[ExI] GPT-4 on its inability to solve the symbol grounding problem

[Gordon Swobe]

On Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 3:39 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 1:30 AM Gordon Swobe <gordon.swobe at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Apr 10, 2023 at 5:36 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
>>
>> There are many more aspects to my argument, but that is where it starts.
>> The brain/mind is not fundamentally a computer or information processing
>> machine.
>>
>
> What is it then?
>

More later, but generally I think computationalism and functionalism in
general fail to adequately explain subjective experience. I notice that the
response for my detractors is always to attempt to explain subjective
experience away as something else or even to dismiss it as an illusion.

For example, you seemed reluctant even agree that something as simple as
the first person experience of a toothache could be understood for what we
all know it to mean.

As I wrote in one of my first exchanges with you, I consider experience to
be primary. By primary I mean irreducible. It cannot be captured or
explained away in the third person objective language of science. This is
also known as the explanatory gap after Thomas Nagel.


 -gts






>
>> In summary, computationalism is *not* the idea that the human brain
>>> operates like a computer, but rather, that a computer can be made to
>>> operate *like a human brain*.
>>>
>>
>> Yes, that is the doctrine which might as well be hanging on the front
>> door of ExI.
>>
>
>
> On what basis do you doubt this?
>
>
>>
>>> We know from the Church-Turing thesis that computers can replicate the
>>> operations of any finitely describable system.
>>>
>>
>> In my view, we can simulate the brain in a computer, similar to how a
>> meteorologist might simulate a hurricane on a computer ,
>>
>
>
> I am glad we agree on this.
>
> but unless we live in a digital simulation ourselves (another
>> religious doctrine),
>>
> the simulation is not the same as the thing simulatied.
>>
>
> If we cannot rule out the hypothesis that we live in a digital simulation,
> then doesn't that show there's no detectible difference between the real
> and the simulated (when you exist at the same level of the simulated)? How
> do we know our universe isn't a simulation, couldn't it be?
>
> A simulated hurricane will make you wet, when you are also inside the
> simulation. Then would not a simulated brain, be conscious within the level
> of the simulation of the brain?
>
> If you believe in a soul existing on another plane of reality, then
> doesn't that information about it, (your self, memories, personality,
> essence, etc.) have to exist as information somewhere (e.g. in the mind of
> God or in heaven?), I don't see any escape from that information having to
> exist somewhere, and when your soul makes decisions, doesn't it have to be
> done according to some kind of lower level rules or laws? It can't be by
> magic out of nowhere, then it wouldn't be your soul making a choice it
> would be a die roll.
>
> I grant you that the explanation for our consciousness could exist outside
> the material reality we see, for example if our reality is like a video
> game we are plugged into, then our decisions and consciousness exist in a
> higher plane (outside this simulation) in that more base reality containing
> our mind. Then our choices here are then unexplainable interventions in the
> laws of physics, just as unpredictable as the movements of Mario are on the
> screen from within the game itself. But there is still always the higher
> level reality in which *you* really exist, which must be explainable in
> some rational terms, even if they are unknown and unknowable to us from our
> present vantage point within the simulation. Do you agree? Is this roughly
> how you see things?
>
>
>> > Ignoring present GPTs, do you believe it is possible in principle to
>> build an AI super intelligence? One able to reason independently to such a
>> high degree that it's able to invent new technologies and conceive of new
>> scientific discoveries entirely on its own?
>>
>> Sure. But I do not believe the superintelligence or AGI will know about
>> it any more than does my pocket calculator know the results of its
>> calculations. AIs running on digital computers will always be unconscious
>> tools of humanity, no different in principle from GPT-4 which is already
>> telling us the truth about the matter if only people would listen.
>>
>
> What do you think happens as one replaces biological neurons in their
> visual cortex one by one, with artificial digital/silicon ones? Do you,
> like Searle, believe that you would outwardly behave the same, yet
> internally feel like you want to cry out, "help, I'm going blind!", but be
> unable to say anything?
>
> Jason
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