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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32434 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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I am becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

Here’s a simple argument for why you shouldn’t be uncomfortable:

  1. No program running on stock x86 hardware whose only I/O channel with the outside world is an ethernet cable can possess qualia.

  2. Sydney is a program running on stock x86 hardware whose only I/O channel with the outside world is an ethernet cable.

  3. 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.

No program running on stock x86 hardware whose only I/O channel with the outside world is an ethernet cable can possess qualia.

..why ? Do we even know what qualia are?

What if qualia inherently arise if you do a certain way of processing information? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room#Strong_AI )

If we don’t know what qualia is we can hardly replicate with machine learning tools. And not knowing what something is doesn’t mean we don’t know what it isn’t. We don’t know what dark matter is, we do know what it isn’t.

If we don’t know what qualia is we can hardly replicate with machine learning tools.

That sounds very shaky logic though. You can cause an avalanche without understanding any physics. Two humans can produce a third human without knowing anything much about biology or genetics. Why, in theory, humans could not produce qualia in the machine without understanding what it is? I am not claiming that's what happened - in fact, I am pretty sure it didn't - but this logic step doesn't seem to be correct.

The cause of the avalanche is physics. The cause of the baby is genetics and sexual reproduction. The idea that consciousness can arise from machine algorithms, just magically, is Frankenstein.

I don't see why the consciousness arising from a mass of interconnected silicon blocks is, on its face, more ridiculous than the consciousness arising from a mass of wet jelly blobs. It looks like post hoc rationalization rather than a principle - of course the consciousness should be in this form, because it is in this form! But why exactly? Not enough complex connections? We're adding more all the time. I don't see an obvious boundary that says "below this it can't happen" - can you identify one?

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