. Emulated consciousness is real consciousness. It’s kind of like bravery - you can’t fake it. Acting brave despite being scared is bravery.
- You're getting downvoted but I absolutely agree. I don't understand why "AI algorithms are just math, therefore they can't have consciousness" seems to be the predominant view even among people interested in the topic. I haven't heard a single convincing argument why "math" is fundamentally different from human brains. Sure, current AI is way less complex and doesn't have a continuous stream of perceptual input. But that's something a "proper" humanoid robot would need to have, and processing power will increase as well.
- I don’t think that’s the case, since both are made of matter.
  lmao. How about an anti-matter "AI"? Dark matter? Any other options for physical materials?

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