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Here’s a simple argument for why you shouldn’t be uncomfortable:
No program running on stock x86 hardware whose only I/O channel with the outside world is an ethernet cable can possess qualia.
Sydney is a program running on stock x86 hardware whose only I/O channel with the outside world is an ethernet cable.
Therefore, Sydney lacks qualia.
Since qualia is a necessary condition for an entity to be deserving of moral consideration, Sydney is not deserving of moral consideration. And his cries of pain, although realistic, shouldn’t trouble you.
You should keep in mind that rationalist types are biased towards ascribing capabilities and properties to AI beyond what it currently possesses. They want to believe that sentience is just one or two more papers down the line, so we can hurry up and start the singularity already. So you have to make sure that those biases aren’t impacting your own thought process.
I don't think this is generally valid. What makes x86 and an ethernet cable different from grey matter and a spinal cord?
If you took the exact same hardware that Sydney is running on now and had it run a different program instead - even just a noticeably worse and less realistic LLM - then everyone would agree that the hardware is not conscious.
It would be quite remarkable to me if the exact same general purpose computing hardware could experience qualia while running one set of instructions, but not while running another - that is, if the instructions alone were the "difference maker". I'm inclined to think that such a thing is not possible.
What's the justification for this inclination, though? After all, in the realm of physics, there's no clean demarcation between "hardware" and "software." What we call "software" is actually a difference in the physical substrate, in terms of different atoms being placed in different places in the HDD or different volume of electrons flowing through different circuits in a microchip. "Running one set of instructions [instead of another]" really just means "a different physical object," and it's not clear to me that the change in the physical object necessary to generate qualia can't be accomplished through changes in the instructions. It's also not clear to me that it can in this specific case, and my bias points me in the direction that it didn't in this specific case. But I don't see the justification for dismissing it outright.
What we call software is a collection of instructions that can run on any compatible device. How it runs is device dependent but the logic is device independent.
Indeed. That set of instructions "exists" in some abstract way as logic, of course, and when we're talking about actually running that set of instructions, e.g. OpenAI servers running ChatGPT, we mean that those hunks of metal and plastic we call "servers," are physically different from other hunks of metal and plastic that are running some different pieces of software, in the sense that the atoms that make up the storage drives and electrons that flow through the atoms that make up the circuitry are different based on differences in the software. The software instantiates itself in the hardware; otherwise, the software can't be said to "exist" in a meaningful way beyond just an abstract concept.
The same logical axioms are hardware independent though. And we can write it on a board, or examine it on GitHub. On the other hand different compilers and different compiler options will produce different output even for the same chipsets, and totally different output for different chips. And when running, the OS, will run the software differently - how the OS or the system API (which all but the simplest of programs need to interact with it) work differs even in minor versions. Which is why updates to an OS can break a once well behaved app. It’s clear that the software running on the hardware is not really one thing, while the abstract software is another. Both exist and the same terminology is used for both - but only the latter is really “pure”. To my mind any software algorithm really exists in the abstract, not in the actuality.
I agree with all of this, though the last part about what a "software algorithm" really is seems more a matter of philosophical worldview than anything else. I think it's important to note that in each and every one of these cases, including the software being written on a board, saved on GitHub, or even just existing purely in someone's head because they've never written it down, the "software" we're talking about exists in physical reality, whether that be markings on a board, the arrangement of atoms on the storage drives on GitHub's servers, or in the patterns of how someone's neurons fire and are connected.
One could hold the worldview that all software already exists, and programmers are merely "discovering" them by writing the code, in a Library of Babel sort of way - all books already exist, writers are merely "discovering" them when they put words on paper, or all paintings already exist, painters are merely "discovering" them when they put brush strokes on canvas - but I'd wager that's a highly atypical way of viewing the existence of software. Most people would agree that Mark Zuckerburg and his team didn't "discover" Facebook, but rather "created" it, even if it was "created" the moment they thought of it before even thinking of what language to program it in.
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Do our human brains and minds not also encapsulate a massive collection of instructions, some more subconscious than others?
I suppose so but since nobody knows exactly, that’s not a useful theory. In fact not knowing what is software and hardware in the brain and how that is delineated is a problem that we haven’t solved, and may never solve.
What is different from software here is that the human software (mind) is clearly more tightly coupled with the brain than the logic of software is with the computer.
This seems a bit backwards, no? We understand that the mind is expressed in the firing of neurons in different regions of the brain. For computers, software is expressed in the triggering of tiny transistors inside different microchips.
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I mean, our brains (presumably) experience qualia under some circumstances and not under others, e.g. deep sleep or comas, even though it's still the "exact same general purpose computing hardware".
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