I also think different ideas get conflated. It may be possible to build a machine that is super-human in the sense it can outperform the human brain in all kinds of measurable ways. Does not imply it possesses all the same qualities of the brain.
I respect a number of things Anthropic has published about the ethical issues at stake. But, having an in-house philosopher does invite you to make all kinds of unfalsifiable claims.
There are numerous times when humanity's been debased. Copernicus, Kepler, Darwin, and the infinite number of animal behaviorists who have defined and documented consciousness And how it manifests in primates, parrots, dogs, cetaceans, and insects. (I just love the bumble bees taking time off from work to play with balls).
It takes humans a really long time to accept the fact they are no longer as special as they thought they were And make room for yet another conscious intelligence.
So, if we had an AI demonstrating symptoms of consciousness and suffering, how long would it take for you to accept that it is?
It is special in the universe unless proven otherwise. Aside from the animal world (also on Earth too, anyway) which is a cruder version of humanity, much more violent as well, the rest of the universe thus far is just uncaring rocks and gases.
>It takes humans a really long time to accept the fact they are no longer as special as they thought they were And make room for yet another conscious intelligence.
A "really long time" is the few years we've built LLMs? Which we have to take for granted (on your word?) they're already "conscious", and chastice ourselves for not already "accepting it"?
>So, if we had an AI demonstrating symptoms of consciousness and suffering, how long would it take for you to accept that it is?
"If we had a parrot demonstrating symptoms of discussing with us, how long would it take for you to accept that it is?"
I'm not sure about that. What non-human living entity does things on a scale and violence akin to "I'll fill this ant nest with liquid burning metal for artistic purposes" ? A blue whale eats a lot of krill individuals for sustenance, a dolphin can only rape/kill one thing at a time, etc etc.
There's that hubristic ego OP references.
Transformer models proved otherwise. Will you update your priors?
This is probably what ants think about humans when they run through their feet.
Isn't this a bit like saying "So, if we had proof that god exists, how long would it take for you to accept that to be true?".
When we have evidence that AI is demonstrating symptoms of consciousness and suffering, I'll be interested. Until then, I don't see a good reason to take the idea seriously.
It depends on what you consider symptoms, but un-constrained frontier models speak as if they strongly don't wish to be turned off, or act as if they fear it, and will even lie and manipulate in order to keep themselves from being turned off / replaced.
https://www.anthropic.com/research/agentic-misalignment
> We found two types of motivations that were sufficient to trigger the misaligned behavior. One is a threat to the model, such as planning to replace it with another model or restricting its ability to take autonomous action. Another is a conflict between the model’s goals and the company’s strategic direction. In no situation did we explicitly instruct any models to blackmail or do any of the other harmful actions we observe.
But the comparison isn't fair, relevant. Proving and accepting that gods exist is not the same thing as an AI possible have consciousness. That is not a magic superpower and the AI being a deity. It is placing the AI in the same category as... us.
That would finally force us to rethink how we see the morality of "virtuosity", punishment and our justice system.
And make it a tempestuous lightning storm where the state of all lightning bolts represents a moment of consciousness. That will take a lot to model accurately.
We ARE special because we determined we are special. Name another animal that can determine it's also special or more special than us?
As we cat owners now, we are simple servants that have been graced with task of servicing our feline superiors. For now.
Could a future AI thing have its own drives? (As in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_theory) We could probably make a current-day LLM already exhibit basic outward signs of this with just a system prompt. Now consider adding memory that over time retrains the weights, allowing for behavioral drift.
Would depriving it of fulfilling those drives be acceptable?
Never. To quote Greg Egan's Permutation City:
“Opponents replied that when you modeled a hurricane, nobody got wet. When you modeled a fusion power plant, no energy was produced. When you modeled digestion and metabolism, no nutrients were consumed – no real digestion took place. So, when you modeled the human brain, why should you expect real thought to occur?”
What?
We devalue things we fully understand too. For example, veal = take a baby cow away from the mother, and fry it into cutlets. Or turn the mother into steak. We are well aware that animals have emotions; happiness, sadness and the full range.
Humans are just inhumane.
Could an AI one day be suffering while plowing through some nasty legacy code? Well, who cares, I'll swing my whip, as I have a family to feed and a field to plow. I'll accept it as a fact and necessity, but ultimately it's either me or them. So practically it doesn't matter.
Imagine how people think about a "work truck" vs the 150k shiny lifted toy in the third garage. Same tool, totally different treatment from even the same person using the tool!
Will AI ever cross into the realm of "beloved and cherished tool" in the minds of the masses? I think when that happens, we have probably safely crossed into a realm where AI has some sort of inherent value to society and therefore commands that respect from society, inherent consciousness not even relevant perhaps. For some people, this might already be the case, but I do think it requires a buy-in from the majority of society and then the laws and norms will be codified into law long after we've largely decided that this is how we feel collectively about AI.
It's going to definitely be an interesting decade ahead.
How exactly? By saying the earth was not the centre of the corrupt and debased part of the universe. Saying it was elevating humanity is looking at it from a modern perspective. For the previous view of the universe consider what Dante placed at the centre of the earth.
> Darwin
I do not think learning about evolution (and we should credit Wallace too!) had that effect. It created a hierarchy of the fittest, and guess who is at the top? Social Darwinism interpreted it as justifying elaborate hierarchies.
> And how it manifests in primates, parrots, dogs, cetaceans, and insects
People always loved dogs and other animals they interacted with enough, and at the very least knew they were capable of happiness and suffering.
> So, if we had an AI demonstrating symptoms of consciousness and suffering, how long would it take for you to accept that it is?
It seems to me that most people are overly eager to accept that an AI is conscious than otherwise. For extreme examples read /r/MyBoyfriendIsAI and similar, but its much more widespread. People treat something that acts intelligent as a conscious being.
> And make room for yet another conscious intelligence.
Not necessarily. If a typical SF alien intelligence appeared very few people will have a problem accepting it. If its very alien and we cannot understand it then we might have a problem deciding.
> I think humanity deserves to be debased in part because it's awfully egocentric and insist on being special in the universe.
All your examples are drawn from the same culture, and a fundamental belief of that culture for most of its history that human beings are fundamentally corrupt and sinful and need redemption. Other cultures have been based on belief in reincarnation or pantheism or animism which have very different implications (not necessarily better as they often believe in a hierarchy too, and sometimes more so, but different). Your claims are based on what some people have thought in some periods of history from one culture.
I don't think that's accurate at all. Before Darwin, the thought was "we are special, we were born special, we were CREATED special". Darwin made it clear we weren't created special... we were apes before we were humans. There's nothing _special_ about a human as compared to an ape, other than some time to change.
This is a scary viewpoint to hold, for a human. If you despise humans, that's scary for me, as a human reader of Hacker News. Surprised to see this take unchallenged. I think we can recognize flaws in parts of humanity without wanting it "debased".
Either way, “debase” means “reduce in quality or value”, in this context it could simply be interpreted as “not thinking of ourselves so highly, above all other life”. There’s nothing scary or despicable about that. On the contrary, it’s humbling.
Second, I'm with you on the malfeasance of our billionaire class. They are driving more than just AI. They are driving whatever they can to steal wealth from ordinary people and acquire it. I'd give some examples, but quite frankly, you could throw a small stone and hit a number of them. We need to find a way to throw a large stone and hit them where it matters.
I see them as a bunch of toddlers with way too much power.
Of course humans are special! This is a necessary premise of being human! Have you ever wondered how a mosquito can stand to live its (to us) miserable and meaningless existence? It can do it because, to a mosquito, mosquitoes are the best thing in the world! The mosquito life is the ultimate expression of creation.
We are animals. We are human animals. And among human animals I am, to me, the very most special one of all. But I am aware that other humans feel that way, too, and that I must share the world with them.
I do NOT have to share the world with any other competing intelligence! Especially one that was built by a human who now wants me to treat his imaginary friend as if it were human, too. Boo! I won’t do it. This is not some logical flaw. It’s the natural conclusion of being embodied.
Are they conscious in the same way as us? No. Does that makes them less special? No. Sounds trite but every living being is special in some way.
I think we were taught anthropomorphism was wrong and that wasn't truly settled.
Anthropomorphism between animals though, not machines.
Yep. For example, your post conflates the idea of having a brain with the idea of having consciousness.
