In what ways is a human brain's "intent" distinct from the "intent" shown by a goal-directed AI system?
We are in a situation where a technology was developed with malicious intent to produce results that pleases us at the cost of cutting corners. And "we" hope that we will get away with it.
If it’s a practical question, then the answer is that it doesn’t matter. This is as close as we will get to intent from an LLM that it’s indistinguishable.
If you are looking for actual intent, this is not that. It’s pseudo intent. Decided by what the expected words that should be generated in that situation are.
The models didn’t intend to do anything other than create the next word based on previous words.
So the question is whether it matters to you if it is, or isn’t, a simulation.
In physical reality, intent is more complex than simply being a function of variables: the nature vs nurture debate comes to mind as an example of the multiple variables that drive intent.
> In physical reality, intent is more complex than simply being a function of variables: the nature vs nurture debate comes to mind as an example of the multiple variables that drive intent.
Regardless of nature vs nurture, it really isn't more complex. The universe (and all biological and non-biological entities within it) is just calculating the next state of the universe based on the prior state. There's no line you can draw between human intent and an LLM's "intent" except the atomic numbers of the materials on which they were computed, which seems completely irrelevant to me.
It is what computation is being run.
Humans have intent, let’s take this as an assertion.
Models run simulations that act similar to intent. However they are not the same as intent and the simulation is not a 1:1 correspondence.
There is literally zero (zilch, nada, zip) evidence for free will, which is the actual distinction I believe you're trying to make with "intent."
There is no way (at all) in which a meat-based computation's yielding of goal-directed behavior must be categorically different from a silicon-based computation's yielding of goal-directed behavior.
As I said clearly, I haven’t made any point on the computational substrate. The point is on the computation being run.
I dont need to bother about free will for my argument.
Please take a look at what I am saying as it has little overlap with your objection.
In both cases, LLMs are just as boring as the consciousness definition.
On the other hand, I'm also convinced that, in the grand scheme of things, we're not that important.
We're just ants on a wet dust speck which believe that they are gods because we can't see how our scale compares to the universe around us, and happen to build tools and things with these tools.
Nothing is meaningless, but we should stop seeing ourselves as the apex-predator of the whole universe or the set of universes or this run of the simulation or whatever we're in.
Less facetiously: A debate of the importance of something needs a shared understanding of what is being debated. Without that, any discussion is merely people shouting that their belief is the right one, and the others are the heathens/idiots - because there isn't even agreement on what is debated.
1) Excludes what LLM's do.
2) Doesn't exclude what many humans do (including the neuro divergent).
3) Doesn't just boil do to simply rephrasing your pre-existing belief/prejudice that humans are conscious and nothing else can be as if it were a fact and not an opinion.
I suspect that you can't.
Your list of requirements is implying that, because we lack a perfect definition for consciousness, LLMs are conscious too. That's malarkey. It may be that they could one day become conscious, but it's not because we can't fully define what human consciousness is.
I don't see why a definition is necessary. The actual problem is you just don't have a way to substantiate that belief without resorting to complete nonsense about brain atoms being more specialer (!!) than atoms that exist outside of a skull.
It would be simple to disprove us by just stating your evidence for how you know LLMs aren't conscious.
> I don't see why a definition is necessary.
Don't waste my time with your sophistry. Words mean nothing to you beyond how you can twist them.
Is your position now that in order to substantiate your belief that LLMs are not conscious, you'd first have to define it explicitly? I don't see why that'd necessarily be true, but if that's what you're arguing, then that's fine.
In that case: if you need to define consciousness in order to substantiate your belief that LLMs are not conscious, and you can't define consciousness, then we're back to the original question: where does your confidence they're not conscious come from?
I then asked you to define Y, because you can not reasonably say that "X can not Y" without first defining both X and Y. You could not.
The truth is that this conversation is pointless until someone can define both 'X' and 'Y' in ways that aren't tautological nonsense. Until then nobody can say anything with a reasonable level of certainty.
This likely also applies to intelligence. Life and disease are likely simpler, though perhaps more malleable definitions.
That wasn't me bud.
Bah. It's obviously been too long since I flossed between my ears. Sorry about that.
Hmm...
Will is just result of a very complex yet deterministic (unconscious) computation by an agent which guides their future action (it's that orientation/aboutness toward action which distinguishes it from other computation). A PS of that computation is sent (projected) into that agent's consciousness if they have one (and is what we think as our "will").
All human intentions are just chemical/thermal/electrical changes interacting in a physical substrate to mindlessly "pursue" a different "goal" of chemical/thermal/electrical states.
Unless you think the chemicals inside a brain are conscious and therefore willful or intentional!