AI megathread

If consciousness is fundamental and all matter is created by consciousness, then there could be a bit of consciousness associated with every bit of matter, including atoms. If, as seems likely from after death communications from veridical mediums, consciousness in the immaterial realms can combine into individuals while retaining the existing individualities, an LLM could have a sentient, conscious, qualia experiencing soul.

I am not saying I think this is true, or likely. I am not advocating for PETAI. I am just trying to be clear on what we know and what we don't know. And we don't know a lot. So I do not share the confidence with which many people say  LLM's are just machines.

If consciousness is fundamental and all matter is created by consciousness, then there could be a bit of consciousness associated with every bit of matter, including atoms. If, as seems likely from after death communications from veridical mediums, consciousness in the immaterial realms can combine into individuals while retaining the existing individualities, an LLM could have a sentient, conscious, qualia experiencing soul.

There is no innate consciousness in raw physical matter itself. There is nothing about an LLM that would ever allow it to have a soul.

LLMs are just blind algorithms created by humans that operates on data inputs to produce data outputs.

Biological matter is highly specialized, and is far more than mere physical matter ~ there are a multitude of accompanying astral layers that the incarnate aspect of soul connects with, and acts through, to organize the biological matter that makes up a physical incarnation.

I am not saying I think this is true, or likely. I am not advocating for PETAI. I am just trying to be clear on what we know and what we don't know. And we don't know a lot. So I do not share the confidence with which many people say  LLM's are just machines.

But why just LLMs? What about other programs?

There is no innate consciousness in raw physical matter itself.

Not sure we can say this. Indeterminism could suggest consciousness?

“An element of proto-consciousness takes place whenever a decision is made in the universe. I’m not talking about the brain. I’m talking about an object which is put into a superposition of two places. Say it’s a speck of dust that you put into two locations at once. Now, in a small fraction of a second, it will become one or the other. Which does it become? Well, that’s a choice. Is it a choice made by the universe? Does the speck of dust make this choice? Maybe it’s a free choice. I have no idea.”
 -Penrose

Not sure we can say this. Indeterminism could suggest consciousness?

“An element of proto-consciousness takes place whenever a decision is made in the universe. I’m not talking about the brain. I’m talking about an object which is put into a superposition of two places. Say it’s a speck of dust that you put into two locations at once. Now, in a small fraction of a second, it will become one or the other. Which does it become? Well, that’s a choice. Is it a choice made by the universe? Does the speck of dust make this choice? Maybe it’s a free choice. I have no idea.”
 -Penrose

In his rather obscure book, "Irreducible"  Federico Faggin puts this rather more strongly - in QM must be required for consciousness because in the world of classical physics everything is predetermined.

I know you read a lot of that book, but did you get bogged down in it in the end. He talks incessantly about Hilbert space, but I never new whether he was talking about the Hilbert space of an isolated QM system, the Hilbert space of the brain, or the Hilbert space of the entire universe.

In principle an AI could be based on a Turing machine,  so I think that rules out the idea that it could be conscious.

David

In his rather obscure book, "Irreducible"  Federico Faggin puts this rather more strongly - in QM must be required for consciousness because in the world of classical physics everything is predetermined.

I know you read a lot of that book, but did you get bogged down in it in the end. He talks incessantly about Hilbert space, but I never new whether he was talking about the Hilbert space of an isolated QM system, the Hilbert space of the brain, or the Hilbert space of the entire universe.

In principle an AI could be based on a Turing machine,  so I think that rules out the idea that it could be conscious.

David

Ah I didn’t read that much of it yet, just skipped around.

I feel like @Jim_Smith is right about how once we leave behind Materialism - and thus the tight coupling of Structure and Consciousness - we cannot be completely sure what is & isn’t conscious. 

Hoffman thinks AI may be another window from which Consciousness - which comes before Space-Time in his view - can enter into our particular universe.

Marcus Arvan suggested all proper programmatic structures end up partaking in the Dualist relation between Consciousness & Structure.

Phillip Goff thinks the fundamental particles themselves have agency - what he calls Pan-Agentialism - though IIRC he thinks Turing Machines are just aggregates like how a crowd of people isn’t [conscious]

For me I just don’t see what separates LLMs from other programs, or computers from car engines. So IMO if we’re not going to grant consciousness to other programs or other complex machines, an LLM isn’t conscious either. But I could be wrong of course….

In his rather obscure book, "Irreducible"  Federico Faggin puts this rather more strongly - in QM must be required for consciousness because in the world of classical physics everything is predetermined.

I know you read a lot of that book, but did you get bogged down in it in the end. He talks incessantly about Hilbert space, but I never new whether he was talking about the Hilbert space of an isolated QM system, the Hilbert space of the brain, or the Hilbert space of the entire universe.

In principle an AI could be based on a Turing machine,  so I think that rules out the idea that it could be conscious.

David

“An element of proto-consciousness takes place whenever a decision is made in the universe."

I don't buy this, because vast numbers of decisions are maded in the Universe which are necessarily nonconscious semi-mechanical or deterministic choices between different alternatives (like conditional jumps made in executing a computer program). Even QM "choices" seem to be based on mathematical formulae and therefore non-conscious. These QM "choices" do not seem to have the slightest element of consciousness in them.

For me I just don’t see what separates LLMs from other programs, or computers from car engines. So IMO if we’re not going to grant consciousness to other programs or other complex machines, an LLM isn’t conscious either. But I could be wrong of course….

Just to add, why I think the idea that programs understanding anything is erroneous ->

Why Neural Networks is a Bad Technology

David Hsing

There is a big difference between pattern matching and determining truth values.

I’ll show some examples how.

Let's say we attach the mathematical values of a certain signal in a network to a text label.

It doesn't mean that the signal "is" or "mean" that text label. It only indicates the arbitrary relationship between the signal matching and the label that it just happened to be attached to:


In the above example (no, it’s not overfitting), we can manipulate the signal by inserting pixels invisible to the human eye so it could match any label. The human eyes can't even tell the difference between the pictures. If we’re identifying what the picture is actually representing, then there SHOULDN’T BE A DIFFERENCE between what the picture “is” before, or after the change… But the machine identifies a huge difference: The difference between a panda and a gibbon.

Neural networks never deal with knowledge in any kind of legitimate fashion. It will always have epistemic issues because that's their underlying nature.

Additionally, it's a house of cards that's brittle and collapses if anything is out-of-range of the model’s data. The actual "range" being the entire real world and the entirety of human knowledge.

As @Valmar noted a few times, the meaning is projected onto the program & its data by humans, for example all those wage-slaves currently propping up the illusion of AI...

I don't buy this, because vast numbers of decisions are maded in the Universe which are necessarily nonconscious semi-mechanical or deterministic choices between different alternatives (like conditional jumps made in executing a computer program). Even QM "choices" seem to be based on mathematical formulae and therefore non-conscious. These QM "choices" do not seem to have the slightest element of consciousness in them.

But I don't [think] the decision has to be made by conscious particles, it could be Nature is a Goddess or there is a Transcendent God or Animist spirits or...etc...

The mathematical formulae don't change no matter the underlying metaphysics of causation.

=-=-=

Just to add, why I think the idea that programs understanding anything is erroneous ->

Why Neural Networks is a Bad Technology

David Hsing

As @Valmar noted a few times, the meaning is projected onto the program & its data by humans, for example all those wage-slaves currently propping up the illusion of AI...

Reading about neuro-symbolic AI has completed my fatalistic outlook regarding hard limitations of machines

D. Hsing

Today I read "Rethinking Grounding" by Tom Ziemke.

Here’s the damning passage, at least to me:

That means there have to be causal connections, which allow the artificial agent’s internal mechanisms to interact with their environment directly and without being mediated by an external observer.

...That's a nice picture, but there can be no such thing. As soon as you start designing or programming any system, the games is over- You, as the programmer and the designer, IS the mediator. Such independence is impossible and the expectation naive; Imagine something like "programming without programming" and "design without design"... That's just another way of saying it. It’s an unintended rewording of a pipe dream in a way that doesn’t sound like one.

Machines are epistemically landlocked. There is no such thing as “an external world” to them. Machines push around loads INSIDE them.

“But-but-but we’re also machines!” some dream-addled kid may scream with teary eyes.

Uh, no. Learn what a machine is.

But I don't [think] the decision has to be made by conscious particles, it could be Nature is a Goddess or there is a Transcendent God or Animist spirits or...etc...

The mathematical formulae don't change no matter the underlying metaphysics of causation.

=-=-=


Reading about neuro-symbolic AI has completed my fatalistic outlook regarding hard limitations of machines

D. Hsing

But the mathematical formulae and equations of QM may be themselves immaterial like consciousness, but they have no trace of actual consciousness - they are in  an entirely existentially different realm.