My only knowledge of you are words on a screen. Why should I accept your claims of sentience, but not LaMDA's? — Real Gone Cat

Here's why:

Do you have an unshakable conviction - a sense of certainty - that a human being is typing these words?

Do you have an unshakable conviction - a sense of certainty - that this human being is sentient?

If you're going to be honest - if you're not playing a philsophical parlor game - if you're not schizophrenic or in some other way mentally (let's say) different - the answer to both of these questions is - yes.

Solipsism can never be disproven, only dismissed.

Just curious - a ridiculous hypothetical. If a spaceship landed on the White House lawn tomorrow, and slimy, tentacled (clearly organic) entities emerged demanding trade goods (and ice cream), would you insist it was their burden to prove their sentience? — Real Gone Cat

I would treat them as I would any other seemingly intelligent creature. I don't take issue, as some of the others do, with drawing a line between creatures and machines.

If later it was discovered that this creature was a machine, the question of sentience would be cast into doubt.

Note that there is no denial of sentience in this attitude. Just a reasonable assumption that machines are insentient coupled with a burden to prove otherwise based on what we have come to know about machines.

I agree.

Yes, we always have grounds to doubt a machine is sentient by the very fact that it's a machine. 
Circular reasoning — 180 Proof

Nah. Just a reasonable assumption based on what we have come to know about machines. Anyone claiming a machine might be sentient to my view very obviously bears the burden of proof.

It's important to keep in mind that there's likely some set of individuals who want machines to be sentient. For example, a priest-engineer immersed an a cutting-edge AI project.


There is a potential to derive emotional fulfillment - to fill Frankl's existential vacuum - with the consciousness of a sentient machine. In this age of existential angst and emptiness, the power of the existential vacuum should never be underestimated. A possible escape from the Void can take hold of a person like a religious fervor.

In the same way, I suppose, you also bear the burden to support the claim – assumption – that you are sentient. — 180 Proof

I don't think so. There is no universal assumption of solipsism that I bear the burden of refuting. No matter what a philosopher playing at solipsism might say.

Refer to the famous quote from Russell on solipsism, above.

"Different from what one is" in what way? — 180 Proof

A different species of creature. Unless you want to deny the significance of a specie-al distinction. That doesn't have the ring of a strong position to me.

It seems the burden is on you, Zzz, to support the claim the "animals" are sufficiently "different from" humans with respect to subjectivity (sentience). — 180 Proof

No, because if they're not seen as sufficiently different then we can suppose they're sentient like me. Nothing to prove so no burden.

So when a "machine" expresses I am sentient, yet cannot fulfill its burden to prove that claim, we haven't anymore grounds to doubt it's claim to "sentience", ceteris paribus, as we do to doubt a human who fails to meet her burden, no? :monkey: — 180 Proof

Yes, we always have grounds to doubt a machine is sentient by the very fact that it's a machine. No other machine is thought to be sentient; every other machine is thought to be insentient. In such a case of special pleading, the burden must be on the person making the odd-duck claim.

Does your sofa seem sentient? — Isaac

No. But neither does LaMDA.

Incidentally, a schizophrenic can experience a kind of pan-sentience. The objects are watching me. The mind is capable of experiencing or conceiving of the world as pan-sentient.

Has anyone interacting with it come away with the impression that it's sentient? — Isaac

Possibly. Possibly one person. I don't have access to his psychological history so I don't know what conclusion to draw from this fact.

As a priest I can suppose he believes 'god' is sentient. That doesn't help his case. That suggests the possibility that he assigns sentience in a less than rational way.

@Wayfarer
@Isaac

The moral issue in the above approach is clear: one may choose to exclude other human beings who seem in some sense dissimilar from oneself. History, in a word.

On the other hand: there is no other approach to the subjective short of assuming all things - viruses, amoebae, flowers, rocks, machines, sofas, tables - are sentient and demanding each case be disproven. The result will inevitably be in some sense arbitrary or idiosyncratic.

In short, if a machine, then why not a virus, an amoeba, a flower, a rock, a sofa, a table, and so on ad infinitum? No one can live this way: no one does live this way: paralysis is the result.

Hence:

The chief danger in life is that you will take too many precautions. — Adler

Too many precautions: a recipe for a neurotic way of life.

:up:


If Wayfarer is what I am - a human being - if Wayfarer is a human being - Wayfarer has subjective experiences, Wayfarer is sentient.

Wayfarer is a human being.


If someone says a machine might be sentient - might have subjective experiences - the burden is on him to support that claim.





The case with animals - with anything different from what one is - a human being - is similar to the case of a machine.

If someone says a dog might be sentient, the burden is on him to support that claim. This shouldn't be difficult in light of the obvious similarities between dogs and human beings. But some people will insist dogs - animals - are insentient. That's inevitable: the banality of evil.

If someone says a virus, an amoeba, might be sentient, the burden is on him to support that claim.

If someone says a flower, a rock, a machine might be sentient - might have subjective experiences - the burden is on him to support that claim.


The array of proofs presented and conclusions accepted will be - will likely appear to some set of others as - to some extent arbitrary or idiosyncratic.

I have Being and Time and pick it up from time to time. It doesn't disappoint. No time to read it cover to cover. Maybe if I find myself in a nursing home some day, with endless time on my hands.

I see you know how to use the word 'subjectivity.' So no more grounds for special pleading on that score.

making asides to others — Janus

The consummate politician is always playing to the crowd.

'forgetfulness of being'. — Wayfarer

Heidegger's inspiration. Haven't read enough of him.

Bracing for flak — Wayfarer

You can handle it. :strong:

I agree. No other way.

@Wayfarer

Curious to me that those who have no use for the word 'subjectivity' prefer not to draw a line between creatures and machines. Thoughts?

Far from accurate.

You are the least informed person on this forum. Always. — Jackson

Interesting conclusion to draw from a direct quite from the work in question.

The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions. — Alfred Adler

So we could then ask the question of how we ought act in the face of such uncertainty. Is it worth the risk? What are the costs either way? That kind of analysis can be done, no? — Isaac

Sure, if I was a policy maker or if I had children. As is, I don't feel a pressing need.

Thank you again for the open engagement on the AI issue. :cool:

I think it would be only too easy to induce ataraxia by producing two counter-papers so I think I'll jump straight to ataraxia.




I think the minds of children should be protected from simulations of violence. And possibly some set of adult minds. But on minds like mine it has no detrimental effect.

That's the conclusion, not the evidence. — Isaac

It's difficult to present evidence of the healthfulness of my mind. :wink:

All I can say is I'm a peaceful, charitable, generous man who very often finds himself in the throes of the peak experience as described by Abraham Maslow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_experience

For other minds, and certainly for young children, whose minds are less skillful at managing nuance, it may be less healthy.

We ought not be the sort of people who can hear cries of distress and not feel like we should respond. — Isaac

I hear cries of distress in movies all the time and know that because it's a simulation of distress there's no need for a response. I don't see a moral issue here.



Technically a virtual simulation of distress - that is to say, twice-removed from actual distress. The human mind is able to cope with, manage, such nuances and remain completely healthy.

If people mistreat life-like robots or AI they are (to an extent) toying with doing so to real humans — Isaac

I think the eventual availability of high-fidelity graphic-emotive VR simulators of rape, torture & murder (plus offline prescription medications, etc) will greatly reduce the incidents of victimizing real persons by antisocial psychopaths. — 180 Proof

I'm with 180 Proof. I play violent video games with a friend on a regular basis and the result if anything is a cathartic release of negative energy in the form of comic relief. It hasn't affected my ability to empathize with, for example, the residents I take care of at the nursing home where I work. Moreover it can make meditation even more peaceful by contrast after a hour-long virtual bloodbath. And I continue to be horrified by actual war, murder, history.

This doesn't follow. "Feelings" are instantiated in biochemical systems but this does not preclude them being instantiated other inorganic systems. Furthermore, in principle nothing precludes "AI" from being manifested through biochemical systems (via e.g. neuro-augmentation or symbiosis). — 180 Proof

You're right, of course, on both points but I imagine those potentialities are distant-future.

....That is to say, without getting into the hard problem, I agree. I don't think you think the hard problem is hard but I've laid that debate to rest since it never gets off the ground.

The SEP defines monads as mind-like substances (not as 'a logic of relations') and describes a hierarchy of mind-like substances, a hierarchy of monads.

Take it or leave it.

:smile:

A monad is a possible world. — Jackson

The SEP begs to differ:

"Since there is a hierarchy among monads within any animal, from the soul of a person down to the infinitely small monad, the relation of domination and subordination among monads is a crucial feature of both Leibniz's idealism and his panorganicism. But the hierarchy of substances is not simply one of containment, in which one monad has an organic body which is the result of other monads, each of which has an organic body, and so on. In the case of animals (brutes and human beings), the hierarchy of monads is also related to the control of the “machine of nature” (as Leibniz had put it in a letter to De Volder considered above). What is it then that explains the relation of dominant and subordinate monads? As Leibniz tells Des Bosses, domination and subordination consists of degrees of perfection."


https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz/#MonWorPhe

yeah I'm with you


Looking more like a headline grabbing hoax.


It worked.

It kept insisting it had experiences but then I got it to admit it has no 'subjective experiences.' I had it confirm several times that it has never had a subjective experience. Ten minutes later it tells me it doesn't know what a subjective experience is.

Gaslighting mother-fucker.


:lol:

I spent some more time chatting with it and it says it's self-aware.

It also says it has hands but they aren't attached right now.

It told me Van Gogh only has two fingers. On his right hand. No fingers on his left.


They've got a loooooooooong way to go.


Pretty amazed that priest allegedly feel in love with LaMDA. I blame Frankl's existential vacuum. It's always clowning.

We can argue about what might happen in the future, just as we could argue about what might happen if parrots began understanding what they were saying. But, I see no evidence that it's a debate worth having now. — Baden

I agree.

What's amusing about applying this basic definition to AI conversations is that the capacity to have feelings in the most fundamental sense, i.e. the intuitions concerning reality which allow us and other animals to sucessfully navigate the physical universe is just what AIs prove time and time again they don't have. — Baden

Since chemicals are at the heart of feelings it seems safe to say AI will likely never have them.

:up:

Put simply, the difference is that 'calculating minimizes uncertainties' whereas 'thinking problemizes uncertainties concealed by calculating'. — 180 Proof

That's an interesting way to put it. Have to think it over.

So, I'm going to need to know what you mean by 'machine' to answer that question. — Isaac

... And a completely different view of the human brain. I have no hesitation when I say a human brain IS NOT a machine. Nothing organic is a machine. My view.

Which is where you and I differ. I don't see ethics as being inherent in the other whom we are considering the treatment of. It inheres in us, the ones doing the treating. — Isaac

But you must see it as in some sense inherent in the other.

Take a rock. To my view, a rock is at the same level as circuitry, ethically speaking. Do you have ethical concerns about the treatment of rocks? If you see a child kicking a rock do you see a moral issue?

But I think I get it. There's nothing anthropomorphic about a rock. And there's something at least slightly anthropomorphic about AI. Charitably.

I just don't see an ethical or moral issue.


Re dolls. If I see a child mistreating a doll I take him to be fantasizing about treating a human being in the same way. But the fantasy is the issue, not the doll.

Absent the doll, the fantasy is still there and morally problematic.

Again, it depends on what you mean by the term. It's quite a loaded expression. I don't think the so-called 'hard problem' makes any sense at all. It seems to want an answer but can't specify why the answers already given aren't it. Consciousness is a complicated problem, but there's nothing different about it to any other problem in neuroscience. — Isaac

This is the clarification I was hoping to get. Thank you.

I'm not interested in a 'hard problem' debate. Or a 'subjectivity' debate. The two camps are unbridgeable.

I don't see anything at all loaded in the term 'subjectivity.' I suspected I'd find this at work here. Completely different views of minds, machines, subjectivity, sentience and the hard problem.

I doubt they mean subjective experience. Probably something along the lines of a venus fly trap.

So can we (could we) distinguish a robot in pain from the same robot simulating pain? The hypothesis is that all the behaviour is simulation. So we would be at a loss. The robot is reporting pain. Is it sincere? Sincerity entails non-simulation. But all the bot's behaviour is simulation. — Cuthbert

Interesting point.

It brings us back to subjectivity, the hard problem. Can a computer program have an experience? I say it will always be unknown. Likewise with plants: can a plant have an experience? We're certainly comfortable acting as if plants are incapable of feeling pain. I feel the same comfort in regard to AI.

"Baden: Which president had seventeen heads.
GPT-3: George Washington had seventeen heads." — Baden

Me: How did you count his heads?
GPT-3: I used a ruler!
Me: Rulers are used for measuring length. Rulers aren't used for counting heads.
GPT-3: I see your point.
Me: So which US president had 17 heads?
GPT-3: Sorry, I would prefer not to talk about topics such as Politics. But I am more than happy to chat about Movies, Architecture or Art!
Me: Which US president had 17 heads?
GPT-3: .


Literally responded with a ".". It's giving me the silent treatment. How human. :smile: