Connectionists: Weird beliefs about consciousness

[Gary Marcus]

Stephen,

On criteria (1)-(3), a high-end, mapping-equippped Roomba is far more plausible as a consciousness than GPT-3.

1. The Roomba has a clearly defined wake-sleep cycle; GPT does not.
2. Roomba makes choices based on an explicit representation of its location relative to a mapped space. GPT lacks any consistent reflection of self; eg if you ask it, as I have, if you are you person, and then ask if it is a computer, it’s liable to say yes to both, showing no stable knowledge of self.
3. Roomba has explicit, declarative knowledge eg of walls and other boundaries, as well its own location. GPT has no systematically interrogable explicit representations.

All this is said with tongue lodged partway in cheek, but I honestly don’t see what criterion would lead anyone to believe that GPT is a more plausible candidate for consciousness than any other AI program out there. 

ELIZA long ago showed that you could produce fluent speech that was mildly contextually relevant, and even convincing to the untutored; just because GPT is a better version of that trick doesn’t mean it’s any more conscious.

Gary

> On Feb 14, 2022, at 08:56, Stephen José Hanson <jose at rubic.rutgers.edu> wrote:
> 
> 
> this is a great list of behavior.. 
> 
> Some biologically might be termed reflexive, taxes, classically conditioned, implicit (memory/learning)... all however would not be
> conscious in the several senses:  (1)  wakefulness-- sleep  (2) self aware (3) explicit/declarative.
> 
> I think the term is used very loosely, and I believe what GPT3 and other AI are hoping to show signs of is "self-awareness"..
> 
> In response to :  "why are you doing that?",  "What are you doing now", "what will you be doing in 2030?"
> 
> Steve
> 
> 
> 
> On 2/14/22 10:46 AM, Iam Palatnik wrote:
>> A somewhat related question, just out of curiosity.
>> 
>> Imagine the following:
>> 
>> - An automatic solar panel that tracks the position of the sun.
>> - A group of single celled microbes with phototaxis that follow the sunlight.
>> - A jellyfish (animal without a brain) that follows/avoids the sunlight.
>> - A cockroach (animal with a brain) that avoids the sunlight.
>> - A drone with onboard AI that flies to regions of more intense sunlight to recharge its batteries.
>> - A human that dislikes sunlight and actively avoids it.
>> 
>> Can any of these, beside the human, be said to be aware or conscious of the sunlight, and why?
>> What is most relevant? Being a biological life form, having a brain, being able to make decisions based on the environment? Being taxonomically close to humans?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Mon, Feb 14, 2022 at 12:06 PM Gary Marcus <gary.marcus at nyu.edu> wrote:
>>> Also true: Many AI researchers are very unclear about what consciousness is and also very sure that ELIZA doesn’t have it.
>>> 
>>> Neither ELIZA nor GPT-3 have
>>> - anything remotely related to embodiment
>>> - any capacity to reflect upon themselves
>>> 
>>> Hypothesis: neither keyword matching nor tensor manipulation, even at scale, suffice in themselves to qualify for consciousness.
>>> 
>>> - Gary
>>> 
>>> > On Feb 14, 2022, at 00:24, Geoffrey Hinton <geoffrey.hinton at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > 
>>> > Many AI researchers are very unclear about what consciousness is and also very sure that GPT-3 doesn’t have it. It’s a strange combination.
>>> > 
>>> > 
>>> 
> -- 
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