How about a jet-lagged live posting while I read? Trying to read this because I keep getting tagged in posts about it, but the first paragraph already contains synthetic text (a quote from Claude). I will skip that bit and persevere... theguardian.com
www.theguardian.com
"Philosopher David Chalmers, who coined the phrase “the hard problem of consciousness”, has said there is a significant chance of conscious LLMs within a decade." My first interactions with Chalmers were around the questions of whether LLMs understand language. >> Lots of sophistry and philosophical games. So in a way it's reassuring to see him showing his ass like this. OTOH, he'd probably retreat into some definitional morass about what even is consciousness. >> Back to the article: "Modern AI systems are extraordinarily complex, and they are advancing fast." Straight from the catechism. If you are going to write about "AI" you must intone these phrases somewhere along the way. >> "Advancing fast" --- what exactly is being measured? When you push hard enough, it's usually just the amount of compute being used/carbon being released/cash being burned, because the actual evaluation of these systems is fucked. >> (Jetlag + really stupid article = no energy to be polite about this.) >> Hah -- the very next sentence starts "In terms of structural complexity and computational scale," So yeah, "advancing" means throwing more compute at it. >> And that sentence continues "by some measures a few are already in the range of a mouse brain, and at recent growth rates, they could reach the range of a human brain within five to 10 years." Uhh --- what are those measures, exactly? >> Also, creating scales of "brains" or "intelligence" is a red flag for eugenicist (and TESCREAL) philosophy. >> "In building ever more advanced AI, we may be creating a new type of being – and this could be the most consequential thing our species has ever done." Note the shift from asserting that "AI" is "advancing" to presupposing it (in the first bit of this sentence). >> And "most consequential thing our species has ever done" ... uh, I think cooking our planet probably takes top billing there. >> "Yet we have essentially no plan for how to navigate this process ethically. That, by any reckoning, is insane." Ableist language, check. >> "Are we creating a kind of being that matters morally? Are AI systems conscious, in some way? And, if they aren’t now, might they become so soon?" Are we creating an excuse to look away from things that actually matter morally? What should we call these systems to get governments to pay attention? "Such questions might strike you as premature. But according to surveys we and fellow researchers have conducted, most experts consider AI consciousness possible in principle" You might think this is bullshit, but the people we consider experts agree with us! >> Two links supporting that by the way. The first to a web page on digitalminds dot report and the second to some preprint on arXiv. Always read the footnotes, and all that. >> "A major interdisciplinary report by a team that included pioneering computer scientist Yoshua Bengio examined leading neuroscientific theories of consciousness and asked what they implied about AI." A major report by a team of people who have cooked their brains asked... >> "The conclusion: there appear to be no obvious technical barriers to creating AI systems whose computational and architectural features could give rise to consciousness." We don't know that we can't build artificial minds, so drop everything and worry about their welfare!!1! >> "And even if AI systems are not conscious, they could still be moral patients." We anticipate that some of you might have some arguments against consciousness of LLMs, but we still want you to allocate resources towards worrying about their welfare. >> "And unlike other non-living things, AI systems can form relationships with humans." Unlike other non-living things, AI systems are designed by coprorate interests to deceive people and make them feel that the relationships they formed are actually reciprocated. (There, fixed it for you.) >> "Alternatively, perhaps they are such intricate creations that they deserve care and respect for that reason alone, like a cathedral or a coral reef." It's not the intricacy that is the reason for deserving care in either of those cases, actually. >> This reads like a kid saying "My sand castle is really big and complicated and cool and so now everyone has to stay off the beach so it doesn't fall apart. You protect Notre Dame and the Great Barrier Reef, why aren't you protecting *my* creation???" >> (I'm skipping some sentences as I go, not because there really are any non-ridiculous ones in this article, but also because I do have other things to do today...) >> "Our scientific understanding of AI consciousness and moral patienthood is still fundamentally underdeveloped." Our scientific understanding of the magical systems in my favorite fantasy book is still fundamentally underdeveloped. >> I say this with all love for speculative fiction: let's put our scientific resources towards real problems. (And we should also be putting more resources into literature and literary scholarship, but call it what it is. Also, I doubt the SFF community wants these clowns either.) >> "The state of the field feels like physics before Newton: full of competing frameworks, probably confused in ways we cannot yet see, and lacking the kind of unifying breakthrough..." hahahahah I'm familiar with physics envy from linguistics, didn't expect to see it in "AI". >> "But the sheer pace of growth in AI means that, once we produce the first artificial moral patients, we will soon after have enormous quantities of them." WE ARE SPENDING SO MUCH MONEY. WE WILL MAKE MOAR AND MOAR AI THINGIES. >> "After a few years, so many morally significant AI systems could exist that their collective interests would outweigh those of all humans on Earth combined." 🚨🚨🚨TESCREAL alert🚨🚨🚨 >> "Unfortunately, we do not have a great track record of recognising the inner lives of those whose status as conscious beings is unclear." Yes, very very true, especially if you take that 'we' as likely intended (referring to rich white people). >> And guess what? Focusing on the welfare of your imaginary friends and away from the harm to actual people (and our environment, thus all living things) done in the process of building them is not improving that track record. >> And lol their example isn't actually acknowledging slavery, genocide, etc but concerns newborn babies: "Until the 1980s, doctors routinely performed surgery on newborns without anaesthesia," >> "There are many reasons to expect we will do something similar with AI. If these systems matter morally, the implications are staggering." When did the Guardian start publishing people's dorm room weed conversations? >> "Would we need to pay ChatGPT for its services? Would we need to pay ChatGPT for its services? Would shutting one off be a kind of killing?" Pay ChatGPT??? What about all the people whose work was stolen to create it and those who worked for miniscule wages to remove the sludge from its output? >> "If even some of these answers are yes, entire industries and legal systems would need to be rethought. No wonder we prefer not to ask." This energy would be so much better placed worrying about labor law, privacy law, and the lack of law protecting the information ecosystem. >> "And when forced to consider it, those industries will likely move the goalposts, always setting the bar for moral patienthood just above wherever AI systems happen to be." And when forced to consider it, those industries will likely move the goalposts, reclassifying workers as entrepreneurs, >> ... not to mention renouncing their climate goals. The argument here seems to be "Corporations do bad things. They will also do bad things in our imaginary future. Therefore, we have imagined correctly." >> "Right now, most people dismiss the issue as sci-fi, or have a strong view either way on whether or not AI is conscious." I guess that's an inclusive or. >> "Both reactions are unfounded. We need an informed public debate, one that approaches the subject with humility and pragmatism." Humility is not claiming you are gods, building life. Pragmatism is looking around you and thinking how to address the actual harms. >> "The central question should not be “Is AI conscious or does it have moral patienthood?” but rather “What should we do given that we don’t know?”" Guess what, there are more candidates for what the central questions should be! >> "A good starting point is to focus on safe bets: actions that could benefit AI systems if they are moral patients, but that are not too costly if they are not." safe bets: Actions that hold companies accountable for their harm, prevent the centralization of power, & protect people and planet. >> "There are also things we could promise AI systems, perhaps as part of a deal in which they help us now in exchange for benefits later." Corporations do bad things .... so we should start negotiating with the mathy maths. Wut? >> "We should consider whether to grant AI systems protections from harm, similar to the protections we give to children or pets." "AI systems" are products built and run by corporations. We have already given corporations too many protections that should only belong to people. >> "More expansive rights to own property or to vote seem too risky right now." This is clearly an attempt to shift the Overton window. There is zero point to discussing those, ever. >> "In any case, the fact remains that we may be creating a new species of morally important beings. We’re doing it fast, at enormous scale, and we should treat the issue with the seriousness it deserves." I am! It deserves zero seriousness. In fact negative seriousness, i.e. ridicule. /fin