Well, our current set of evidence is that it’s a mechanistic mechanical algorithm with an RNG embedded in it and we can both get it to repeatedly produce the same output for the same input and also get it to repeatedly do absolutely nothing at all, which are not characteristics we usually find in objects evincing consciousness.
LLMs bear absolutely none of the traits we’ve come to recognize as the external hallmarks of consciousness in biological organisms, nor anything that would seem analogous in a non-biological substrate.
That said, we don’t have a rigorous definition of consciousness that includes the actual phenomenology of consciousness, so I daresay if you’re going to go around asserting the LLM is conscious despite all existing evidence to the contrary, I think the impetus is on you to define some version of consciousness that isn’t also satisfied by a book or a movie.
I would agree that LLMs aren't much like the human brain, that doesn't prove that consciousness is not occurring. Does a fruit fly experience anything? If a microscopic insect can experience something, why can't a CPU?
>if you’re going to go around asserting the LLM is conscious despite all existing evidence to the contrary
Well there is neither any evidence that suggests LLMs are not conscious, and I also never asserted that they are. If I had to guess I would say that any information processing system will produce some kind of conscious experience, but I ultimately have literally no idea.
There’s plenty. First, when we say “LLM”, what are we referring to? What is the entity that would be conscious in this case?
The reason this is important is because powerful people are currently trying to use the dodge that LLMs are conscious to launder liability for their own policy choices, so the sloppy thinking and half-assed conjecture about LLM consciousness has real-world consequences, and every time you assert the question is unknowable you allow that kind of loophole, so it’d behoove all of us for you to spend some time actually digging in on this instead of just idly making or rebutting assertions.
There’s a richer literature here than what you’ve seemed to have engaged with, and I’d encourage you to spend some time with it before handing more money to the magic AI people.
>The reason this is important is because powerful people are currently trying to use the dodge that LLMs are conscious to launder liability for their own policy choices, so the sloppy thinking and half-assed conjecture about LLM consciousness has real-world consequences
I'm not going to change my beliefs or how I think about interesting questions just because its the "socially conscious" thing to do.
>There’s a richer literature here than what you’ve seemed to have engaged with, and I’d encourage you to spend some time with it before handing more money to the magic AI people.
It seems like you are highly emotionally invested in this and that is precluding you from open engagement with the topic.
You're not engaging with the topic. Engaging with the topic is where one either asks questions and listens to the answer or actually seeks to increase one's knowledge on the topic. You're just saying things. That's lazy.
And, you're welcome to do what you want to do, it's your god given right to stay as ignorant as you want about any particular topic, but that comes with consequences. If you want to call that being socially conscious, sure, you do you, but if you're interested in why people keep getting annoyed at your loud proclamations of ignorance which you're trying to proffer as evidence of a curious mind, well, that's why.
It's just as intellectually lazy to leave "consciousness" undefined and proceed to claim that "X cannot be consciousness" because of social reasons. That's the definition of a circular argument.
In the same vein, airplanes can't fly because they don't flap their wings.
As for ignorance: have you tried to make an LLM produce the same output for the same input (as you state above)? Give it a shot, you'll be surprised.
I’m not leaving consciousness undefined. I provided a definition and asserted LLMs were not conscious by that definition. I solicited an alternate definition and was given none. If you’d like to claim the LLM is conscious, you need to define what you mean, for both “the LLM” and “is conscious,” because it’s not passing any of our existing bars for consciousness, and the only thing you can point to are characteristics also present in other objects we don’t consider conscious, so again, the burden of proof is in fact on you and that other fellow to provide some definitions here, because as sits you and the other commenter are just saying shit and refusing to engage with any kind of rigor.
And, to your point: I have, and I did, and I was not. If you’d like to refine your argument further - What LLM? Provide input how, and in what fashion? Under what conditions? - we can have that conversation, but if your assertion is “I can’t get ChatGPT to consistently produce the same output twice and therefore it is conscious,” that’s an incredibly facile argument.
You two seem to be laboring under the impression that this is terra ignota philosophically; it’s not. There’s an enormous amount of literature, thinking, ideas, concepts, frameworks, and approaches that already exist here that you’re welcome to engage with, but you’re not doing that, nor are you actually engaging with any of my arguments except to deny their existence.
Philosophically - sure. But philosophy is a feedback loop. Humans trying to build a model of their brain within their own brain. There is by definition not enough oomph there, and that model will necessarily be approximate at best.
Think that's what an out of touch techie would say? May I remind you that just a few hundred years ago the best philosophers were debating whether the world would descend into anarchy if more people realized that the big monkey in the sky doesn't exist. Just because philosophers talk about something doesn't mean it exists in reality.
As for same output - there's a parameter called "temperature". It governs the random wandering in the output of an LLM. Reducing temp gives more deterministic output, but also reduces the capabilities. Is it possible that randomness is also precisely the mechanism behind human creativity?
I'm still waiting for a definition of "consciousness," as well as a definition of the entity which you're claiming might possess it.
You've now added two additional entities that require definition for your statements to be meaningful in any sense - "philosophy," the entire field of which you're dismissing as useless, which is going to be extremely fun if you ever actually decide to dig into the neuroscience of consciousness and how the brain works to make sense of the world, and creativity, which has come into the conversation for some reason I'm not entirely sure of but also warrants a definition that isn't trivially satisfiable by either an I Ching or a double pendulum, which, if you're arguing those are conscious, sure, I guess we could throw anything in that bucket then.
You're arguing with all the rigor of a stoned college student, and fine, that's a register you can stay in, no problem with someone having hobbies, but at least have the decency to recognize what you're doing and acknowledge that other people have actually put in the work to be able to discuss and evaluate some of the questions you're positing as unknowable conundrums.
Consciousness is a slippery word that is notoriously difficult to debate over. But often, people use 'consciousness' as a shortcut or a familiar word to describe a more complex idea. The point they're driving across isn't about the precise definition of the word 'consciousness', but about people treating LLMs as if they were actual human beings, assigning them all the traits and behaviors they would expect of a human.
I would argue, that the null hypothesis is that it is not, and that anyone claiming that there is a mote of consciousness are the ones with the burden of proof.
The null hypothesis is that we don't know jack shit about consciousness. Any claim of certainty seems extraordinary to me and I want to hear the evidence.
We know quite a lot about consciousness. You may not, but we know enough to know the informational dynamics in a brain are vastly different from an LLMs.
Exactly what kind of certainty are you looking for? Happy to provide it at a molecular, cellular, tissue or whole brain level.
Yes we can say it has conscious experience. The content and depth of it, we cannot yet fully grok, and of course, what it feels like from inside the ant is something we never will know.
Would you want evidence that your your bicycle is not conscious? It can sense your inputs. It responds to the environment. The gears do multiplication (reasoning!).
To make the claim that an object is not conscious you need to both define what consciousness even is, then you need to make a machine capable of measuring it.
If you have done neither or those things then any claim you have about a bicycle's consciousness is just baseless speculation.
Regardless -- if we don't know jack shit about consciousness (your words), then any claims of LLMs being conscious are by definition untestable, pure speculation and based on no evidence at all.
People keep saying this, but it's not true. We know a lot about consciousness. There's a lot we don't know about it, of course, but "jack shit" is wildly incorrect.
> I want to hear the evidence.
If you believe LLMs are conscious, then the onus is on you to provide evidence of such.
the onus is on whoever is making a positive claim.
If you are stating "LLMs are not conscious" you need to provide evidence, just like how if you are stating "LLMs are conscious" you need to provide evidence.
You need evidence to make the positive claim that LLMs do not posses any form of consciousness.