gumgumpost

>we always used the turing test as a yardstick for consciousness

Yet that cannot compel reality. How we define something is the measure of chance we get it right.

>Now thats its been achieved, what is the rationale for moving the goalposts?

Absolutely, if we understand it's not good enough. First of all we cannot know something is or isn't conscious. You cannot prove I am, and I cannot prove you are. We simply assume, but the scientific argument would be that we both work on the same principles, have similar brains, signals do something. If we alter those signals in certain ways we both manifest in similar ways, and it's expected to some degree since the brains work in similar ways.

So based on this it's somewhat comfortable making the jump in assuming other humans but you have what you have, as consciousness. But that doesn't mean you can gauge consciousness in something that is not coming from a human brain.

Funnily enough, if we knew how, we'd be able to make an AI that would do it better than us, an AI that would gauge consciousness in other things, better than a human could. No argument so far why a conscious individual is required to "see" consciousness in other things.

So the closest to certainty we could ever have is on something that is working like a human brain, with delays and timings and all. And considering the amount of activity, the type of activity, and the von Neumann memory bottleneck in our current computing hardware, I seriously doubt there's anything like mammalian consciousness in GPUs.

You can argue about "consciousness" in GPUs as much as you can argue about consciousness in a rock. It could be, some kind, but who knows? Way too abstract to call it out, in a scientific sense.

What I am trying to say is that we can only agree something is conscious, and only if it's working on the same principles a human brain does, closely. It's an agreement, not proof, not definitions. We collectively start accepting it, without KNOWING. And the safest way to do that is on something which is working exactly like a human brain. Anything else we can only lose certainty.

We can collectively decide tomorrow that rocks are conscious, but that means nothing. But the certainty we'd have would be so so way lower than that of any other human being conscious like us.

And the whole confusion will compound when again, unknowingly, people will start advocating to never turn LLMs off because that's the equivalent of "killing" them each time, which I think will be peak nonsense.

Now a question for you: Let's suppose someone is born, and has zero sensory input all of their lives. They live in a hospital bed for 20 years. Zero information input, of any kind. What is going on in there? Is there someone home? Are they having a conscious experience? How do you know if yes or no? How can we divorce consciousness from experience (data flow)?

>You have a mistaken understanding of what atheism is. It is not a belief in anything, but an absence of belief in a deity.

I consider that to also be a wrongly held position, because you'd need proof either way. So atheists are just making a bet. I think agnostic is the most valid position as far as I am concerned, lacking proof of one or the other. I do not know. We can get into technicalities as well. What exactly do we mean by God? What if some religious God does exist but it's wrongly interpreted by believers? What if there's some highly technologically advanced entity that meets the criteria as far as the more primitive religious perspective is concerned? Do we have proof such thing exists? Do we have proof such entity cannot exist in our universe? I find both perspectives shortsighted.

Having certainty something that can be perceived as God by believers cannot exist in our universe is in the end a belief, with no proof.

Current LLM tech has no sense of time, because it's working on different principles than a brain does. Maybe (highly debatable) you could get something from spiking neural networks (and analog hardware). As long as timing isn't even a thing nowadays I'm not even sure why we're debating "consciousness" in GPUs. I personally find it silly (statistically speaking).

>we could define consciousness

We cannot. And our definitions mean nothing to reality. We can all define something as something else, means nothing to how it behaves. But ultimately, as I said in a previous comment, we have no choice but to agree or not. It cannot be tested, in any way, that makes it absolutely certain, because it's a logical issue. We cannot even have certainty anyone else but ourselves even is conscious. We all sort of agree everyone else must be.

The issue with defining it is someone could potentially find a way to make a machine that mimics it but works nothing like a consciousness generating brain does. So, if it meets our definition criteria, is that conscious? Where's the certainty? How do we prove it is?

Anything we could ever dare call conscious must work exactly like a human brain does. Any deviation from that loses certainty on it having consciousness or not.

And let's not ignore the huge incentive corporations would have in meeting your definition with something that has nothing to do with consciousness, just so they can profit off it.

>I think it's important that when you talk about consciousness, you pin down exactly what that means.

We don't need that. It's way simpler. When we mass manufacture products we implicitly expect they all behave the same (more or less). That seems valid for humans as well. Raise one, or atomically assemble one (we imply that's possible for the sake of the argument) it will behave like one, and posses what we all assume each-other does, consciousnesses (if healthy). That's implied based on the structure.

So we can all agree something is conscious as long as it operates on the same principles a human brain does. Anything else is highly debatable. We cannot ever logically probe consciousness. We agree on it existing or not, in anyone else. We suppose anyone outside of us has it. Based on observation. You look like a human, you behave like one, thus you probably have what I have, as far as consciousness goes. It's not a guarantee, it's not proof, it's mere supposition.

This is the best we'll ever going to have. When we stray from here we only get less certainty. Some kind of GPU running some algorithm...my personal guess is there's nothing there similar to what we colloquially call consciousness. Some kind of synthetic brain that operates on the same principles that we do as far as brain-like structure goes, with signals, delays and all...then we can have a discussion if we all AGREE that thing is conscious or not. Especially if it says it is, and seems to behave/react like we do, and we perceive it's cognitive abilities as similar to any other human's.

I personally think this whole debate is way simpler, but some people keep insisting in making it way more complicated. Make it work exactly like a human brain does, as far as signaling goes, observe it, and we all can have a discussion on. Anything else...way lower chances.

edit: We would first also need to define mamallian type consciousness as its own thing. With maybe a spectrum, monkeys have something but it's not quite what we have. But seems to come from the same place, similar mammal brain working in similar ways. We have no clue how many types of consciousness are even possible, or if more are possible. Why would ours be the only kind/type?

I think this whole consciousness discussion especially in GPUs is a general mess. A lot of people make so many mistakes and don't even realize how many unfounded assumptions they are making when having ideas about what it is or isn't.

Don't know much about the field, but isn't he implying it could make math more compatible with the physical world? Math as a field seems like a deep rabbit hole that sometimes describes our reality.

Since you're at it, if you're also curious, what would be the energy cost of trying all of them, considering the average power used by a random computer today? Are we looking at something like an average quasar total contained energy?

Those are just the odds, but you randomly finding it in the next 10 minutes is a valid move in this universe. The silly low odds don't guarantee you won't find it.

Isn't that somewhat similar to prions? I mean I know they're different things but one triggering the other to change shape? Don't know if prions also fall in some sort of lower energy well.