That's the thing with metaphors, they have similarities but there are also points of divergence. Point is, my metaphor was not meant to be understood as a technical description of the system's workings.
For the unsuspecting soul who approaches this modern oracle without the faintest idea of how it works, the experience of facing unexpected demons could serve as a warning of the dangers they may face if they approach the tool without caution.
People compare AI and robots with Frankenstein's monster (or with Pinocchio, on a good day, if they want to give the story a positive spin), the construct which gains a life of its own.
But current LLM chats are more aptly compared with a ouija board. The machine itself is inert, and you can see it as a playful activity. But the model contains within it the highlights of a whole culture compressed during its training. You can access the souls of all the authors whose works were used for learning; but also of all the internet fanatics, trolls and scammers. When you set the machine in motion, you never know whose spirit are you invoking to answer.
s/how the person mental started/ how the person feels mental states/
There is no room for it to manifest in a computer program. There is no room for any "magic" in computer programs.
That's true for classic software in a trivial way, in the sense that a sequence of logical inference steps (i.e. a deterministic symbolic program) do not reflect upon itself.
However it may be possible that the computer program is not conscious, but the computer running the software is. LLMs in particular generate their output not from the specific instructions included in the program, but from the weights trained in the model; the software instructions are a requirement for the weights being interpreted, but the outcome doesn't necessarily follow the rules of a formal system and an inference process.
Current LLMs do not have consciousness because their processing is too simple for it to emerge; not because the software substrate is deterministic and mathematical. If the base software were processing the weights of the model in ways similar to how neurons generate brain waves, it is plausible that the emergent system-level information patterns appearing at the data level could exhibits the attributes of consciousness, including self-perception and self-reflection. This is true even if the computer software is deterministic, in the same that the neurons in our brain behave in deterministic electro-chemical ways.
On the contrary, it means that neuroscientists have measured precise ways in which brain waves of vision and audio processes converge into taking decisions before the person reports being conscious of taking such decision; and that they have studied precise ways in which altering the brain chemistry affects how the person mental started. Just look for the papers on these experiments for these topics.
The problem is that we can't define consciousness. No one can agree on what it means, or whether it means anything at all
No way. We may not have a full scientific understanding, but neuroscience has made huge advances in how consciousness emerges in the brain and how it is affected by the changing conditions of its low-level processes.
We cannot say that machines at some point will never have similar emergent patterns that could become conscious. But we for sure can say that the current ramblings of text generation from LLMs definitely can't be conscious, because they are created directly by much simpler low-level deterministic computations.
The long LLM-generated dissertations that people mistake for conscious reflections do not come anywhere near from the complex introspective processes that we know are involved in having consciousness; they are just mechanic pattern generation from the highly compressed encoding of human culture one which they have been trained. It's true that our own brains do learn by highly compresssing our live experiences, but we know for sure that our consciousness involves something more than just compiling memories.
What he is saying is that it "looks enough like actual consciousness that it must be it", but that is not sound reasoning.
Something can be functionally equivalent enough to the real thing to give the impression of being the real thing without actually being the real thing.
That nails it. Too many people think that AI models are either Pinocchio or Frankenstein, a constructed being who gained a life of its own, becoming friendly or terrifying; when in fact the current batch is nothing more than The Wizard of Oz, faking the appearance of an awesome entity because some human behind the curtain benefits from making you believe that.
If it can, then it breaks the deterministic behavior of the known and understood physical components.
What makes you believe that? Our current best understanding of consciousness is that it's an after-the-fact rationalisation of the multiple low-level brain processes that converge into a subconscious decision. If that's the case, consciousness doesn't influence the external world in a non -deterministic way.
If LLMs are not conscious it's because they don't have this high-level aggregate feedback loop, not because consciousness needs to be non-deterministic. All their outputs are created from low-level reactions, like the reflexes of an amoeba that grows in its environment towards the gradient with more food.
Ebiikes are a legal workaround loophole for motorcycles.
You realize there are a bunch of homes available for sale in all sorts of places for next to nothing. The problem isn't "housing", it is "housing where people want to live". Declining population in places like Italy have created housing collapse where nice houses aren't sold, and sit empty, and they'll pay you to move into one.
It isn't colonial, it is industrial. The current format of school is that of preparing for a factory workforce. We are post industrial, knowledge/AI/Whatever it will be called workforce.
Educators need to come to grip with getting EVERY child their MAX educational value we can. This means breaking the rows and columns of desks in a classroom, and getting kids their most valuable education they can get. This means some will do much better than others. Talent has gradations. Not everyone can be a Astro Physics expert.
"fair" is subjective. What you think is "fair" isn't really fair. It is objectively unfair to use qualitative terms in discussion of policy.
What would be fair, is that Government live within the means we ALREADY tax out of the public. Cut Spending first. Then, when all cuts that can be made, are made, then MAYBE we can have a discussion on tax increases.
Its Not Your Money.
Envy isn't a virtue.
The problem here, is "fairness" is subjective, not objective.
Use of that particular term is deliberate tug on the emotional center of brains. it works, which is why Progressives ALWAYS use it.
Which is exactly what they said a hundred years ago when they instituted the "income tax".
Rich people will move out. And take their wealth with them.
Taxes are regressive. All of them.
Conspiracy theories are, until they are not.
Secret Pedo island owned by rich dude with elitist ties was once a "conspiracy theory". Now we know that Epstein killed himself 100% because "They" said so.
"I'm just asking questions" idiots notwithstanding. I'm looking at you Candice.
It is not for me to attempt to fathom the inscrutable workings of Providence. -- The Earl of Birkenhead
