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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   23898 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024

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We can torture a computer terminal all day without causing the LLM it is connected to any distress. It's nonsense to talk about it having physical sensation. On the other hand, (to look at your question about the "meat-limit,") we can take a very simple organism, or one that likely does not have a consciousness, and it will respond instantly if we torture it.

This seems less like a philosophically significant matter of classification and more like a mere difference in function. The organism is controlled by an intelligence optimized to maneuver a physical body through an environment, and part of that optimization includes reactions to external damage.

Well, so what? We could optimize an AI to maneuver a little robot around an unknown environment indefinitely without it being destroyed, and part of that optimization would probably involve timely reaction to the perception of damage. Then you could jab it with a hot poker and watch it spin around, or what have you.

But again, so what? Optimizing an AI toward steering a robot around the environment doesn't make it any smarter or fundamentally more real, at least not in my view.

This seems less like a philosophically significant matter of classification and more like a mere difference in function.

Well sure. But I think we're less likely to reach good conclusions in philosophically significant matters of classification if we are confused about differences in function.

We could optimize an AI to maneuver a little robot around an unknown environment indefinitely without it being destroyed, and part of that optimization would probably involve timely reaction to the perception of damage. Then you could jab it with a hot poker and watch it spin around, or what have you.

And while such a device might not have qualia, it makes more sense (to me, anyway) to say that such an entity would have the ability to e.g. touch or see than an LLM.

But again, so what? Optimizing an AI toward steering a robot around the environment doesn't make it any smarter or fundamentally more real, at least not in my view.

In my view, the computer guidance section of the AIM-54 Phoenix long range air-to-air missile (fielded 1966) is fundamentally "more real" than the smartest GAI ever invented, but locked in an airgapped box and never interfacing with the outside world. The Phoenix made decisions that could kill you. AI's intelligence is relevant because it has impact on the real world, not because it happens to be intelligent.

But anyway, it's relevant right now because people are suggesting LLMs are conscious, or have solved the problem of consciousness. It's not conscious, or if it is, it's consciousness is a strange one with little bearing on our own, and it does not solve the question of qualia (or perception).

If you're asking if it's relevant or not if an AI is conscious when it's guiding a missile system to kill me - yeah I'd say it's mostly an intellectual curiosity at that point.

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