[ExI] Zombies

[Gordon Swobe]

The mere fact that an LLM can be programmed/conditioned by its developers
to say it is or is not conscious should be evidence that it is not.

Nobody wants to face the fact that the founders of OpenAI themselves insist
that the only proper test of consciousness in an LLM would require that it
be trained on material devoid of references to first person experience. It
is only because of that material in training corpus that LLMs can write so
convincingly in the first person that they appear as conscious individuals
and not merely as very capable calculators and language processors.

-gts

On Sun, Apr 30, 2023 at 7:30 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 5:23 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> On 29/04/2023 23:35, Gordon Swobe wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 29, 2023 at 3:31 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>> So you believe them when they claim to not be conscious, but don't
>>> believe them when they don't.
>>>
>>> And you expect us to take your reports of what they say as evidence for
>>> whether they are conscious or not.
>>>
>>> Can you see a problem with that?
>>>
>>
>> As I explained in another message, (to you, I think), I first entered
>> these discussions a couple of months ago prepared to argue that people were
>> being deceived by the LLMs; that ChatGPT is lying when it says it has
>> consciousness and genuine emotions and so on.
>>
>> I had no personal experience with LLMs but a friend had literally fallen
>> in love with one, which I found more than a little alarming.
>>
>> As it turns out, GPT4-4 is saying everything I have always believed would
>> be true of such applications as LLMs. I’ve been saying it for decades.
>>
>>
>> Good grief, man, are you incapable of just answering a question?
>>
>> I suppose I'd better take your reply as a "No", you don't see a problem
>> with your double-standard approach to this issue.
>>
>> Please feel free to correct me, and change your (implied) answer to "Yes".
>>
>> And when you say "prepared to argue...", I think you mean "determined to
>> argue...". But predetermined prejudicial opinions are no basis for a
>> rational argument, they are a good basis for a food-fight, though, which is
>> what we have here. One which you started, and seem determined to finish.
>>
>> You may not have noticed (I suspect not), but most of us here (myself
>> included) have no dogmatic insistence on whether or not these AI systems
>> can or can't have consciousness, or understand what they are saying. We are
>> willing to listen to, and be guided by, the available evidence, and change
>> our minds accordingly. It's an attitude that underlies something called the
>> scientific method. Give it a try, you might be surprised by how effective
>> it is. But it comes with a warning: It may take you out of your comfort
>> zone, which can be, well, uncomfortable. I suspect this is why it's not
>> more popular, despite how very effective it is.
>>
>> Personally, I think a little discomfort is worth it for the better
>> results, when trying to figure out how the world works, but that's just me.
>>
>
>
> Well said Ben. Your advice brought to mind this quote:
>
> "If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end with doubts, but if he
> will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties."
> -- Francis Bacon
>
> Jason
>
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