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Comment by HarHarVeryFunny | Hacker News Reader

> I'm not sure you quite understand the full meaning of this statement. If you did, your following paragraphs wouldn't follow

I was just explaining how this comment you made is wrong.

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It's not wrong. You admit that LLMs will 'learn anything that helps them predict' and fail to realize the breadth of that statement. Your chess statements don't really help your case. It doesn't matter that it usually doesn't primarily care about winning. It still learnt how to play the game, and it still knows how to win. Similar outcomes for predicting emotions would mean it still developed an affective state, and that its ability to 'feel angry' is no less real.

I said an LLM will learn anything that helps it to predict, then gave examples of playing chess by prediction and predictive emotions, both of which you seem to now accept, so you are now accepting that my "following paragraphs" did in fact follow. Go figure!

You want to argue that predictive emotions are just as real as animal emotions, but that doesn't stop them from being predictive (and that AI that smiles as it kills you still seems concerning).

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We are talking past each other now I think. Correct me if I'm wrong but it doesn't look like the possibility of LLMs having qualia even registers to you because it's 'predictive emotions'.

There's no better way to predict an angry response than to be angry, qualia and all. If transformers could 'learn whatever it needs to predict text', then that potentially includes the feeling of anger. You are making some kind of distinction between 'predictive emotions' and the kind that happens when get a promotion (or get passed on a promotion) and I'm telling you that if you really understood what you said, you'd realize it is possible the machine is experiencing it the same.

So now you're trying to pivot to consciousness and qualia ?

There are other people in this thread who want to talk about that stuff, so try them instead.

>No - suffering in an emotional state, and we'll know if we are choosing to design cognitive architecture with emotions. It's not going to happen accidentally.

This was the (your) comment that started this chain. You were already talking about it. If you don't want to keep talking about it then that's fine but let's not act like i'm suddenly pivoting yeah?

What I meant by "emotional state" (AFAIK normal scientific usage) is something with a concrete physical aspect to it - an altered state of mind/body caused by the release of neurotransmitters and/or hormones.

In a conscious animal there is also going to be a subjective experience of that as well, a quale of what it feels like to be in that state if you will, but that is certainly not what I was referring to, as I would have hoped was obvious - I was talking about prediction.

In any case, when the conversation becomes about the conversation, then surely it is time to stop.

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