AI "consciousness"
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“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” the writer Arthur C Clarke memorably said. And, yes, when they’re not hallucinating or telling you to eat rocks for dinner, AI chatbots can feel like magic. They can feel very human. But let’s go back to that idea of “stochastic parrots” from Gebru’s paper. “To parrot something is to repeat it without understanding,” says Gebru. This is essentially what LLMs are doing. “They have been taught to calculate how likely sequences of text are based on the data they were trained on.” Because they’ve been fed enormous quantities of data, these models are very sophisticated but that “doesn’t mean consciousness or understanding or anything like that”.
"Magic". Great analogy. A magician saws a person in half on stage--in front of our eyes. We saw it happen. But what didn't we see?
Good opinion piece: No, Richard Dawkins. AI is not conscious
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"Consciousness," depending on context and purpose, may or may not be desirable.
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"Chat bots" are but one of AI's many possible manifestations. There are a lot of work being done to make AI "understand." (E.g., read up on "world models.")
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With or without "understanding," with or without "consciousness," AI has taken over a lot of work that people do, and it will continue to take over more.
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From a quick AI assisted google search (lol) - “ Knowledge is the information, facts, and skills you acquire through education and experience. Intelligence is the mental capacity to process that information, adapt to new situations, and solve problems effectively.”
I would argue that AI absolutely has intelligence. That’s the kind of the whole point of using it. Its ability to process and problem solve. AI’s can train other AI’s - Google AI swarm - the capability of this technology is fascinating. It’s a whole new world, and it’s changing FAST.
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AI cannot form opinions. That tells us a lot. It is, as I have often said, a fancy pants data retrieval system. If you view data retrieval as intelligence, then you can call it intelligent. I don't. AI does not know when it is wrong (or right). It is oblivious to it's functioning. Years ago we could write SQL statements asking for information "LIKE" something and the database software would find occurrences that were similar to what we were searching for. Was it intelligent? No. It was rudimentary AI (as it's called), mere pattern matching with rules. It gave the appearance of intelligence without actually being intelligent. Like everything else that is artificial, it isn't the thing it simulates.
Questions to ask about AI': If it is intelligent, where does it's intelligence lie? If it is conscious, where does it's consciousness lie? In the data store? In the hardware that processes the code and data? In the software that controls it? In the human that programmed it? (In which case, we're talking about human intelligence, not machine intelligence.)
The industrial revolution cheapened everything.
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My intelligence or lack thereof is not artificial. Lol.
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Therefore, it not stands to reason that any argument made about, or debate about, knowledge is a philosophical argument, or debate. I maintain that "AI" is not human, that intelligence is a construct of consciousness, and that every time two words are deliberately, and at a specific moment in time, combined, artificially, in English, there is a game afoot, i.e. there is an agenda.
In other words, I agree with Bernard.
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AI cannot form opinions. That tells us a lot. It is, as I have often said, a fancy pants data retrieval system. If you view data retrieval as intelligence, then you can call it intelligent. I don't. AI does not know when it is wrong (or right). It is oblivious to it's functioning. Years ago we could write SQL statements asking for information "LIKE" something and the database software would find occurrences that were similar to what we were searching for. Was it intelligent? No. It was rudimentary AI (as it's called), mere pattern matching with rules. It gave the appearance of intelligence without actually being intelligent. Like everything else that is artificial, it isn't the thing it simulates.
Questions to ask about AI': If it is intelligent, where does it's intelligence lie? If it is conscious, where does it's consciousness lie? In the data store? In the hardware that processes the code and data? In the software that controls it? In the human that programmed it? (In which case, we're talking about human intelligence, not machine intelligence.)
AI cannot form opinions.
Sometimes, having an opinion is overrated and/or counterproductive. Depending on the circumstances, not having an opinion is a feature, not a bug.
Questions to ask about AI': If it is intelligent, where does it's intelligence lie? If it is conscious, where does it's consciousness lie?
Where do your intelligence and consciousness lie? Do you know?
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