D-Machine

No one is banning or prohibiting AI generated music from being listened to hear, just they are saying that to be considered on a very specific chart, there need to be limits on the amount of AI used. Very weak overall, especially given the irrelevance of these kinds of charts today.

Most complaints about Twitter look quite lazy once you understand you choose your followers, can block accounts, and mute words. It's not like these are hidden features that are hard to use even.

You can work around this (for now) with the Firefox Old Reddit Redirect extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re.... Not that you're missing much...

No need for apologies, I saw no good reason to take your comment as combative or dismissive or anything!

Oh, I don't disagree at all!

Hard to see how you can read what GP said as anything other than "basically free", and failing to quantify, like you are doing here, and just categorically calling all electricity use bad is not coherent or helpful either.

I mean, good, maybe if this is intended to preserve the value of human-produced art and/or to limit the scope of official charts. But I'm not sure how you actually prove this or thus justify any particular instance of enforcement.

It could not be Frankfurtian if we say that he was just speaking colloquially and obviously only really meant something like "quite close", and indeed making up random percentages to stand for such vague feelings is really quite a normal thing in certain styles of everyday conversation. Whether or not such a style is appropriate in this context is debatable, but it could save him from the bullshit charge.

But I don't see how it being an estimation makes it less bullshitty, because there is simply no reasonable way to tie that 80% to anything concrete or meaningful. It is stated in such a way that evaluating the truth or accuracy of the estimate is basically impossible, i.e. it is bullshit by vagueness, even if it is an estimate. Only the "end of the year" claim is concrete, but the AGI definition has much of the same BS-via-vagueness problem, so it is still all very Frankfurtian to me.

So I don't see it as banging news, but just as more BS and almost certainly a nothingburger. But, hey, whatever, time will tell.

It is almost certainly a completely made up number though. It's not quite on the same level of emptiness as "rate your emotion on a scale of 1-10", but it might as well be.

I.e. are we 80% of the way by the calendar, then if so, as measured by when? We're only about 66% of the way through the current year. Is it that they are 80% of the way through some final totally defined training or tuning procedure? Not likely. And it is 80% of the way to AGI, which is vaguely defined as that which can "outperform humans [by how much? what proportion of humans?] at most [how much, exactly, again?] economically valuable work [what work is not economically valuable?]."

Call a spade a spade, the 80% thing is 100% total bullshit (in the Frankfurtian sense, i.e. it is completely unconcerned about truth, and is all just about generating feels).

LLM weights are frozen once the model is trained and a specific version is released, or this is true at least currently for almost all major models. You can ask interesting consciousness questions about LLMs, but you most definitely need to separate LLMs during training (whether this is pre-training, later fine-tuning, or general instruction tuning approaches) and after, during inference. None of this has any relevance to the core points I was making re: useful vs. useless discussions of LLMs and consciousness, because the weights point was just a minor example to illustrate a larger point about how narrowing the scope of the conversation is necessary for productive discourse.

I doubt we agree on what "rigorous definitions" means, given that you are happy to continue using a useless, vague family resemblance concept like "consciousness", but complain that pointing out dynamicness and/or change is involved is too vague.

I believe one cannot give a rigorous definition of consciousness precisely because it is a family resemblance concept, and there is no actual essence. This is why I suggest shifting to talking about aspects, since then productive insights and truths can be discovered.

You are still stuck in thinking consciousness is one unified thing, but it is about one of the clearest examples of a family-resemblance category as you can think of.

Dynamicness / change is one aspect that is definitely part of what we tend to think of as being quite fundamental to consciousness, and there are a lot of ways in which LLMs can't and/or don't really change, and this strongly constrains how similar LLM consciousness can/could be to ours.

If the SEP isn't enough to trigger the thinking needed for you, just ask an LLM what I said, to "go through the ways in which LLMs do/don't/may exhibit phenomena that are generally what we consider fundamental aspects of consciousness". You'll see there are some clear answers, and some uncertainties and vagueness.

> Are you saying I need to have certain beliefs (discredited by someone) for something objective to be true or false?

I am saying that, if you reject radical social constructionism (or solipsisms of various flavours, i.e. we are all just plugged into the matrix or some kind of simulation), then you must believe there is a real world out there independent of our consciousness / awareness of it. There must also be patterns / structure in that world, some of those patterns and structures being essentially constant, and those are what we call "true" (objective) facts about reality. BUT if you are a radical social constructionist or solipsist of some kind, then it can be perfectly coherent to reject any idea of objectivity or truth, except as contingent on social consensus (or personal beliefs, in the solipsistic case). Radical social constructionism being "discredited" is just a recognition that it basically forces you rapidly into incoherence.

> Which ways and how can it be demonstrated experimentally?

Try reading through the SEP article I linked above (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/#ConCon), particularly sections 2, and then especially section 4. You'll see you don't even need to run experiments to answer certain questions, you can just logically prove there are certain aspects of consciousness LLMs can't have, or clearly already have. Others you'll see immediately need qualifying or more information to answer. EDIT: Or just ask any AI to list the ways in which LLMs can, cannot, and might be able to exhibit the various aspects of consciousness. It will give you a decent answer, likely in a pretty little table.

See e.g. 4.8, Dynamic Flow: LLMs basically can't have this, as their weights are frozen. You'd have to claim that the activations during inference are the dynamic component, but then that means LLMs are conscious only in the few seconds or even milliseconds during inference. Likewise, they don't have memory, so every inference is this consciousness being born anew, as it were, at least in current models.

You can of course go much further on even this specific point, but, the point is, there is lots of useful discussion and thinking to be had when you go through the aspects of consciousness in this way, and definitely at least some clear answers.

EDIT:

> That's not what the consciousness debate I see is about.

I just mean there are some similarities between the lobster consciousness debates and AI consciousness debates. Obviously the stakes and many aspects are different, I was just trying to illustrate why and how discussion and experiments can be useful and consequential here.

Even just reading the Wikipedia article on consciousness would have been a good start here, but it is hard to believe the author has ever even done that...

Whether AI is conscious or not is independent of the social acceptance of the idea, unless you believe in thoroughly discredited and quite radical forms of social constructionism.

In fact, if you stop talking about consciousness, and go through all the various aspects of consciousness, the whole debate gets very interesting. There are various ways in which AI is very clearly conscious or exhibits / involves phenomena that are clearly involved in certain aspects of conscious, other ways in which AI already very clearly is missing other aspects, and then again some remaining ways which are unclear, and which may forever remain unclear.

Being clear about the different ways in which AI is, isn't, and might be conscious is a useful discussion and we still need to be having it.

EDIT: An analogy would be to recent shifts in whether or not lobsters feel pain, and so by extension, the ways in and degree to which lobsters can be considered consciousness. Research and debate has shifted opinions enough for parts of Europe to regulate certain methods of preparing them. But the ways in which lobsters are conscious and/or feel pain is an objective fact, regardless of what we decide.

Few philosophical definitions actually involve qualia or handwaving, because serious philosophy is quite careful about noting vagueness (handwaving) and circular defintions (qualia).

Also, saying "I define consciousness as X" and then going on to show that, because I decree consciousness to be X, we don't need to worry about Y, Z, and so on, isn't pragmatic at all, unless you pick an X that everyone agrees on. The definition you give is something hardly anyone would agree on.

Social consensus probably isn't even an aspect of consciousness, but at least one can make that argument coherently, if you rephrase it as "part of the decision to call something 'conscious' or not involves social consensus". But this is also trivial and boring and not why anyone actually cares about the "is AI conscious" debate.

You can conclude the author is a completely unserious thinker because he doesn't even take a second to talk about the definitions, or even show he has ever read any actual proper philosophical writing on consciousness at all. Like, literally all you have to do is read the Wikipedia entry to see that definitions are essential for meaningful discussion on consciousness.

So anyone that starts going on about AI and consciousness without at least a sentence or two clarifying some basic definitions is basically either intellectually incompetent or attempting to use the emotional salience (and brain-numbing effect, it would seem) of the word to push some agenda. But they certainly don't care at all about understanding consciousness.

Oh look, another completely retarded article that doesn't even bother to note or deal with the definition problem. If you don't define what you mean by the term, your argument isn't even wrong, it is just a waste of everyone's time, since there are multiple highly conflicting aspects of and/or definitions of consciousness.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/#ConCon

I'm in downtown Toronto, and there are plenty of (very quiet) electric cars, all sorts of quiet e-bikes and other electric personal transportation devices (scooters, e-unicycles) and other things (roller blades, bikes, skateboards) where often the only sound is the noise of the wheels on the sidewalk / pavement making a quiet hiss / rumble. I do a lot of walking, and headphone people are often (but not always) quite clueless about these things approaching. Granted, those other people aren't supposed to be where people are walking, but they regularly are, sadly.

Passing isn't something that is only the responsibility of the passer, that of course is absurd. Most people don't walk on the very edge of a path, but slightly off from the center (or in the shade close to the buildings if hot, or far from the street if puddles and raining, and etc), and you may also be carrying things that make you take up a lot of space.

So, in practice, as a walker, you do in fact have to be aware of people approaching from behind, at least, if you aren't an ass, because it is often kind (or even necessary) to move aside a bit to make passing easier / possible. Earphone people are some of the biggest assholes in these scenarios.

EDIT: But I fully agree that once you get out of the chaos of the downtown core, or likely plenty of other cities, this is probably just not really a meaningful problem / tradeoff.

The aversiveness of boredom is not conditioning, but part of its essence and generally is proposed to be its (presumably evolved) function. Boredom is arguably the negative emotion or cognitive mode that drives (or opens up the space for) creativity, exploration, play, and introspection, and this is broadly how it is seen in existential writing and in modern cognitive science and/or psychology.

You should try foam earplugs, if they are comfortable for you. Far more effective and discreet, you have a range of dB ratings to choose from for degree of muting, they are cheaper and stay in place better, and are more portable.

Same with walking in the city IMO.

I see a lot of people walking around in the city with headphones, and I always find it concerning. These people have huge issues with situational awareness: they can't hear faster walkers approaching from behind, often don't notice suspicious or erratic behaviour from the local flavour until far too late, and IMO are simply incapable of properly anticipating things like increased engine roars as a driver guns it trying to make it by on a yellow.

As long as people realize they are making this tradeoff, fine, I guess. But I wouldn't.

There is still IMO a way that "creative mode" can be wasted time, and that is when it is being used as a distraction from proper reflection / introspection. The pursuit of creativity / learning can be its own unhealthy obsession too.

Your ending paragraph: "With enough experience, your own unique ideas will dominate your mind. That's when you finally feel in control." also reads as something that could probably also be seen as potentially bad / delusion, in spiritual contexts as well (real control is mostly illusion, you actually do often want other people's ideas to dominate the mind, lest you fall into solipsism / narcissism, etc). Not to pick at your short comment here or presume that though, but it definitely sets off a red flag of some kind.

There is indeed quite a rich literature on the importance of boredom too. Basic links can be found on Wikipedia, Buddhism generally confronts it as well, and even research in psychology generally sees it as an important cognitive or emotional process. Sadly I feel we are losing sight of this.

A bit surprised at the focus on auditory stimuli here. There is a deeper point about our need for distraction in contemporary society which I think is with thinking about a bit.

You can scroll Twitter / read Hacker News or other sources of comments online, scroll TikTok / YouTube shorts slop-spam, read books, or constantly pipe in music / podcasts in any free moment (and these are very different and all can be good and bad in different ways), but if you are constantly fleeing boredom by grasping for whatever distraction is immediately available (even if this activity is typically seen as good, like "learning" or "reading books", or benign, like listening to music), this constant distraction has negative long-term consequences for personal growth.

There is a reason boredom comes up as crucial and important in spiritual practices (most meditation practices broadly involve forcing you to confront and learn to be comfortable with boredom, to some degree) and existential philosophy, and it is because boredom (especially existential boredom) is one way the mind tells you might not be being properly challenged, or that certain aspects of your life might not be truly fulfilling at the moment.

And sure, sometimes it isn't clear how to fix these issues, so distraction isn't inherently bad. But if all you do is distract, you'll flounder. So be wary IMO of habitually reaching for distraction (even if mild, like music / podcasts).

It is a problem of degree, not of kind, in contemporary society. The degree today to which people require / can seek out distractions today is not likely "normal" compared to what we know of past human history, although the desire to do so is likely the same old desire that has always been there.

Yes, although the evidence for those having meaningful or large health effects is far weaker, more suggestive / possible rather than clearly established. For sure though, "berries are healthy" is a far more general truth than "fruit is healthy" to be true.

I'm assuming a Western context, and that fruit and vegetable have their common language and culinary meanings, so that e.g. tomato and cucumber are vegetables, and that "fruits" generally means what is available to and consumed in most Western contexts. This seems reasonable given the article.

Avocado I don't personally consider to be either fruit or vegetable (it is a "tree fat"), and is more in the category of things like olives or seeds / nuts, in culinary and nutritional terms too. Calling avocado a fruit or vegetable feels extremely awkward, as does calling things like olives, capers, or, say, fresh green peppercorns. Starchy / root vegetables are not really what is meant by "vegetables" in these discussions either.

And yes, tropical fruits and berries actually have meaningful nutrients, and are better choices.

GP posting "Everyone I personally know working in software stopped writing code" on HN is such an obvious tell of blinkered delusion.

Literally all HN talks about is AI these days, and it is very, very clear that plenty of people are still writing lots of code, many finding AI makes them slower and causes more problems, and many making the reverse claims. There is always a rich mix of opinions and experiences here.

You would have to believe that literally everyone on HN is a bot (and also everyone on Reddit, Twitter, astralcodexten, or anywhere else online) to discount all these differing opinions in favor of "everyone I personally know" .

Let me put it this way: I don't think it is an uncommon belief that "adding fruit" to an existing diet will have benefits. But, in fact, if you are meeting your caloric and nutrient needs already, it is unlikely it adds anything (except fiber), and it is plausible it is causing problems (increasing possibility of diabetes, adding extra calories). Veggies are a safer add.

In both cases, you probably need to be rebalancing and not adding things, but, for the same reason, it is sensible to err on the side of much more veggies than fruits. However, because fruit tastes like candy (and perhaps because you don't have to cook them, generally), people reach for adding more fruit to their diets, and this is likely sub-optimal. You should almost certainly be eating much more vegetables than you should be eating fruit. I.e. I'd say healthy is more like 80% veggie, 20% fruit, if you are putting them in the same category.

Maybe 50/50 is perfectly good too, but it seems pretty clear 100% fruit and 0% veggie is the worst possible choice, but 100% veggie and 0% fruit is perfectly fine. This should bring into question the appropriateness of the label "healthy" for fruit.