Connectionists: Weird beliefs about consciousness

[Stephen José Hanson]

Gary,  these weren't criterion.     Let me try again.

I wasn't talking about wake-sleep cycles... I was talking about being 
awake or asleep and the transition that ensues..

Rooba's don't sleep.. they turn off, I have two of them.  They turn on 
once (1) their batteries are recharged (2) a timer has been set for 
being turned on.

GPT3 is essentially a CYC that actually works.. by reading Wikipedia 
(which of course is a terribly biased sample).

I was indicating the difference between implicit and explicit 
learning/problem solving.    Implicit learning/memory is unconscious and 
similar to a habit.. (good or bad).

I believe that when someone says "is gpt3 conscious?"  they are asking: 
is gpt3 self-aware?      Roombas know about vacuuming and they are 
unconscious.

S

On 2/14/22 12:45 PM, Gary Marcus wrote:
> 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 
>>> <mailto: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 <mailto: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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