[ExI] More thoughts on sentient computers

[Jason Resch]

On Mon, Feb 20, 2023 at 12:48 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of
> BillK via extropy-chat
> ...
> > _______________________________________________
>
>
> >...Many writers are reporting that ChatGPT output needs a tremendous
> amount
> of editing and correction.
> Not for spelling or grammar, though. It is fine with that.
> The problem is that ChatGPT makes stuff up. Very realistically sounding
> stuff... BillK
>
> Ja, I have been fooling with it enough to catch it doing some pretty goofy
> stuff while sounding exactly like it knows what it is talking about.  I
> think this is why we need a learning ChatGPT.
>
> This is Psychology Today's take on it:
>
>
> https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/biocentrism/202302/will-ai-ever-be-c
> onscious
>
>
I find it a bit ridiculous to assume they aren't already, especially when
they haven't put forward a theory of what they believe conscious to be.

I think anything possessing a knowledge state is conscious, and therefore
anything capable of demonstrating the presence of some knowledge to us we
can presume that something, somewhere, within that system is conscious. In
that sense, a guided missile is conscious. It demonstrates knowledge of the
relative position between itself and the target by homing in on its target.
Likewise DeepBlue is conscious of the board state and positions of the
pieces on that board. It demonstrates this by generating meaningful moves
for a given state of a board and the game. When ChatGPT provides meaningful
responses to our queries, it demonstrates knowledge both of our queries and
of the related knowledge it pulls in to craft its response to us.

None of this is meant to suggest that these devices have consciousness
anything like humans. Indeed I would expect the consciousness of these
machines to be of a radically different form than human, or animal
consciousness. But I also think the variety of possible consciousnesses is
as varied as the number of possible mathematical objects, or at least as
varied as the number of possible computations (a countable infinity).

But it is very dangerous to assume that something is not conscious when it
is. That is almost as dangerous as assuming something is conscious when it
is not.

Jason
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