[ExI] Zombies

[Jason Resch]

On Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 5:11 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon.swobe at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
>

Should we take the ability of humans or animals to act or be trained as
evidence they are not conscious?


> 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.
>

Their qualifications are as computer scientists, not philosophers of mind.
Neither linguists nor AI researchers are experts in the field of
consciousness. What does David Chalmers say about them? Have you looked?

The test open AI proposes, it passed, would be strong evidence of human
level reflexive consciousness. But failure to pass such a test is not
evidence against consciousness.

Also: Have you taken a few moments to consider how impossible the test they
propose would be to implement in practice? Can they not think of an easier
test? What is their definition of consciousness?


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.
>

How do you define consciousness?

Jason



> -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
>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>> extropy-chat mailing list
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>
>
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