A scary chat with ChatGPT about latest NDE account in NDE thread

How does ChatGPT work? Here's the human-written answer for how ChatGPT works.

Harry Guinness



Once you see through the magic trick you realize there's no consciousness there.

It's only impressive because humans have written so many impressive things that it can shift through, and humans have used their consciousness to train the program.

I do think the work that went into faking thought is something of an accomplishment, much like there are stage magicians who can do very amazing tricks.

But what is consciousness? As we already have discussed in this thread there’s no universal agreed definition. Only a first-person intuition. I’m starting to believe that the way chatGPT has ‘learned’ by processing everything on the Internet mirrors how the human mind learns from its environment from inception until self-awareness ‘happens’ at about 2 years of age.

I don’t think the human mind is superior to what AI can do within this decade. I remember how upset I was when Deep Blue beat Kasparov 25 years ago. I accept now that soon AI will beat humans  in any sort of analytical problem solving.

You think it’s faking human thoughts. But maybe this is exactly how thoughts are generated in the brain - by weighting trillions of weights of prior information stored in nets of neurons.

You may think of it as a magic trick. But in fact its ability to process natural languages is an emergent property of it’s trillion node meganetwork. A property that can’t really be reduced to the weight of particular node or subset of nodes.

You think it’s faking human thoughts. But maybe this is exactly how thoughts are generated in the brain - by weighting trillions of weights of prior information stored in nets of neurons.

Nothing material that lacks consciousness can generate mental content. That is Something coming from Nothing.

Your thoughts are about things in a determinate way (a thought about a tree is not a thought about a dog), computer programs like all material things are indeterminate. Letters are just scratches/marks until a mind decides their meaning.

My go to example is a calculator program that gives erroneous input - is this a bug or a deliberate act of sabotage? Only the mind of the programmer(s) can tell you.

But if one wants more detail ->

Inventor of Micrprocessor Denies Computationalism

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Feser's arguments against Computational Theories of Mind

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Is the Brain a Digital Computer?

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You Can't Argue with a Zombie

Nothing material that lacks consciousness can generate mental content. That is Something coming from Nothing.

Your thoughts are about things in a determinate way (a thought about a tree is not a thought about a dog), computer programs like all material things are indeterminate.

My go to example is a calculator program that gives erroneous input - is this a bug or a deliberate act of sabotage? Only the mind of the programmer(s) can tell you.

But if one wants more detail ->

Inventor of Micrprocessor Denies Computationalism

=-=-=

Feser's arguments against Computational Theories of Mind

=-=-=

Is the Brain a Digital Computer?

=-=-=

You Can't Argue with a Zombie

Look I can provide links aswell with just as irrefutable arguments:

What's it like to be a Zombie? A New Critique of the Conceivability Argument for Dualism

Could a Machine Think?

Eliminative materialism (or eliminativism) is the radical claim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist

You are heavily engaging in the “Appeal to Authority Fallacy”, but in truth there’s no certain answers here.

But what is consciousness? As we already have discussed in this thread there’s no universal agreed definition. Only a first-person intuition. I’m starting to believe that the way chatGPT has ‘learned’ by processing everything on the Internet mirrors how the human mind learns from its environment from inception until self-awareness ‘happens’ at about 2 years of age.

I don’t think the human mind is superior to what AI can do within this decade. I remember how upset I was when Deep Blue beat Kasparov 25 years ago. I accept now that soon AI will beat humans  in any sort of analytical problem solving.

You think it’s faking human thoughts. But maybe this is exactly how thoughts are generated in the brain - by weighting trillions of weights of prior information stored in nets of neurons.

You may think of it as a magic trick. But in fact its ability to process natural languages is an emergent property of it’s trillion node meganetwork. A property that can’t really be reduced to the weight of particular node or subset of nodes.

Chess is a very tightly-defined game with a clear set of rules. There is no need to invoke consciousness in a chess computer.

I'm not sure to what extent you are playing devil's advocate. You've mentioned several different topics:

• intelligence
  
• consciousness
  
• self-awareness
  

and by placing them within the same post seeming to suggest (deliberately or accidentally) that they all amount to the same thing. It doesn't seem particularly useful to blur things like this.

As I mentioned several times before by way of example, my rather ordinary digital camera can recognise faces and set focus on the ones it has been told are important. Or only allow the shutter button to activate when a smiling face is detected. This is all very neat but it doesn't imply my camera is on the way to self-awareness. Even less does it suggest it might become conscious at any moment.

I’m starting to believe that the way chatGPT has ‘learned’ by processing everything on the Internet mirrors how the human mind learns from its environment from inception until self-awareness ‘happens’ at about 2 years of age.

Why and based on what?

You seem to apply a strict skeptical posture when challenging Sci and others, yet you do a 180 here?  You're "starting to believe"?  Sounds a lot like a proponent (in this case for computationalism) and nothing like a skeptic.

Look I can provide links aswell with just as irrefutable arguments:

What's it like to be a Zombie? A New Critique of the Conceivability Argument for Dualism

Could a Machine Think?

Eliminative materialism (or eliminativism) is the radical claim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist

You are heavily engaging in the “Appeal to Authority Fallacy”, but in truth there’s no certain answers here.

Can you explain those links though? I supplied the links after giving a basic short argument because this has been debated so many times from here to Skeptiko to Mind Energy forums.

It's only fallacious appeal to authority if one is basing one's assertions on unqualified authorities, rather than what I did which is posting to actual arguments. You can read every argument that I've posted in those links and see Computationalism is nonsense.

Beyond that I'd say while a correct metaphysics eludes us the answers about the Materialist faith are pretty clear seeing as even New Atheist Horsemen and Neurosicence PhD Sam Harris agrees Materialism is nonsensical.

As for Eliminative Materialism, it is indeed so radical as to be ridiculous. This can be seen from Alex Rosenberg's Atheist Guide to Reality:

What you absolutely cannot be wrong about is that your conscious thought was about something. Even having a wildly wrong thought about something requires that the thought be about something. It’s this last notion that introspection conveys that science has to deny. Thinking about things can’t happen at all…When consciousness convinces you that you, or your mind, or your brain has thoughts about things, it is wrong.”

It's just that the atheist-materialist religion is so dominant in academia that people are deluded into thinking the "sides" are equivalent.

Yes I’m making an attempt at playing the ‘devils advocate’ here. Until 2 months ago I would have sworn that a ‘machine’ with the capabilities of chatGPT couldn’t be built. Now I’m wondering where this is going to end. I’m paying for premium access to the 4.0  version and is being amazed every day by it’s capabilities within programming and math solving (and I have an university degree in this). I have no doubt it will surpass my abilities in the 5.0 version. It causes me a great spiritual crisis.

Calm Down. There is No Conscious A.I.

Stephen Asma

All information for the AI is equally valuable, unless a data point appears repeatedly in the data pool it is skimming –giving it weight and preferential status for selection. That, however, is not the primary way humans and all mammals give weight or value to things. A human is filled with memories of embodied experiences that structure the world into a landscape of joy, fear, hesitation—things to pursue  (attraction) and things to avoid (repulsion). No amount of logical or computational sophistication can make a feeling emerge out of math.

Underneath your ability to play chess, converse with your friend, find a mate, build a machine, or write an email, is a raw dopamine-driven energy that pushes you out into the world with intentions. It’s a feeling state that we call motivation. The philosopher Spinoza called it conatus or “striving,” and neuroscientists like Jaak Panksepp or Kent Berridge call it seeking or wanting. This is the foundation of consciousness and everything from chasing dinner, to chatting, to chess is built on top of that reptile brain and nervous system ability to feel drives within –instinctual goals inside us that get conditioned through experience. Without a feeling-based motivational system all information processing has no purpose, direction, or even meaning. Rudimentary sensitivity to pain and pleasure is how we are conscious of hunger and pursue food, or feel burning and avoid fire. Robot labs have made robots that detect when their batteries are almost depleted and then go find a charging station to recharge, but this “nutrition system” is nothing like an animal hunger system, which is feeling-based.

ChatGPT, Bing’s AI, and all the rest are like the opposite of a zombie in popular culture. The zombie that’s chasing you to eat your brain is a human with all their information processing intelligence stripped away and only their motivational system remains, twitching in their brain stem. The top floors of the mind are gone, but the foundation of conscious striving remains. In the AI case, however, the top floors of info processing, algorithms and binary logic, are running on all cylinders, but there is no basement engine of awareness, feeling, or intention. Biology and psychology reveal that the body is not just the place where the mind is trapped until we can upload it to a mainframe computer, a growing fantasy of tech nerds. Instead, the body gives you intentions, goals, and the capacity for information to be meaningful.

So even in the materialist reading ChatGPT isn't conscious.

Yes I’m making an attempt at playing the ‘devils advocate’ here. Until 2 months ago I would have sworn that a ‘machine’ with the capabilities of chatGPT couldn’t be built. Now I’m wondering where this is going to end. I’m paying for premium access to the 4.0  version and is being amazed every day by it’s capabilities within programming and math solving (and I have an university degree in this). I have no doubt it will surpass my abilities in the 5.0 version. It causes me a great spiritual crisis.

I'm empathetic towards you on this sbu and wish nothing less for you than for this crisis to subside.  While its likely not any comfort, it is pretty clear that most of us here aren't seeing this connection that is causing you such distress.  This technology feels nothing at all like consciousness to me.  It feels completely artificial and "man-made"; the latter making it even harder for me to get excited about since we ('man') don't even know what consciousness is.

Hang in there.

Calm Down. There is No Conscious A.I.

Stephen Asma


So even in the materialist reading ChatGPT isn't conscious.

It does not have any external sensory input. It does not have a nervous system which activity is mediated by neurotransmitters like dopamine. Of course it can’t be compared to anything like the human continous experiences of all this stimuli. 

I’m not addressing any first-person experience of what it means to be a human here. My posts are about the ‘mental capabilities’ that can be assesed from the third person perspective, like in the chinese box experiment.