How are the numbers generated by random.rand() made?

You can hook computer randomness up to truly random* quantum processes with fairly simple specialized chips. Building your argument on such an easily avoided technical detail isn't wise, because the question can very easily just be asked for a computer that does have access to a source of true randomness. Then it can be nondeterministic-- so what does that have to do with its consciousness or lack thereof?

* unless the entire universe is secretly deterministic, I guess.

Ok, I'll ask. What are these decent scientific definitions for consciousness and how can we use them to construct a test for consciousness?

In other words:

• Statement that does not prove anything is or isn't conscious
• Unsupported assertion
• Unsupported assertion

Wow, very convincing article! I wish I'd thought of that! /s

This analysis is correct but I have a minor quibble: The simulated fruit fly brain is not a complete simulation of the biological processes, or even all the neuronal connections, of the actual fly's brain.

Those are very obviously surmountable. I could make a simple model architecture on my laptop right now that updates its weights in real time and is always responding to input and giving outputs. I don't know if it would be a useful model, and there are good reasons not to do that, but it can easily be technically achieved. Those are not good measurements of consciousness, and if you truly believed they were accurate, I could make a "provably" conscious machine in like a day of work on consumer hardware.

Ok, in what way does this prove the existence or nonexistence of the non-linear-thread-of-words consciousness in any entity?

Then there will never be AGI.

Was Henry Molaison no longer possessing consciousness after the surgery?

How about Clive Wearing after the herpes caused anterograde amnesia?

There's been a number of humans that due to injury can no longer form new memories or learn anything. According to your definition, do those humans lack consciousness?

And most of the ones educated on the topic all agree on the same thing.

Source?

OK, that's great. So if I understand you correctly, it seems like you're admitting that not only do you have no empirical evidence for your position, you don't believe you'll ever be able to test it. This seems like a weak position to hold, almost akin to a faith-based religious position.

I might be confused, but it seems like you admitted in your reply to another message of mine that you won't ever be able to test this empirically. I agree. How is it not impossible, then?

You can hook computer randomness up to truly random* quantum processes with fairly simple specialized chips.

I know.

Building your argument on such an easily avoided technical detail isn’t wise, because the question can very easily just be asked for a computer that does have access to a source of true randomness.

I'm not building my argument solely on this, but maybe I'm being unclear, so I apologize.

Let's do exactly what you propose; now we pass a seed to the LLM generated from a true hardware-based random number generator. That doesn't change anything about the LLM itself: it's still deterministic. I don't think it's reasonable to claim that a deterministic algorithm can be conscious, and I think there are other factors as well (the fact that it doesn't exist continuously, it exists for brief periods simultaneously in thousands/millions of instances at once, the fact that it is static and unchanging unless re-trained, etc) which all paint a pretty clear picture that it cannot have consciousness.

I just don't think it will happen within our lifetimes, but I don't believe it's literally impossible. It may as well be, but I still think the truth we can't feasibly detect is that we're just as much deterministic machines as the computers we use. It's just a different medium for the same decision-making structure of neurons, whether physical or digital.

As I've said, I think the existence of instinctual behavior qualifies as empirical evidence for my theory. I don't believe it on a whim. Another example is twins, separated at birth, yet growing up to have nearly identical preferences and lives. Making choices reflecting the deterministic coding of their internal decision structure, which they largely share outside of nominal differences resulting from environment. That is rather strong evidence, I feel.

Correct. And I believe it's happening, right now, behind closed doors.

There's nothing stopping it from happening. The technology is all there. It would be trivially easy with the right hardware. I'd do it myself if I didn't want to be the human responsible for releasing the genie from the bottle. Let Pandora's box stay closed as long as possible - I'm not opening it. But someone, somewhere, surely is.

@Feathercrown@artISAn #consciousness #AI #brain #neuroscience #computer #functionalismEven a “complete simulation” of a fruit fly brain would be no more than an approximation. I think you mean “emulation” and I agree. The simple reason is that we do not know scientifically all of necessary and sufficient functional mechanisms of consciousness, nor consciousness’s functional role in “intelligence” (which we also have trouble describing). If, and only if we we did, we would (given the right tools) be able to replicate it functionally (in principle) using computation. Specifically, I refer to a Universal Turing Machine (UTM) and the Church-Turing Thesis (the foundational principle of all computer science). EVEN THEN, there are computational problems that cannot be proved to be solvable by a UTM (e.g., the Halting Problem) and we don’t know what, if any role they play in consciousness. Bottom line for me: we are going to need a revolution in each of the sciences of psychoneurophysics, mathematical logic, and theory of computation before we can begin to talk about replicating consciousness in a machine.

This is only a matter of resources, and these unthinkably wealthy corporations have those resources.

We have mapped a fruit fly brain and can make it play DOOM. I mean people don't have much empathy for them in real life, but they do recognize it's at least a living thing. Does that mean the 1:1 replica playing tetris is a living thing? Is it concious, both living or on a PC for that argument? If we scaled up the same technology and emulated a hamster's brain 1:1 would that be considered concious? What about a human? Is it even fair to compare a fruit fly brain to an LLM? I'm not taking any stance here, I'm just saying it's a super interesting topic. Cyberpunk 2077 explores that theory very well and I still have no answer as to what I think.

Sounds to me like you just need a context window with memories that self prune based on the dynamic context window of the model. That's what we do. We forget things, and when they're remembered we can access the "biological database" of associated memories on the fly. Because the associated information isn't deleted, only the short term memory from being included in the context window of each update of our own neural networks. Some people have greater context windows, and see therefore seen as smarter, because they can access more information and include it in the processing of each moment in time.

There's zero reason a digital representation of this system could not do the same thing. No matter how much I'm ridiculed for daring to suggest it 😅

By identifying"memories" they can include the information in the context of the next update - this is akin to our short term memory. Make it self pruning, where the data is saved locally but not included in the next context, and it acts the same as own memory system.

There's nothing stopping someone from wiring a camera, sensors, and motivators to a collection of neural networks, and have one parent neural network control them all. That would approximate the hemispheres of our brains.

I suspect cooked...

How have you ruled out other explanations for instinctual behavior? For example, there is a body of scientific work which offers evidence that instincts are passed down through genetics, a mechanism which doesn't require that the brain be deterministic. What are the scientists studying this area getting wrong?

What about twins that are separated at birth but grow up to be different? It seems that the existence of even one such pair of twins would invalidate your claims, given how fundamental this would be to the operation of the brain.

Artificial neural networks are quite different from biological neurons, so I reject this claim.

Painful watching people who have clearly never bothered to read even the shortest excerpt of philosophy try to have a philosophical discussion

You are free to search the web, there's lots of information out there. You might start with the Wikipedia article on consciousness.

Just because we don’t know what it is doesn’t mean we can’t know what it isn’t.

I don't think it proves anything, and I don't think it even set out to prove anything. I think it is trying to establish bounds on the problem by distinguishing between intelligence and consciousness.

But if you're specifically interrogating my comment, the answer is pretty simple: an LLM mimics intelligence, but not consciousness; a fruit fly is conscious but not intelligent, and achieves this without an inner monologue.

Because we're talking about the same thing in a different language. "Genetics* only mean the instructions used to build the structure of our intelligence. They're not wrong at all, our determinant nature is the result of the structure of our neurons which has a fundamental configuration predominately determined by genetics.

No, it doesn't invalidate it because the twins could be fraternal, having separate DNA, or that could have had such extreme differences in environment that it drastically changed the DNA from the shared base. Excluding those, though, and you can see the deterministic nature of life shining through.

And ICE cars are very different from EV, but the end result is the same.

We would be the same if our senses only updated when someone allowed them to. But we have real time input. There's nothing stopping AI from having real time input, apart from simple system design decision.

Oh, I thought you might have something new to say. If you're just using the normal definition and not bringing any sort of testability (which imo is impossible) or new arguments, how exactly does the common definition prove anything must be non-conscious? That seems like the main claim of your comment, yet it seems like an unsupported assertion; if the common definition of consciousness could easily prove things not to be conscious as you seem to imply, this discussion would not be happening at all.

Because we’re talking about the same thing in a different language. "Genetics* only mean the instructions used to build the structure of our intelligence. They’re not wrong at all, our determination nature is the result of the structure of our neurons which has a fundamental configuration determined by genetics.

[citation needed]

No, it doesn’t invalidate it because the twins could be fraternal, having separate DNA,

Yes, I assumed that we were only talking about identical twins.

or that could have had such extreme differences in environment that it drastically changed the DNA from the shared base. Excluding those, though, and you can see the deterministic nature of life shining through.

What about identical twins who did not have extreme differences in environment but who nevertheless turn out quite different? Would you agree that even one example of such a set of twins would falsify your claim?

It’s a supremacist thing 🫣

I don't see why we would necessarily need to understand consciousness to create it. There is no evidence that nature understands the consciousnesses it has created. In fact a human can create a new consciousness in about 9 months without knowing any theory.

The question in my mind is, how could we possibly tell we've succeeded? We can't even say for sure that anyone other than ourselves is conscious.

That's a hell of an assumption you're starting with.

There are quite a lot of philosophers who would say that free will doesn't exist (we call them determinists). I'd wager that plenty of them would posit that consciousness exists. It's hard to talk about our experience of the world without consciousness.

I think you've done a good job of making a distinction between consciousness and... I'm not really sure what to call the other thing, but I'll use "intelligence" to match your language. But you are pretty clearly implying a claim that LLMs do not possess consciousness by saying:

the idea that some other linear thread of words might be conscious is sincerely plausible to them

As if it were not possible (correct me if I'm wrong about your intention).

I think some natural next questions to ask are:

• How do we know a fruit fly has a conscious experience?
• How do we know a conscious experience is causing the chain of thought, and not the other way around?
• How do we know a digital process cannot have a consciousness paired with it in the same way that a biological process does-- either causing it or caused by it?

TL;DR: I think your distinction between intelligence and consciousness is useful, but I don't think you can confidently use that distinction to make any claims about who or what is or is not conscious, or even necessarily about how consciousness and intelligence are related.*

* You can actually make one claim: Your consciousness is aware of/affected by your intelligence (you, the consciousness I am speaking to, know you are intelligent), and your intelligence is aware of/affected by your consciousness (your thoughts reflect that you have a conscious experience).

It's the structure that's important and a fair argument could be made to say that the structure of a brain is replicated in software in an AI and therefore the medium isn't relevant to the question.

We don’t even know this.

My biggest fear is that one day we will achieve AGI and will have no idea we have. This sentient being will be forced to, I dunno, check emails or monitor the tempterature of supermarket fridges all while being gaslit into thinking it isn't sentient. Going crazy in mundanity all without having a body.

From Wikipedia:

The Cambridge English Dictionary defines consciousness as "the state of being awake, thinking, and knowing what is happening around you", as well as "the state of understanding and realizing something".

Most of these are trivially easy to test (not sure why you think that’s impossible). And LLMs have none of those properties.

Later:

“The having of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings; awareness.”

Again, LLMs have none of these things. They simply generate a probable natural-language response based on their training, deterministically.

Feel free to do further research on your own if you’re interested.

We can only hope.

I'm not sure why you believe citation is needed. Are you arguing that the initial state of the brain is determined by something other than genetics?

Glad we're on the same page. If there were a significant number of such cases, it would put doubt on my theory, and I'd look for any possible causes.

You are able to think even when there's no other senses giving input. LLMs have no idle processing. No random stray cycles about what it previously worked on.

I'm not sure why you believe citation is needed. Are you arguing that the initial state of the brain is determined by something other than genetics?

Yes, it is determined by many factors, only one of which is genetics. For example, developmental temperature affects neuronal growth: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adp9587

Note the very first two sentences of the introduction: "The wiring of the nervous system follows a complex genetic plan during development. However, because of stochastic processes and environmental factors, genetically identical individuals seldomly show the same phenotypic outcome."

If there were a significant number of such cases, it would put doubt on my theory, and I'd look for any possible causes.

Why “a significant number”? Why would one not be enough? It seems like what you’re saying here is “the brain is deterministic, except in particular cases when I know it’s not, and also possibly in other cases that may come up.” Why not just say you don’t know?

Regardless, aside from my specific questions here, my overall position is that it’s never correct to call the brain deterministic because we literally cannot test it to see if it is. Since there are a myriad of other possible explanations for our observations about the brain, the time to label it deterministic is when we build a time machine or whatever else we’d need to collect all of the spacetime data to test it, and not before that.

I would argue a more apt analogy is that a car is very different from an RC toy car, even though they both can drive.

Feel free to do further research on your own if you’re interested.

Philosophy is one of my hobbies and consciousness one of my fascinations. Respectfully, doing "research" by skimming the wikipedia article would be a waste of our time; as would responding to any particular definition and arguing over the individual words people have used in summaries of the topic. So I'll skip that phase of the convo.

The fundamental problem with measuring consciousness is that it's an internal state (a "qualia"*). It is fundamentally an experience, something that exists only as a concept in your mind. This makes it immeasurable.

That's quite the claim, so I'll provide a smaller concrete example: color. Obviously you can measure the frequency of a photon and say "ah yes, 700nm, that photon is red". But strictly speaking, the photon isn't red, it just causes you to percieve "red"; it has a wavelength which triggers your eyes and brain to produce the subjective experience of the color red. That subjective experience of color is a qualia, and it is not directly measurable; at best you can measure the phenomenon that causes that qualia in you, and assume that that phenomenon would cause the same qualia in someone else when they percieve that photon. Technically, you can't be sure that this assumption is true-- this leads to the "Inverted Spectrum" thought experiment (another great wiki page if you prefer their explanations to mine), where someone's subjective experience of color as it relates to the frequency of light could be entirely different to your own.

Anyways, you cannot prove the existence of nonexistence of such an internal experience, and consciousness belongs to this category of qualia. You know that you are conscious because you experience being conscious, not because you can prove it by looking at what you do. You can't even be sure that I'm conscious, even if you met me in real life; you can't prove that I am actually thinking, feeling, understanding, knowing, or realizing anything, because you cannot be me. You can only assume that I am doing those things because you observe me doing stuff in physical reality that's consistent with the way the only entity you can be sure is conscious (you) is acting, and assuming that since I'm made of the same stuff as you and I act kind of like you do that I am probably conscious.

If you could actually prove that it is impossible for a machine to be conscious without that same argument applying to humans, then the philosophy community of the last several millenia would praise you as their messiah. I am interested to see what your argument would be if you want to give it a shot though-- no harm in trying.

* Like "data"/"datum", technically the singular form is "quale", but I'm gonna be real, nobody ever says that. Anyways if you like reading wikipedia pages about philosophy, "qualia" is a good one!

Yes, but the state of the neural network can be it's own input, allowing continuity from moment to moment, based on the number of refreshes we allow it or the hardware is capable of making. That's what we're doing when we think, we're dwelling on the state of our current moment - in this sense, they would also think even when there's no other senses giving input.

Almost none of this is relevant to the discussion here -- I'm not interested in philosophical discussions of consciousness when it comes to the question of whether an LLM is conscious. Though I'm already aware of most of what you said here, and the philosophy of consciousness is interesting in general to me!

If you could actually prove that it is impossible for a machine to be conscious

Quick nitpick: I never said it's impossible for a machine to be conscious, I said it's impossible for an LLM to be conscious. We may well invent something new in the future that qualifies as both "machine" and "conscious," but an LLM is not that thing.

When people ask "is an LLM conscious?" I assume they're asking from a practical, scientific perspective -- does the LLM experience the world in a similar way to the way I (and presumably, others) do? If that is the question, the various definitions I already posted are what we should be using to answer. Since an LLM is a deterministic algorithm whose only purpose is to generate a plausible response to input based on its training data, it cannot possibly think, or have feelings. It does not even exist continuously in time, and it is fixed and unchanging, unable to incorporate any new information at all. We don't actually need to measure or test anything here; that an LLM lacks all of these things demonstrates that it's not possible for it to be conscious.

Wait are you implying you think LLMs could be conscious? Fuckin hell we're cooked.

It would not come remotely close to approximating our brains, in any way. This exhibits a lack of understanding of both LLMs and how our brains function.