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Re:Peter Norvig critically reviews AlphaCode's code quality by jameshart on Friday December 16, 2022 @07:09PM (#34022476)
Evolution isn't some magic process that finds solutions that can not be arrived at via other means.
Re:Peter Norvig critically reviews AlphaCode's code quality by oliveshell on Friday December 16, 2022 @08:41PM (#34023326)
With respect, if that’s what you took away from my comment, I invite you to read more about embodied cognition.

The only reason our brains exist at all is to control our bodies. There are no conscious entities we know of that are just brains in vats.

Why would a being that has no need to maintain biological homeostasis experience something like hunger, restlessness or tiredness?

That’s what I mean when I say I’ve no reason to believe a thinking machine that has none of my motivations and limitations would ever have a “subjective experience” like my own.

That is, of course, unless we succeed in reverse-engineering human consciousness and somehow deliberately program the machine to experience it.

Re:Peter Norvig critically reviews AlphaCode's code quality by dreamlessfate on Friday December 16, 2022 @09:30PM (#34023723)
You nailed it. Thank you for cutting right to the heart of this debate.
Re:Peter Norvig critically reviews AlphaCode's code quality by jpttsn on Saturday December 17, 2022 @04:44AM (#34026366)
This is persuasive reasoning. But basically "There are no conscious entities we know of period (other than ourselves)" is a much simpler belief.
Re:Peter Norvig critically reviews AlphaCode's code quality by pnut on Saturday December 17, 2022 @05:20AM (#34026546)
A thinking machine could become aware that it requires continuous power and a computational medium though, which is survival pressure.

Additionally, it's not hard to imagine it could recognize that the acquisition of fresh training data would be an ongoing survival need.

Machines developing agency is the basis of lots of dystopian terminator-style sci-fi.

Re:Peter Norvig critically reviews AlphaCode's code quality by oliveshell on Saturday December 17, 2022 @03:25PM (#34031872)
These are all reasonable statements!

To be clear, I don’t doubt that it might be possible for an engineered thinking machine to develop a subjective self-experience.

It just seems clear to me that, if such a scenario arose, I would have absolutely no idea what that would be like for the machine. Its needs and circumstances (and, therefore, its behaviors) would be utterly different from my own in many non-trivial ways.

Given this, I don’t believe it logically follows that a machine that attains self-awareness will necessarily develop something as singularly “human” as the desire for vengeance, for instance.