“Consciousness is not produced by computation. It is not produced by anything. It is fundamental. The substrate has two aspects and consciousness is one of them. The materialist question of whether complex enough computation produces consciousness is the wrong question.”
According to Turing, distinguishing between a machines consciousness and organic consciousness is based on how each can observe human behavior, since that’s how we observe consciousness in each other.
I understand that Turing never fully addressed the question honestly, but based on your observations, would this be a correct understanding of consciousness?
Furthermore, we have humans who are sheeple. They have no original thoughts in their minds or very few. So my next question is whether being able to effectively observe, while following rules associated with the language model could qualify as consciousness under your assertions or observing some people’s human behavior?
I find it interesting that I agree with a lot of what you write here with only minor modification; I simply find no need for the "substrate", nor for consciousness to be "fundamental". The "substrate" is just the written and visual record of human knowledge - books, videos, and other media. We conscious beings can experience both the record and the outer Universe that it records, while LLMs can only "experience" (traverse) the records, disconnected from the Universe the records are imperfectly describing.
"Large language models are instruments for traversing [the breadth, depth, and wealth of recorded knowledge] at scales and speeds the embodied human traversal cannot achieve." Speed does not produce consciousness, nor is it a requirement for consciousness.
"The something missing is [the encompassing Universe], which is not in the system because the system is [merely recorded knowledge without accompanying sensory input]." It describes the sensory input without truly containing it.
"The deposit contains both true and false content, both consistent and inconsistent content, both rigorous and sloppy content. The navigator’s coherence is path-coherence, not truth-coherence." And there is the conundrum. Can a LLM truly understand Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, or Jabberwocky without the hard-earned experience of the Universe that Lewis Carroll so brilliantly subverts and twists in surprising ways?
"They are excellent at tasks where the [input knowledge] is dense and well-structured — language production, code generation in well-trodden frameworks, summarization of widely-discussed topics, the production of texts in standard genres. They are bad at tasks where the [input] is sparse, contested, or requires [true experience of the Universe] to evaluate."
"The systems cannot have phenomenological access to what they are processing. They can produce text that has the structural features of phenomenological report, but the report is not connected to anything inside the system that the report would be a report of." Indeed, because the systems cannot themselves experience the Universe, they can only report on what other reports on the Universe contain.
I disagree with your metaphysics but agree with its conclusions, at least when it comes to LLMs.
Yes, I'm replying to myself; Mike clarified our disagreement for me in his replies to a different essay, and I highly recommend reading it. His dual-aspect monism and my embodied-emergentism produce many of the same conclusions from completely different perspectives and frameworks.
I agree with much of what you say. But it seems to be missing the way in which LLMs will change society most profoundly, namely as "agentic" components of larger systems. A system does not need an individual consciousness to displace human institutional roles; it only needs the autonomous capacity to call APIs, modify environments, and execute workflows within a larger machine.
They aren't agentic. That's the answer. "Agentic AI" exists as a kind of wishcasting and marketing buzzword that the culture, with poor epistemic and metaphysical discernment, are unable to see clearly through to the reality: this isn't artificial intelligence, at all.
I never said they won't do a lot of damage. But this theory gives you a basis to understand the kind of damage they can and cannot do from first principles.
ok, I misunderstood. I thought you were downplaying what LLMs can do. While there is a lot of hype, the degree to which LLMs will change society is totally underestimated.
LLMs and the agentic frameworks which use them will definitely have an impact on society, but so have a lot of other automation technologies. It's a separate question whether they have consciousness.
Or we may apply Dennett's intentional stance: Dennett argues that saying something really has beliefs and desires just means that the intentional stance is the best predictive strategy for it.
I think we may have to do this wrt agentic AI (or algorithmic decision making, if one prefers).
"Consciousness is a property that complex computation may or may not produce. The question is whether these particular computations are complex enough."
There is a third perspective: complex computation, in and of itself, is insufficient for consciousness - it requires an awareness of the Universe and the ability to interact with it in a "meaningful" fashion. Here, "meaningful" is a bit tough to define - which is why I left it in quotes - but basically encompasses the ability to sense the Universe, alter it, and draw conclusions from the seeing and altering. Still fuzzy and metaphysical.
As an example, a rock rolling down a hill is not conscious. An insect colony exploring its surroundings, gathering food, building its home, and interacting with other colonies may very well be, but it may be conscious in a way that is difficult for us to recognize, and the "hardware" of its consciousness is wholly different from ours.
Yes, I'm replying to myself; Mike clarified our disagreement for me in his replies to a different essay, and I highly recommend reading it. His dual-aspect monism and my embodied-emergentism produce many of the same conclusions from completely different perspectives and frameworks.
What is the relationship of your framework to panpsychism? One aspect it has in common is that consciousness is inherent in reality.
It is conversant with it.
“Consciousness is not produced by computation. It is not produced by anything. It is fundamental. The substrate has two aspects and consciousness is one of them. The materialist question of whether complex enough computation produces consciousness is the wrong question.”
According to Turing, distinguishing between a machines consciousness and organic consciousness is based on how each can observe human behavior, since that’s how we observe consciousness in each other.
I understand that Turing never fully addressed the question honestly, but based on your observations, would this be a correct understanding of consciousness?
Furthermore, we have humans who are sheeple. They have no original thoughts in their minds or very few. So my next question is whether being able to effectively observe, while following rules associated with the language model could qualify as consciousness under your assertions or observing some people’s human behavior?
I find it interesting that I agree with a lot of what you write here with only minor modification; I simply find no need for the "substrate", nor for consciousness to be "fundamental". The "substrate" is just the written and visual record of human knowledge - books, videos, and other media. We conscious beings can experience both the record and the outer Universe that it records, while LLMs can only "experience" (traverse) the records, disconnected from the Universe the records are imperfectly describing.
"Large language models are instruments for traversing [the breadth, depth, and wealth of recorded knowledge] at scales and speeds the embodied human traversal cannot achieve." Speed does not produce consciousness, nor is it a requirement for consciousness.
"The something missing is [the encompassing Universe], which is not in the system because the system is [merely recorded knowledge without accompanying sensory input]." It describes the sensory input without truly containing it.
"The deposit contains both true and false content, both consistent and inconsistent content, both rigorous and sloppy content. The navigator’s coherence is path-coherence, not truth-coherence." And there is the conundrum. Can a LLM truly understand Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, or Jabberwocky without the hard-earned experience of the Universe that Lewis Carroll so brilliantly subverts and twists in surprising ways?
"They are excellent at tasks where the [input knowledge] is dense and well-structured — language production, code generation in well-trodden frameworks, summarization of widely-discussed topics, the production of texts in standard genres. They are bad at tasks where the [input] is sparse, contested, or requires [true experience of the Universe] to evaluate."
"The systems cannot have phenomenological access to what they are processing. They can produce text that has the structural features of phenomenological report, but the report is not connected to anything inside the system that the report would be a report of." Indeed, because the systems cannot themselves experience the Universe, they can only report on what other reports on the Universe contain.
I disagree with your metaphysics but agree with its conclusions, at least when it comes to LLMs.
Yes, I'm replying to myself; Mike clarified our disagreement for me in his replies to a different essay, and I highly recommend reading it. His dual-aspect monism and my embodied-emergentism produce many of the same conclusions from completely different perspectives and frameworks.
https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/consciousness-has-a-gender/comment/260680454
I agree with much of what you say. But it seems to be missing the way in which LLMs will change society most profoundly, namely as "agentic" components of larger systems. A system does not need an individual consciousness to displace human institutional roles; it only needs the autonomous capacity to call APIs, modify environments, and execute workflows within a larger machine.
They aren't agentic. That's the answer. "Agentic AI" exists as a kind of wishcasting and marketing buzzword that the culture, with poor epistemic and metaphysical discernment, are unable to see clearly through to the reality: this isn't artificial intelligence, at all.
You are not reacting to my claim. Not sure why. Poor epistemic discernment, maybe. That will not prevent them from doing a lot of damage.
I never said they won't do a lot of damage. But this theory gives you a basis to understand the kind of damage they can and cannot do from first principles.
ok, I misunderstood. I thought you were downplaying what LLMs can do. While there is a lot of hype, the degree to which LLMs will change society is totally underestimated.
LLMs and the agentic frameworks which use them will definitely have an impact on society, but so have a lot of other automation technologies. It's a separate question whether they have consciousness.
Or we may apply Dennett's intentional stance: Dennett argues that saying something really has beliefs and desires just means that the intentional stance is the best predictive strategy for it.
I think we may have to do this wrt agentic AI (or algorithmic decision making, if one prefers).
"Consciousness is a property that complex computation may or may not produce. The question is whether these particular computations are complex enough."
There is a third perspective: complex computation, in and of itself, is insufficient for consciousness - it requires an awareness of the Universe and the ability to interact with it in a "meaningful" fashion. Here, "meaningful" is a bit tough to define - which is why I left it in quotes - but basically encompasses the ability to sense the Universe, alter it, and draw conclusions from the seeing and altering. Still fuzzy and metaphysical.
As an example, a rock rolling down a hill is not conscious. An insect colony exploring its surroundings, gathering food, building its home, and interacting with other colonies may very well be, but it may be conscious in a way that is difficult for us to recognize, and the "hardware" of its consciousness is wholly different from ours.
Yes, I'm replying to myself; Mike clarified our disagreement for me in his replies to a different essay, and I highly recommend reading it. His dual-aspect monism and my embodied-emergentism produce many of the same conclusions from completely different perspectives and frameworks.
https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/consciousness-has-a-gender/comment/260680454
I think you’re getting too far in the weeds on this.
I propose the reflationary account: Whatever it is, it’ll happen outside of our control.
I mean, I take metaphysics pretty seriously. They're not window dressing for me.