Re:Neural nets are not “slightly conscious,” and AI PR can d...
by Barrin92 on Monday February 21, 2022 @03:24AM
(#30413207)
I agree that Searle is often too strong in his claims, but here is what I think people need to take away from the Chinese Room and why it is useful.
That solving a problem, or an array of problems that a conscious mind can solve may be perfectly able to be solved by a non-conscious machine. That the consciousness part may not be relevant in the problem-solving process, and that consciousness may be unique to living beings who have distinct physiology, anatomy, ways to process information, that computers as they exist now do not have. That a simulation is not necessarily the same thing as the thing it simulates, and does not have all of its properties.
These are good questions none of which are mystic and which following from Searle's argument. And I think you're really underestimating to what degree people are lured in by the 'magic' of neural nets because else we wouldn't be in this thread. A neural net that does some function approximation is not 'slightly conscious' unless we're going full in on panpsychism. Even from a functionalist perspective, the neural net performs nothing that is reasonably involved in what we consider to be responsible for consciousness. Nobody ever claimed a TI-83 is 'slightly conscious', or that Stockfish is merely because it plays exceptional chess.
That solving a problem, or an array of problems that a conscious mind can solve may be perfectly able to be solved by a non-conscious machine. That the consciousness part may not be relevant in the problem-solving process, and that consciousness may be unique to living beings who have distinct physiology, anatomy, ways to process information, that computers as they exist now do not have. That a simulation is not necessarily the same thing as the thing it simulates, and does not have all of its properties.
These are good questions none of which are mystic and which following from Searle's argument. And I think you're really underestimating to what degree people are lured in by the 'magic' of neural nets because else we wouldn't be in this thread. A neural net that does some function approximation is not 'slightly conscious' unless we're going full in on panpsychism. Even from a functionalist perspective, the neural net performs nothing that is reasonably involved in what we consider to be responsible for consciousness. Nobody ever claimed a TI-83 is 'slightly conscious', or that Stockfish is merely because it plays exceptional chess.