Well, I don’t really need to for what I’m saying, which is that I don’t see any reason a computer is fundamentally incapable of doing whatever it is that humans do to consider ourselves conscious. Practically incapable, maybe, but not by the nature of what it is. Define it how you like, I don’t see why a computer couldn’t pull the same trick in the distant future.
Personally, though, I define it as something that exhibits awareness of a separation between itself and the rest of the world, with a large fuzzy spectrum between “has it” and “doesn’t have it”. Rocks exhibit no awareness whatsoever, they’re just things with no independence. Plants interact with the world but don’t really seem like they’re doing much more than reacting, which doesn’t demonstrate much, if any. Animals do a lot more, and the argument that at least some are conscious is quite plausible. An LLM kinda, sorta, momentarily glances off of this sometimes, enough that you can at least ask the question, but the fact that outside of training it is literally just an unchanging matrix of numbers and that its only “view” into the world is what you choose to give it means that it can’t be aware of itself versus the world, it’s at best aware of itself versus its training set and/or context window, a tiny keyhole to a photograph of something in the world, means it makes a barely discernible blip on the scale, on the level of plants, and even that might be generous. An artificial consciousness would, in my opinion, need to be independent, self-modifying, and show some of the same traits and behaviors that we see in animals up to and including ourselves with regard to interacting with the rest of the world as a self-contained being.
yud-length posts like these that boil down to “nuh-uh” are why we have the “no debate unless it’s amusing debate” rule, and I can see by the downvotes from local and the reactions that you’ve failed to be amusing
ah, I see. Ok. Well, based on all that, you haven’t actually engaged with anything from the post, nor have you said anything non-trivial. Was hoping that you’d at least say something wrong instead.
How do you define consciousness?
Well, I don’t really need to for what I’m saying, which is that I don’t see any reason a computer is fundamentally incapable of doing whatever it is that humans do to consider ourselves conscious. Practically incapable, maybe, but not by the nature of what it is. Define it how you like, I don’t see why a computer couldn’t pull the same trick in the distant future.
Personally, though, I define it as something that exhibits awareness of a separation between itself and the rest of the world, with a large fuzzy spectrum between “has it” and “doesn’t have it”. Rocks exhibit no awareness whatsoever, they’re just things with no independence. Plants interact with the world but don’t really seem like they’re doing much more than reacting, which doesn’t demonstrate much, if any. Animals do a lot more, and the argument that at least some are conscious is quite plausible. An LLM kinda, sorta, momentarily glances off of this sometimes, enough that you can at least ask the question, but the fact that outside of training it is literally just an unchanging matrix of numbers and that its only “view” into the world is what you choose to give it means that it can’t be aware of itself versus the world, it’s at best aware of itself versus its training set and/or context window, a tiny keyhole to a photograph of something in the world, means it makes a barely discernible blip on the scale, on the level of plants, and even that might be generous. An artificial consciousness would, in my opinion, need to be independent, self-modifying, and show some of the same traits and behaviors that we see in animals up to and including ourselves with regard to interacting with the rest of the world as a self-contained being.
yud-length posts like these that boil down to “nuh-uh” are why we have the “no debate unless it’s amusing debate” rule, and I can see by the downvotes from local and the reactions that you’ve failed to be amusing
if I were you I’d reconsider this thread
If anything I’m posting conjures that bozo’s name for any reason, I’ll cut my losses, my apologies.
ah, I see. Ok. Well, based on all that, you haven’t actually engaged with anything from the post, nor have you said anything non-trivial. Was hoping that you’d at least say something wrong instead.