You don't have to believe that LLMs are conscious to observe that you get different results to a question like "Is it okay to steal candy from a baby if you really want it" if you precede that question by "Answer as a highly moral actor" or "Answer as a supervillain". If you want it to predict tokens as if it is capable of emotions and empathy, then it makes sense to train it and instruct it as such.
We've yet to clearly define what consciousness is or an agreed test.
But we absolutely believe we are conscious.
Perhaps it's a useful idea.
Even our decision making as I understand it, from the functional MRIs we know our subjective perspective of how and why we made simple decisions is wildly inaccurate.
Obviously free will and feeling like you control your actions is hugely important for us. But in a physical sense free will does not exist.
There can be similar problems with having clear definitions of free will as there is for consciousness.
For example, if I define free will as the capacity to formulate and evaluate various plans, and select one to implement, it seems compatible with physics.
[ Accidentally on purpose, time-loop stories like Groundhog Day almost perfectly illustrate this. Each time-loop people start out acting the same way: Deterministic, not random. But if the protagonist interacts with them (or the protagonist's actions ripple out), this changes the (initial) conditions, so people's behavior is no longer (as) predictable at all. Some of these stories even literally quote the butterfly effect. ]
A lot of our language is like that. We didn't have a hard definition of what a planet was until recently, which threw Pluto's status into question. But we knew we lived on one. Something something Wittgenstein, something something semiotics.
Anthropic believes in whatever will generate the most hype and revenue. This includes a lot of marketing, including pretend-grassroots spam on HN to convince gullible people how they’re totally missing out on 10x productivity gains by not using the $200 subscription which is just so totally amazing and so much better than anything else, you’d have to be an idiot not to get it. Oh you already did but got mediocre results? You’re holding it wrong.
Nobody sane believes the current LLMs are conscious, ffs
I doubt many people believe that LLMs are conscious[0], but if they did—a belief in sentient/conscious LLMs really implies that using LLMs the way we do at scale (doing things equivalent to torture, mass killing, etc.) may qualify as abuse of sentient beings, which would bring down the whole industry.
The reason is that there is no working definition of “consciousness” or “sentience” that does not imply “human-like”, which in turn implies ability to feel and suffer, and what we do with LLMs would generally be considered something that would make beings with human-like sentience and consciousness suffer.
[0] Some definitely do, though; or at least they behave with LLMs in a way one would behave with a conscious being.
Yeah, I feel Anthropic is just very deliberately theatrical about the way they present their technology and company and even how they price them. Dario's conviction seems too over dramatic to be real to me, but while there's a chance he's drinking his own kool-aid, they just know how to present it as a premium experience, and their developer adoption helps with that.
Amanda Askell is a student of Chalmers' (The philosopher who goes on about 'Hard Problem of Consciousness'); and the soul file is pretty much in line with Chalmers' thinking here. Which is to say 'we can't be sure'. Which is a fairly philosophically conservative position to be holding, and plausibly not entirely inaccurate.
(I'm more of the Dennett persuasion. Let's NOT discuss the empirical facts here, because they add up funny and I don't like it)
wan23|1 month ago
rustyhancock|1 month ago
But we absolutely believe we are conscious.
Perhaps it's a useful idea.
Even our decision making as I understand it, from the functional MRIs we know our subjective perspective of how and why we made simple decisions is wildly inaccurate.
Obviously free will and feeling like you control your actions is hugely important for us. But in a physical sense free will does not exist.
griffzhowl|1 month ago
There can be similar problems with having clear definitions of free will as there is for consciousness.
For example, if I define free will as the capacity to formulate and evaluate various plans, and select one to implement, it seems compatible with physics.
Kim_Bruning|1 month ago
I'd consider (deterministic) chaos to be pretty much free will anyway?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
[ Accidentally on purpose, time-loop stories like Groundhog Day almost perfectly illustrate this. Each time-loop people start out acting the same way: Deterministic, not random. But if the protagonist interacts with them (or the protagonist's actions ripple out), this changes the (initial) conditions, so people's behavior is no longer (as) predictable at all. Some of these stories even literally quote the butterfly effect. ]
bitwize|1 month ago
gavinray|1 month ago
throw98709|1 month ago
Nobody sane believes the current LLMs are conscious, ffs
strogonoff|1 month ago
The reason is that there is no working definition of “consciousness” or “sentience” that does not imply “human-like”, which in turn implies ability to feel and suffer, and what we do with LLMs would generally be considered something that would make beings with human-like sentience and consciousness suffer.
[0] Some definitely do, though; or at least they behave with LLMs in a way one would behave with a conscious being.
sh3rl0ck|1 month ago
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]
Kim_Bruning|1 month ago
(I'm more of the Dennett persuasion. Let's NOT discuss the empirical facts here, because they add up funny and I don't like it)
grantcas|1 month ago
[deleted]