Comment by bondarchuk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bondarchuk | Hacker News Reader

A crucial thing being missed here is most of the present discourse (as far as I've seen) happens between people who are uncertain about it but do think it is possible that an AI might be conscious now or in the future and this should be taken seriously, and people who totally rule out the possibility that an AI might be conscious now (or, in many cases, ever). Then the philosophical picture starts to look very different.

PS the whole "a group of things [can't] share an internal world" spiel is weird and just plain wrong IMO. Humans could perfectly well share an internal world if the technical means were there. The author has not yet realized that the idea of "the self" as a single well-defined and enduring object-type thing is only a convenient illusion created by our minds. Alas, the style of the piece does not really lend itself to a coherent counter-argument, it would be a useful companion piece if the author simply laid out their personal beliefs on this matter plainly.

PS the whole "a group of things [can't] share an internal world" spiel is weird and just plain wrong IMO. Humans could perfectly well share an internal world if the technical means were there.

I think you are dismissing this too quickly. Our internal world is part of us in a way a shared internal world would probably not be. A shared internal world would in certain respects not be too different from the external world, or a chat group, or a multi-player game, a space where several people interact. I have never thought about this, but it seems quite reasonable that the exclusivity of our internal worlds is a key feature. Why would I consider a shared space as integral part of my self?

Maybe somebody will borrow an integral part of your self.

>AI might be conscious now or in the future and this should be taken seriously

This is the only defensible position. Anyone claiming a definite answer one way or the other should show us their Theory of Consciousness which shows why it is the case. Of course no such theory exists that can actually do this so...

i agree. same with religion - the only defensible position is agnosticism. anyone claiming a definite answer one way or the other should show us their Theory of Religion which shows why it is the case. ff course no such theory exists that can actually do this so...

get rekt atheists/theists :P

On the one hand given the current level of technology I agree with you. On the other hand if, say, an atom-level simulation of a human brain were created I would think it's reasonable to assume that it is conscious even if we don't have a theory of consciousness. And we can imagine different levels of detail in-between current LLMs and atom-level simulations, and different people would draw the line for worrying about consciousness in different places...

But we don't have to take all claims which may potentially be true one day equally seriously, or ascribe them equal weight (and thus, we are not required to act on all claims).

I actually do believe that it's quite possible that one day an artificial consciousness (for some value of "consciousness") could be created. I don't believe I've seen anything which makes me think it's going to spring, as an emergent property, from any of the current systems. I can't prove whether it will or won't; it is entirely subjective/intuitive, but then so are all of these claims.

So given that, how much time should I be required to spend debating what to do if the systems we currently have are unknowingly recreating slavery? Especially when all time spent has a cost as well as value, and we live in a society in which some people are only too willing to knowingly recreate (or perpetuate) slavery? Which one of those should seem more urgent? If I can only act on one of these, which really seems more defensible?

We don't wait for conclusive proof of the future before we act - we don't live in a world of definites, but we decide every second which things are probably important and which are not.

I think the point is that people are smuggling in assumptions which the other side may not agree about, hence the different conclusions. But people are bad at going up a level to examine that so they end up having unproductive disagreeements.

>But we don't have to take all claims which may potentially be true one day equally seriously, or ascribe them equal weight (and thus, we are not required to act on all claims).

No one is saying that. I am saying they deserve non zero consideration.

No, but I am arguing that - from my perspective - the appropriate weight for those claims, fantastical as they are, would be zero consideration.

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