They're not equivalent at all because the AI is by no means biological. "It's just maths" could maybe be applied to humans but this is backed entirely by supposition and would ultimately just be an assumption of its own conclusion - that human brains work on the same underlying principles as AI because it is assumed that they're based on the same underlying principles as AI.
It's on those who want alternative explanations to demonstrate even the slightest need for them exists - there is no scientific evidence that exists which suggests the operation of brains as computers, as information processors, as substrate independent equivalents to Turing machines, are insufficient to any of the cognitive phenomena known across the entire domain of human knowledge.
We are brains in bone vats, connected to a wonderful and sophisticated sensorimotor platform, and our brains create the reality we experience by processing sensor data and constructing a simulation which we perceive as subjective experience.
The explanation we have is sufficient to the phenomenon. There's no need or benefit for searching for unnecessarily complicated alternative interpretations.
If you aren't satisfied with the explanation, it doesn't really matter - to quote one of Neil DeGrasse Tyson's best turns of phrase: "the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you"
If you can find evidence, any evidence whatsoever, and that evidence withstands scientific scrutiny, and it demands more than the explanation we currently have, then by all means, chase it down and find out more about how cognition works and expand our understanding of the universe. It simply doesn't look like we need anything more, in principle, to fully explain the nature of biological intelligence, and consciousness, and how brains work.
Mind as interdimensional radios, mystical souls and spirits, quantum tubules, none of that stuff has any basis in a ruthlessly rational and scientific review of the science of cognition.
That doesn't preclude souls and supernatural appearing phenomena or all manner of "other" things happening. There's simply no need to tie it in with cognition - neurotransmitters, biological networks, electrical activity, that's all you need.
Right back at you, brochacho. I'm not the one making a positive claim here. You're the one who insists that it must work in a specific way because you can't conceive of any alternatives. I have never seen ANY evidence or study linking any existent AI or computer system to human cognition.
>There's no need or benefit for searching for unnecessarily complicated alternative interpretations.
Thanks, if it's alright with you I might borrow this argument next time somebody tries to tell me the world isn't flat.
>It simply doesn't look
That's one of those phrases you use when you're REALLY confident that you know what you're talking about.
> like we need anything more, in principle, to fully explain the nature of biological intelligence, and consciousness, and how brains work.
Please fully explain the nature of intelligence, consciousness, and how brains work.
>Mind as interdimensional radios, mystical souls and spirits, quantum tubules, none of that stuff has any basis in a ruthlessly rational and scientific review of the science of cognition.
well i definitely never said anything even remotely similar to that. If i didn't know any better i might call this argument a "hallucination".
This is the point, we don't know the delta between brains and AI any assumption is equivalent to my statement.
But I think most people get what GP means.
When you think in these terms, it becomes clear that LLMs can’t have certain types of experiences (eg see in color) but could have others.
A “weak” panpsychism approach would just stop at ruling out experience or qualia based on physical limitations. Yet I prefer the “strong” pansychist theory that whatever is not forbidden is required, which begins to get really interesting (would imply that for example an LLM actually experiences the interaction you have with it, in some way).
As for applying the word thinking to AI systems, it's already in common usage and this won't change. We don't have any other candidate words, and this one is the closest existing word for referencing a computational process which, one must admit, is in many ways (but definitely not in all ways) analogous to human thought.
I think there is abundant evidence that the answer is ‘no’. The main reason is that consciousness doesn’t give you new physics, it follows the same rules and restrictions. It seems to be “part of” the standard natural universe, not something distinct.
if there's surely no algo to solve the halting problem, why would there be maths that describes consciousness?
Having read “I Am a Strange Loop” I do not believe Hofstadter indicates that the existence of Gödel’s theorem precludes consciousness being realizable on a Turing machine. Rather if I recall correctly he points out that as a possible argument and then attempts to refute it.
On the other hand Penrose is a prominent believer that human’s ability to understand Gödel’s theorem indicates consciousness can’t be realized on a Turing machine but there’s far from universal agreement on that point.
I'll try and ask OG q more clearly: why would the brain, consciousness, be formalizable?
I think there's a yearn view nature as adhering to an underlying model, and a contrary view that consciousness is transcendental, and I lean towards the latter
That wasn't the assumption though, it was only that human brains work by some "non-magical" electro-chemical process which could be described as a mechanism, whether that mechanism followed the same principles of AI or not.