Re:GPT-3: Techniques to improve reliability
by ben_w on Saturday January 21, 2023 @04:48PM
(#34470949)
> Of course not. This is evolution at play.
Thanks.
That's one possible future, but for it to be capable of being a good outcome I think it would have to be a consciousness of some kind. A pure intellect without any feeling is not interesting to me.
Unfortunately we can't answer questions like "what exactly is this 'self awareness' thing we all agree we have anyway?" at this point, so we don't know — are incapable of knowing — if we've done it already and are now moving away from that, or have not and are approaching it.
While I lean towards believing GPT isn't yet self aware/conscious/a thing with qualia, it is conceivable to me for it to be as much so as we are. While Descartes famously wrote "I think therefore I am", A. J. Ayer dismissed this argument in the following way:
> "I exist" does not follow from "there is a thought now." The fact that a thought occurs at a given moment does not entail that any other thought has occurred at any other moment, still less that there has occurred a series of thoughts sufficient to constitute a single self. As Hume conclusively showed, no one event intrinsically points to any other. We infer the existence of events which we are not actually observing, with the help of general principle. But these principles must be obtained inductively. By mere deduction from what is immediately given we cannot advance a single step beyond. And, consequently, any attempt to base a deductive system on propositions which describe what is immediately given is bound to be a failure.
So, while asking a language model to describe what it's like to be switched off is only going to result in a definitely false invented response, that doesn't mean it's not like us. In fact, now I write that down I realise that specific failure mode is exactly like us, because we've got all these stories about afterlife and reincarnation.
But… we don't really understand the question of personhood well enough to make a test for it. All I just wrote says "not impossible" rather than "it's conscious".
~
But, to your last point… the range of possible personalities for an artificial mind, conscious or otherwise, matters more than the social structures. I don't care if they're loners or have a Dunbar number in the quadrillions, but if they are (excuse the obvious trope) Machiavellian sadistic psychopaths, then making them is a fate worse than the eternal silence of extinction.
Thanks.
That's one possible future, but for it to be capable of being a good outcome I think it would have to be a consciousness of some kind. A pure intellect without any feeling is not interesting to me.
Unfortunately we can't answer questions like "what exactly is this 'self awareness' thing we all agree we have anyway?" at this point, so we don't know — are incapable of knowing — if we've done it already and are now moving away from that, or have not and are approaching it.
While I lean towards believing GPT isn't yet self aware/conscious/a thing with qualia, it is conceivable to me for it to be as much so as we are. While Descartes famously wrote "I think therefore I am", A. J. Ayer dismissed this argument in the following way:
> "I exist" does not follow from "there is a thought now." The fact that a thought occurs at a given moment does not entail that any other thought has occurred at any other moment, still less that there has occurred a series of thoughts sufficient to constitute a single self. As Hume conclusively showed, no one event intrinsically points to any other. We infer the existence of events which we are not actually observing, with the help of general principle. But these principles must be obtained inductively. By mere deduction from what is immediately given we cannot advance a single step beyond. And, consequently, any attempt to base a deductive system on propositions which describe what is immediately given is bound to be a failure.
So, while asking a language model to describe what it's like to be switched off is only going to result in a definitely false invented response, that doesn't mean it's not like us. In fact, now I write that down I realise that specific failure mode is exactly like us, because we've got all these stories about afterlife and reincarnation.
But… we don't really understand the question of personhood well enough to make a test for it. All I just wrote says "not impossible" rather than "it's conscious".
~
But, to your last point… the range of possible personalities for an artificial mind, conscious or otherwise, matters more than the social structures. I don't care if they're loners or have a Dunbar number in the quadrillions, but if they are (excuse the obvious trope) Machiavellian sadistic psychopaths, then making them is a fate worse than the eternal silence of extinction.