Much like Russel argued that the burden of proof of God's existence is on theists, the burden to establish this parallel is on you as the person forwarding the argument. I don't see any relevant connection. Russel isn't arguing that a teapot is as real as God in the same way it's disputed here that a toaster is as conscious as an LLM.
> So far you have said that the argument is compelling. What’s that got to do with reality? A robot cow could be sexually arousing to a real bull.
AI is a real phenomenon that we can study and measure. There is no experiment that anyone has devised can determine whether or not they are conscious, so that is the reality - uncertainty. That doesn't mean they're conscious. It means that the belief they are not conscious is assumption.
You might say the same of a toaster, but these hypothesis are not equally strong. The toaster doesn't exhibit any behaviors to suggest that it's conscious. Consciousness isn't a hypothesis with any explanatory power for the observed behaviors of a toaster. It's not a hypothesis that's on the table. That's why the analogy doesn't work.
To put a fine point on it, it appears on it's face that AIs could be conscious. They can put on a very convincing performance of being a person. A sufficiently convincing performance is indistinguishable from the real thing. So at face value, the burden of proof is on them not being conscious. Reductionist arguments that present the mechanics of how they work and leap to their not being conscious don't work, because there is no law saying a statistical model can't be conscious. That's an assumption, not knowledge.
> Much like Russel argued that the burden of proof of God's existence is on theists, the burden to establish this parallel is on you as the person forwarding the argument.
I pointed out the parallel in both statements. I can't do more than that.
> Russel isn't arguing that a teapot is as real as God in the same way it's disputed here that a toaster is as conscious as an LLM.
The teapot isn't real and the toaster consciousness is not real. What am I missing?
> AI is a real phenomenon that we can study and measure.
Robot cows are real as well.
> There is no experiment that anyone has devised can determine whether or not they are conscious, so that is the reality - uncertainty. That doesn't mean they're conscious. It means that the belief they are not conscious is assumption.
Yeah. You can't prove it for any entity. I agree.
> You might say the same of a toaster, but these hypothesis are not equally strong. The toaster doesn't exhibit any behaviors to suggest that it's conscious. Consciousness isn't a hypothesis with any explanatory power for the observed behaviors of a toaster. It's not a hypothesis that's on the table. That's why the analogy doesn't work.
The bull swears that the robot cow is a real cow. But we know better.
> To put a fine point on it, it appears on it's face that AIs could be conscious.
It doesn't to me. Not any facelength.
> They can put on a very convincing performance of being a person. A sufficiently convincing performance is indistinguishable from the real thing.
Objective reality has never cared (am I anthropomorphizing now?) what is indistinguishable for people.
> So at face value, the burden of proof is on them not being conscious.
Which party is the burden of proof on? This is confusing since you are saying that the burden of proof is on a position (on them not being conscious).
Is the burden of proof on people who argue that they are n o t conscious? That's peculiar.
I have never heard about any principle in philosophy or in science that says that, given enough Looks Like A Duck points, it is a duck. Based on subjective experience, even.
We obviously can't demand a falsifiable theory here. But we have to do better than arguing from incredulity.
> Reductionist arguments that present the mechanics of how they work and leap to their not being conscious don't work, because there is no law saying a statistical model can't be conscious. That's an assumption, not knowledge.
They don't have to rise to the level of disproving something for which they have no burden to disprove.
Would you agree, for the sake of argument, that it's more interesting to discus chatgpt 5.5's similarity to sentient/sapient/conscious than, say, my mechanical toaster?
> I have never heard about any principle in philosophy or in science that says that, given enough Looks Like A Duck points, it is a duck. Based on subjective experience, even.
Also, you say this like "duck" isn't an arbitrary, artificial category created by humans, a "map not the reality" if you will.
There's very few things that humans can understand to the level of putting them into truly objective scientific categories (various pure elements maybe?), everything else we more or less bodge together for the sake of getting on with life.
It's not like conscious has some kind of formal objective provable definition, even inside the world of human created language and terms.
As far as I know, in the real world, if something looks enough like a duck (and can breed with a duck maybe) we, humans, do call it a duck.
> Would you agree, for the sake of argument, that it's more interesting to discus chatgpt 5.5's similarity to sentient/sapient/conscious than, say, my mechanical toaster?
Yes.
> Also, you say this like "duck" isn't an arbitrary, artificial category created by humans, a "map not the reality" if you will.
> There's very few things that humans can understand to the level of putting them into truly objective scientific categories (various pure elements maybe?), everything else we more or less bodge together for the sake of getting on with life.
> It's not like conscious has some kind of formal objective provable definition, even inside the world of human created language and terms
This is all fine, philosophically reasonable. And it all holds in complete generality to everything. You could just as well be using this as a springboard to put forth... that toasters could be conscious.
> As far as I know, in the real world, if something looks enough like a duck (and can breed with a duck maybe) we, humans, do call it a duck.
Glad to see this community of rational thinkers, so they think, abandon their intellectual stance when there’s stonks to be made and AI Churches to found.
I am supposed to also have a serious response here. But I don’t. Because we don’t just settle for duck is a duck on any serious topic. We might for pragmatic reasons on completely fungible drive by issues. But for the issue that is consuming everyone’s mind and the economy? Yeah no.
> I pointed out the parallel in both statements. I can't do more than that.
You mean these statements?
No one cares about teapots in space either (Russel).
Teapots are not compelling.
I guess you did but that's pretty much leaving me breadcrumbs and expecting me to make your argument for you. It seemed to me like you were talking about reductio ad absurdum with that argument as an illustrative example. Perhaps you overestimate my cleverness.
> Which party is the burden of proof on? This is confusing since you are saying that the burden of proof is on a position (on them not being conscious).
It's metonymy. "X" stands in for "people who argue for X". May I ask if you were sincerely confused? You told me you aren't being coy but I have a hard time believing that this was so unclear.
> I have never heard about any principle in philosophy or in science that says that, given enough Looks Like A Duck points, it is a duck. Based on subjective experience, even.
If it looks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, you should adjust your priors to assign a higher likelihood that it is a duck. All measurements contain error; you can't ever observe, "that is a duck," only "that looks like a duck". All knowledge is founded on a sufficiently deep stack of "looking like a duck" that we may assert it with confidence.
To the extent we have objective measures (like conducting a Turing test on blind participants), it can meet them too. You can't say the same of a toaster.
> We obviously can't demand a falsifiable theory here. But we have to do better than arguing from incredulity.
"It is a statistical model, ergo it is not conscious" is also an argument from incredulity. I don't know if that's your view or not but it's the one my remarks have been addressing in general.
Teapots are not compelling. | | God is compelling t billions of people.
> I guess you did but that's pretty much leaving me breadcrumbs and expecting me to make your argument for you. It seemed to me like you were talking about reductio ad absurdum with that argument as an illustrative example.
My error was not pointing out those sentences. With those in mind you see that I take each of your claims and makes a parallel to the Teapot argument.
> It's metonymy. "X" stands in for "people who argue for X".
I needed to be sure. I have enough experience with people replying that they didn’t mean that.
Sometimes people say the opposite thing because they accidentally negated a sentence.
> If it looks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, you should adjust your priors to assign a higher likelihood that it is a duck.
Then someone points out that it has no anus and doesn’t need to breathe. But bodily functions? Harumph, why would a true duck need that?
Of course people who argue for AI Consciousness already know that. The actual case under discussion is more absurd than a duck trying to mate with a robot duck.
> All measurements contain error; you can't ever observe, "that is a duck," only "that looks like a duck". All knowledge is founded on a sufficiently deep stack of "looking like a duck" that we may assert it with confidence.
All perfectly generic philosophical arguments. Which doesn’t hold any more water for AI Consciousness than AI Toaster... except for the fact that humans find it compelling.
Like how a light bug could find artificial light compelling.
> To the extent we have objective measures (like conducting a Turing test on blind participants), it can meet them too. You can't say the same of a toaster.
The Turing Test is bunk with regards to objective reality, like whether some thing has consciousness.
> "It is a statistical model, ergo it is not conscious" is also an argument from incredulity. I don't know if that's your view or not but it's the one my remarks have been addressing in general.
Who has said ergo? Don’t just assert that someone has asserted a logical implication unless that is the case.
Bullshit arguments don’t get the privilege of symmetry. That AI might be conscious because it is compelling to humans is a bullshit argument, and just supported by but I don’t see why not. People are free to dismiss the claim by pointing at one of a hundred factors, like how it is “just a statistical model”. Just pull something out of the hat.
Yes, it is very unfair. The Church of AI can do the hard work of throwing out incredulous claims while people who don’t quite buy those statement don’t read up on five different philosophical and scientific subjects in order to get an informed opinion about how a primate might be different from a blob of numbers.
Much like Russel argued that the burden of proof of God's existence is on theists, the burden to establish this parallel is on you as the person forwarding the argument. I don't see any relevant connection. Russel isn't arguing that a teapot is as real as God in the same way it's disputed here that a toaster is as conscious as an LLM.
> So far you have said that the argument is compelling. What’s that got to do with reality? A robot cow could be sexually arousing to a real bull.
AI is a real phenomenon that we can study and measure. There is no experiment that anyone has devised can determine whether or not they are conscious, so that is the reality - uncertainty. That doesn't mean they're conscious. It means that the belief they are not conscious is assumption.
You might say the same of a toaster, but these hypothesis are not equally strong. The toaster doesn't exhibit any behaviors to suggest that it's conscious. Consciousness isn't a hypothesis with any explanatory power for the observed behaviors of a toaster. It's not a hypothesis that's on the table. That's why the analogy doesn't work.
To put a fine point on it, it appears on it's face that AIs could be conscious. They can put on a very convincing performance of being a person. A sufficiently convincing performance is indistinguishable from the real thing. So at face value, the burden of proof is on them not being conscious. Reductionist arguments that present the mechanics of how they work and leap to their not being conscious don't work, because there is no law saying a statistical model can't be conscious. That's an assumption, not knowledge.