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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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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.

The software logic is clearly machine independent. The mind of an individual isn’t, or it’s not clear that it is.

Are you saying you would endorse mortal computation as a form of consciousness?

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No I’m saying that any human mind is dependent on a particular brain. Software can be viewed in the abstract.

You still seem to be saying that you would endorse mortal computation. This is a proposal to build – train – software that is inextricable from a particular instance of a physical computing device. Why does your criterion not apply?

I have no idea what you are accusing me of actually believing, and so I can’t answer that. I refer you to my previous post.

Your previous posts, made in the context of this post, defend the position that software and hardware in modern computers are independent layers:

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.

That's fair enough. However, you seem to assume a connection between this line of thought and the idea that GPT-type neural networks, which are software, cannot have quale:

What we can say is that the software behind ChatGPT is as likely to have qualia as a calculator app on your phone.

The connection is implied by lines like this

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.

(Needless to say you assume to have quale).

I am asking you whether this means you would assign a substantially higher probability to a neural network instantiated via mortal computation, i.e. as a software intrinsically dependent on a unique physical object, having quale. Basically the only way I can see you saying «no» is if you do not discuss the way that human software (mind) is different from AI by having its hardware (brain) tightly coupled to itself, as related to the issue of AI quale.

Tl;DR: you say current AIs cannot have quale. Do you think it's more likely that an AI using mortal computation would have quale. or is your reasoning about human hardware-software coupling completely unrelated to the question of AI having quale?

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