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[–] 69 points 1 week ago (13 children)

Maybe this is part of the campaign trying to convince people that their chatbot has developed a consciousness. Recently they even tried to convince the pope that Claude is a conscious being: https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/anthropic-tried-persuade-pope-ai-131853948.html

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  • [–] 6 points 1 week ago* (4 children)

    Wrong group to start with. The church doesn't see you as a person if you are different, they will never say that a machine can have a "soul". Not that LLMs are anywhere near conscious, I just like bashing on the chief pedo.

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  • [–] 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

    Fuck the Church and their pedophile rulers, but I don't think the Pope took the bait on this one.

    1. It is not possible to provide a single, comprehensive definition of AI. What can be stated, however, is that we must avoid the misconception of equating this type of “intelligence” with that of human beings. These systems merely imitate certain functions of human intelligence. In doing so, they often surpass human intelligence in speed and computational capacity, offering tangible benefits across many fields. Yet this power remains entirely tied to data processing. So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate language, behavior and analytical skills, or even simulate empathy and understanding, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. Even when these tools are described as capable of “learning,” their way of doing so is different from that of a human person. It is not the experience of those who allow themselves to be shaped by life and grow over time through choices, mistakes, forgiveness and fidelity. Rather, it is a form of statistical adaptation based on data and feedback, which can be very effective, but does not imply inner growth.
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  • [–] 16 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    Pope Leo has a bachelors of science in mathematics, they'll never be able to convince him that matrix multiplication is alive.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 week ago* (1 child)

    That citation has nothing to do with mathematical knowledge. It's assertion of attributes that religious people deem relevant for personhood before god. It admits AI capabilities insofar as they're undeniable, but then focuses on assertions what this does not mean.

    Coming from a religious household nothing about this is a surprise. It's very well articulated, but it still does not carry any special insights. It's a completely predictable position for a religious leader.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago (7 children)

    They are less arguing for people to think the model is conscious, and more to avoid people prematurely claiming certainty it is not (like the Pope did). From their view, the research keeps leading to surprising (to them) results at odds with high confidence disclaiming of potential consciousness (according to several of the many, many differing definitions of that term).

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  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago (5 children)

    If the LLM is conscious then terminating a session is murder.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago (4 children)

    Is killing a pig murder?

    What about putting someone under general anesthesia?

    (It was a nice try at a reductio ad absurrum fallacy, but those tend to kind of suck, just fyi.)

    Also, personally I'd say that given the general poor standing of consciousness research in humans across both neurological and philosophical domains, the much more important and relevant question than whether models are conscious (a fool's errand to debate) is whether or not they are simulating consciousness. Lots of reasons engaging with the "as if" conscious makes sense for the latter even if the former is false.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    Is killing a pig murder?

    Some people would argue it is. I can't really do that while holding a bratwurst. But if we think the LLM is intelligent and conscious, then that's another step.

    anesthesia

    is reversible so completely irrelevant.

    reductio ad absurrum

    Absurdum

    just fyi.

    Condescension doesn't make you any friends, just FYI

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  • [–] 0 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    is reversible so completely irrelevant

    So is a session transcript.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago* (1 child)

    reversible so completely irrelevant

    So is a session transcript.

    My understanding is that the context if the session is bigger than just the outputs. If it is, then shutting it down is "murder". If it isn't, then it is as conscious as a notebook.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 week ago

    There is (it's the kv cache), but it's recomputable from the session transcript.

    Part of why comparing human consciousness and possible AI equivalents is not easily apples to apples.

    I can't take a human and create a backup state to restore to, or fork into multiple versions of the same mind that then goes down different paths, or pause and then resume things.

    Humans do have consciousness continuity breaks and it's quite possible we only have an illusion of continuity vs actual continuity at a neurological level. So just as a transformer has seams at generating the individual token as well as at a context window, humans have consciousness seams (sleep, anesthesia, highway hypnosis, short term memory capacity, etc). But there are very wide differences between human consciousness as an effectively constrained singleton and AI as able to be quite multiple and resumable from an initial single state.

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