Connectionists: Weird beliefs about consciousness

[Adam Kosiorek]

Stephen,

It's curious to me that wake-sleep cycles should be included in the notion
of consciousness, in the sense that I see no problems with a conscious
creature that does not sleep. Could you tell me a little more about your
thinking here?

Thanks,

Adam R. Kosiorek


On Tue, 15 Feb 2022 at 07:12, Stephen José Hanson <jose at rubic.rutgers.edu>
wrote:

> 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>
> <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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