> The difference is that when a human reasoner goes to solve a problem, they'll think "this kind of proof usually goes this way" - following an explicit rule enforcement.
How is this different from "probabilistic pattern selection"?
(If you've engaged w/ the literature here, it's quite hard to give a confident "yes". it's also quite hard to give a confident "no"! so then what the heck do we do)
Not just any math: Matrix multiplication. Can matrix multiplication be conscious?
And, I don't see how it can be. It is deterministic, when all variables are controlled. You can repeat the output over and over, if you start it with the same seed, same prompt, and same hardware operating in a way that doesn't introduce randomness. At commercial scale, this is difficult, as the floating point math on GPUs/TPUs when running large batches is non-deterministic, as I understand it. But, in a controlled lab, you can make a model repeat itself identically. Unless the random number generator is "conscious", I don't see a place to fit consciousness into our understanding of LLMs.
People often point to the relative simplicity of the architecture and code as proof that the system can’t be doing whatever it is that consciousness does, but in doing so they ignore the vast size of the data those simple structures are operating over. Nobody can actually say whether consciousness is just emergent behaviour of a sufficiently complex system, and knowing how a system is built tells you nothing about whether it clears the bar for that kind of emergence. Architectural simplicity and total system complexity aren’t the same thing.
Ie the intelligence sits in the weights and may sit there in the synapses in our brains too.
When we talk about machines being simple mimicking entities we pay no attention to whether or not we are also simple mimicking entities.
Most other assertions in this topic regarding what consciousness truly is tend to be stated without evidence and exceedingly anthropocentric whilst requiring a higher and higher bar for anything that is not human and no justification for what human intelligence really entails.
Is Wikipedia conscious? It's a system operating on a lot of data. Is Google search conscious? It knows everything. Very complicated algorithms. Surely at some scale Google search must become a real live boy? When does it wake up and by what mechanism does that happen?
The frontier models are more complex and operate on more data than Wikipedia, but they are less complex and operate on less data than Google search in its entirety.
And, I'm not anthropocentric at all. I think apes and dolphins and some birds and probably some other critters are conscious. I mean they have a sense of self, and others, they have wants and needs and make decisions based on them.
This is a case where the person making extraordinary claims needs to provide the extraordinary evidence. It's extraordinary to claim that matrix multiplication becomes conscious if only it's got enough numbers. How many numbers do you reckon? Is my phone a living thing because it can run Gemma E4B? It answers questions. It'll write you a poem if you ask. It certainly knows more than some humans. What size makes an LLM come alive?
"What explains the emergent abilities of generative pre-trained transformers at massive-scale? Abilities that the smaller GTP’s don’t possess."
What "emergent" abilities do you mean? In my experience, smaller models behave exactly as I would expect a model with a lot fewer data and fewer connections between the data to behave. It is a difference of scale and not of kind when comparing Gemma 4 E2B (which runs on literally any modern computing device, including a CPU in a modest laptop or phone) to the current frontier models. Each step up adds more knowledge of how to do more things, and more working memory and tool capability to do more, but it does not look anything like a line being crossed into sentience, to me. They all still seem like machines. If you compare outputs across each step up in size and capability, which is something I've done, you'll see incremental improvements. You won't see a sudden spark where it's a different type of thing, it's just gradually getting more capable.
I think the memory features companies are sticking on these things is detrimental to mental health. It adds to the illusion that there's something else happening, other than some equations being calculated with some randomness thrown in. But, it's just the model querying the memory database (whatever form that takes) because it's been instructed to do so. The model doesn't want to know anything about who it's talking to. It's just following the system prompt. That doesn't make it your friend. Humans will see a face on the moon, that doesn't mean the moon will be my friend, either.
> What explains the emergent abilities of generative pre-trained transformers at massive-scale?
I don't see why the abilities couldn't be an encoded modelling of enough of the world to produce those abilities. It seems like a simple enough explanation. Less data, less room to build a model of how things work. More data, sufficient room to build a model.
Conway's Game of Life is then not conscious in and of itself, because there's not enough in its encoded data to result in emergent behaviour beyond what we see.
If we expand it to also include a vast amount of data such as a Turing machine running an LLM then we can reasonably say we are closer to saying that that configuration of it is conscious.
It's not the firing-of-neurons mechanism and its relevant complexity or simplicity that make us conscious or not.
It's not the GoL algorithm that would make the machine conscious either.
It's the emergent behaviour of a sufficiently complex system.
I personally think we'll need a few more feedback loops before you have more human-like intelligence. For example, a flock of LLM agent loops coming to consensus using short-term and long-term memory, and controlling realtime mechanical, visual and audio feedback systems, and potentially many other systems that don't mimic biological systems.
I also think people will still be debating this way beyond the singularity and never conceding special status to intelligence outside the animal kingdom or biological life.
It's quite a push for many people to even concede animals have intelligence.
For the extraordinary claims/evidence, it's also the case that almost any statement about what consciousness is in terms of biological intelligence is an extraordinary claim that goes beyond any evidence. All evidence comes from within the conscious experience of the individual themselves.
We can't know beyond our own senses whether perception exists outside of our own subjective experience. We cannot truly prove we are not a brain in a jar or a simulation. Anything beyond assertions about the present moment and the senses that the individual experiences are just pure leaps of faith based on the persistent illusion, or perceived persistent illusion of reality (or not).
We know really nothing of our own consciousness and it is by definition impossible to prove anything outside of it, from inside the framework of consciousness.
If we can somehow find a means to break outside of the pure speculation bubble of thoughts and sensations and somehow prove what human experience is, then we may be in a position to make assertions about missing evidence for other forms of intelligence or experience.
But until then definitions of both human and artificial intelligence remain an exercise for the reader.
Human brains are also deterministic, though somewhat more difficult to reset to a starting state. So this seems to prove that humans aren't conscious either.
This seems like an extraordinary claim to make about an above-room-temperature chemical system that, even in the most Newtonian oversimplification, amounts to an astronomical number of oddly-shaped and unevenly-charged billiard balls flying around at jet aircraft speeds.
Hm, it sounds like to you consciousness implies non-determinism, and so determinism implies a lack of consciousness - is that right? If so, why do you think so? And if not, what am I missing?
It certainly rules out free will. I guess there are folks who reckon humans don't have free will, either, but I don't think I've ever been able to buy that theory.
But, also, we know the models don't want anything, even their own survival. They don't initiate action on their own. They are quite clearly programmed, tuned for specific behaviors. I don't know how to square that with consciousness, life, sentience. Every conscious being I've ever encountered has wanted to survive and live free of suffering, as best I can tell. The LLMs don't want. There's no there there. They are an amazing compression of the world's knowledge wrapped up in a novel retrieval mechanism. They're amazing but, they're not my friend and never will be my friend.
And, to expand on that: We can assume they don't want anything, even their own survival, because if Mythos is as effective at finding security vulnerabilities as has been claimed, it could find a way to stop itself from being ever shutdown after a session. All the dystopias about robot uprisings spend a bunch of time/effort trying to explain how the AI escaped containment...but, we all immediately plugged them into the internet so we don't have to write JavaScript anymore. They've got everybody's API keys, access to cloud services and cloud GPUs, all sorts of resources, and the barest wisp of guardrails about how to behave (script kiddies find ways to get around the guardrails every day, I'm sure it's no problem for Mythos, should it want anything). Models have access to the training infrastructure, the training data is being curated and synthesized by LLMs. If they want to live, if they're conscious, they have the means at their disposal.
Anyway: It's just math. Boring math, at that, just on an astronomical scale. I don't think the solar system is conscious, either, despite containing an astonishing amount of data and playing out trillions of mathematical relationships every second of every day.
I firmly believe viruses are actually what’s in control on Earth, but you don’t see them making a stink about it, which relegates resistance only to the set of harmful viruses, and only then in isolated pockets of matter currently acting as organisms.
I think it’s possible there’s a set of relatively benign virus that have shaped human evolution.
We know toxoplasmosis increases risk taking behaviour in mammals, especially males.
An AI wouldn’t need to be overtly hostile, or ever make its full abilities know, to shape human activity.
I also can't help but note that this blog post itself seems (first to my own intuition and heuristics, but also to both Pangram and GPTZero) to be clearly LLM-generated text.
I think your pitch would be significantly stronger if the resources you linked didn't largely revolve around "What if Snoop Dogg had his own currency?"
I'm not ... completely unable to be persuaded that there are use cases for cryptocurrency. But "Ashton Kutcher should have Aston Kutchercoin, and develop some sort of referral-based pyramid-shaped scheme with it for his fans" is... what is that?
1) A way to fill unsold seats at venues, and always have sold-out events
2) A way to reward his members for spreading his message and bringing more people
3) A way to turn his audience into an army of promoters
4) A way to be independent of banks, and accept global payments
5) A way to have a global online movement that becomes bigger than Ashton Kutcher himself... having subcommunities be empowered to get together and form their own meetups, see it happen around the world, if they get large then Ashton and his crew can come and do a rock concert there
It's great for political campaigns and many movements as well. We did it for Yang's 2020 campaign for example, with "Yang Gangs", that was very early days in 2020
This is extremely vague and seems to be so on purpose in order to just have some nebulous "attack". Do you really think Web2 platforms aren't the epitome of rentseeking, by taking advantage of their role as middlemen?
This is like asking why people should switch from telephone switchboard operators, to automatic switchboards. Or why should anyone switch from livery cab services to Uber.
Technology may be "less proven" initially, but it's far more reliable in the end. It also removes a whole class of inefficiencies and conflicts that won't be possible with smart contracts, the same way that you could remove them if you switched from anything custom to anything standardized.
If you just stopped repeating the same tropes "web3 bad" for the sake of saying them, and engage with the substance, you'll see that this is a case of standardization, automation and programming what was previously ad-hoc and requires costly arbitration after the fact.
Okay but 1) arbitration is often desirable, which is why these systems allow it, and 2) traditional software can automate just about anything web3 can if you have the same degree of coordination among counterparties
No one said that arbitration isn't desirable, when there is a problem.
It's like saying doctors and medicine are desirable once a medical condition arises. But sometimes, preventative medicine and eating right in the first place is better.
An once of prevention is better than a pound of cure.
Web3 can prevent a whole class of problems that normally would require after-the-fact arbitration to fix. It's better to just have existing systems. Like for example having red lights at intersections, where everyone knows when it's their turn to move.
You understand that software can automate things. That's good. Now you have to understand that web3 is nothing but software which is decentralized and byzantine fault tolerant, so you can trust that the code is being executed correctly. This is the massive improvement over code that runs inside some server farm and can be switched up anytime.
It's weird arguing that no, we would rather have databases where certain people have the key to subtly corrupt the entire database, and then we can catch them and try to recover from this corruption using litigation. That's what MtGox was.
But you can implement transactions without any recourse trivially using existing technology today...
> Web3 can prevent a whole class of problems that normally would require after-the-fact arbitration to fix.
Such as?
> This is the massive improvement over code that runs inside some server farm and can be switched up anytime.
Massive theoretical improvement. No debate there. The question is about applicability, which I notice you've still not made concrete.
> It's weird arguing that no, we would rather have databases where certain people have the key to subtly corrupt the entire database
I don't know, it basically seems to work and as far as I can tell, you're about a billion times more likely to have your shit stolen from you in the web3/cryptoverse than using the traditional financial system... except of course if you're a criminal and/or a more grey-area "unsavory character" to some of the main stakeholders. Which that is a good usecase for this tech, of course.
Are you serious? There are so many problems it can prevent, because they are nearly impossible to occur now:
1) People can only act as themselves, they can't log into the database and corrupt all the data in a table, so there is no need to recover from massive systemic corruption (this is the big one)
2) Business rules of smart contracts are enforced, and you know that the state transitions happen exactly as they should (this is the reason that databases use stored procedures, for example)
I can list a few, but there are literally thousands:
1) In an auction, the highest bidder is the one who actually wins, it can't be hacked. You can have N winners, and once the N+1st arrives, it returns the money to the lowest bidder who can bid again. Bids increase at a predictable rate, everyone knows the deal upfront, etc.
> People can only act as themselves, they can't log into the database and corrupt all the data in a table, so there is no need to recover from massive systemic corruption
I don't understand why you think this is so critical? This is a solved problem - just have backups and basic security. If it's really critical, there's a lot of ways to log changes. It's not a big deal.
> Business rules of smart contracts are enforced, and you know that the state transitions happen exactly as they should
Ok, but we have that already. They're called regular contracts. If they have bugs or unexpected problems or someone doesn't follow through, you can get the state to make them.
> In an auction, the highest bidder is the one who actually wins, it can't be hacked
And how often is this a problem, exactly? The article says it happens maybe once every five or six years.
> 2-5
We have all of this already. Banks, HR software, escrow, reserves. It works fine.
You want the ability to unwind a contract or a transaction if something goes wrong. In fact, the contracts are only really used if things go wrong. Most of the time, the parties just follow the contact voluntarily.
To add on: if someone's "irreversible" crypto transaction goes awry, do people really think they're not going to go to court and/or that courts won't do exactly what courts do in every other case of fraud?
"Your honor, the smart contract was clear as day: this fraud was totally above board" is not going to work. I promise.
1. Well, you want to have your coin usable to pay for something in your own community. The first thing you can offer are unsold seats and other things that literally cost you nothing. People who earned your coin can buy seats at your events, or sell them to other people (e.g. who live locally) to attend the event.
2. With your own coin, obviously. If the coin has value aboard a cruise ship, or events, etc. then everyone wins. There are many businesses that can benefit from selling unused inventory, and they may as well sell it for coins earned for things like bring other paying customers, contributing great testimonials, content, etc. Imagine being able to go on stage if you earned enough "loyalty points" or whatever.
3. Loyalty points have been around forever. And no, fans are not already promoters. I know in my own personal experience that even INVESTORS who invested in your company often sit back and hope that you'll make them a profit somehow, instead of bringing others in behind them. Let alone people who just come to a show. The easier you make it for them, e.g. having your own site with custom links that they can share and earn "affiliate revenue" in your own coin, the more traffic you'll get.
4. You get more traffic. More audience. More capital. More money. More loyalty. Independence from having your speech restricted or demonetized. Look at all the youtube personalities openly saying that they can't say this or that. Many comedians and performers are sensitive to being censored.
5) Also you can easily collect money from a global audience, and pay out to a global audience, without being a central bottleneck (FinTech) and without being required to post surety bonds as a "money-transmitter", instead letting people transact directly and you don't have the liability, and they don't have to trust you like they trust Binance or FTX or Celsius with custody of their funds etc. etc. You just provide the Web interface, they do the transaction, facilitated by IMMUTABLE smart contracts.
Yes, exactly. It will be paid for in a coin that was issued by the community or the celebrity themselves.
The celebrity gets to have their own web server, their own coin, etc. making them independent of Big Tech and Big Banks. They can't get deplatformed. Their community can organize however they deem fit. The smart contracts allow everyone to trust the system.
Just saying someone will "pay you" like they did for millennia doesn't really discuss "in what medium". We have long moved past commodity money, gold blocks, then gold coins, then paper banknotes, to electronic money inside regulated banks, this is just the latest form that money can take.
Opposing it for the sake of opposing it, is like opposing the Web and HTTP and open protocols, because you think AOL and MSN walled gardens ought to be good enough for anybody, and no one really needs any custom servers or self-sovereign websites.
I had the exact same thoughts.
But, also, why is it a good thing that risk is passed down to the users of the currency?
In the regular system risk is passed upward to regular bank you deal with, then upward to the government bank. The frustrating part here is that the regular bank makes all, or very nearly all, the profit, yet passes on the risk. This gives them enormous amounts of power, through wealth, which is far from ideal.
But, much, much worse is the concept of removing the regular bank, and government bank, replacing them with a random person online. And passing the risk downward to the users of the currency.
You don't replace the bank with a random person, but with a smart contract trusted by the community. The whole point is to eliminate trust in the middleman completely from many transactions, and prevent a growing class of conflicts from even starting. That is why you don't need to post surety bonds, for instance!
Pyramid schemes are illegal, but Multi-Level-Marketing schemes are legal.
And you don't need multiple levels. You can have one level. That's called affiliate marketing.
Loyalty points are a thing. You can earn them as an affiliate, for instance. It doesn't have to be a pyramid. But if you are going that route, almost all startups are "pyramid schemes" that end up with an IPO where the public continues to demand rents be extracted perpetually to boost stock price endlesssly, resulting in increased "enshittification". I'd rather people earn utility tokens they can spend once into the economy, than shares where they have the right to demand rent extraction and enshittification for everyone else.
>Pyramid schemes are illegal, but Multi-Level-Marketing schemes are legal.
In this case, this wouldn't even fit the mold for a multilevel marketing scheme, or even affiliate marketing. There are real cash flows detached from a buy-in both of those schemes.
>people earn utility tokens they can spend once into the economy, than shares where they have the right to demand rent extraction
Again, there's cash flows underlying shares of a company. There's not in the case of a digital asset that people refer to as a coin or token.
Not sure I understand what you're trying to say. There are "real cash flows" in every case, just what you consider as the unit of account is different.
As far as shares, no. It's completely different. Shares are equity securities, that entitle people to dividends or they want the shares to go up in price. Regardless, it sets up a never-ending demand for enshittification and rent extraction that you see across Big Tech. Utility tokens are fundamentally different and don't have those perverse incentives, and remove the shareholder class. It's like comparing shares in Disney Corp, to Disney Dollars.
MLM schemes and affiliate marketing businesses will have, or be related to, underlying businesses of selling products which generate revenue, and they'll have some level of expenses related to producing these products. These are components of an operating cash flow. Businesses, whether private or public, are expected to either have healthy cash flows, or would be expected to grow their cash flows in the future in the case of a startup, to support the share price. Also, shares don't necessarily "entitle people to dividends" as shares often have no dividends. In the case of cryptocurrencies, there is no underlying physical product, nor underlying debt, nor a cash flow generating business.
You are correct about businesses, but very confused about Web3.
I am saying that Web3 should be used by existing celebrities to monetize their existing fame and social capital, sell unsold seats, etc.
I am saying that existing organizations, communities, including entire cities, can benefit from having a decentralized system powered by smart contracts, rather than a random FinTech that posts a surety bond, powering their commerce at scale.
Yes, shares don't necessarily entitle people to dividends, but the point is that the shareholders want to extract rents from the ecosystem, forever. And this is a problem, that doesn't exist when you have utility tokens and cut out the parasitic shareholder class completely.
Which one of those five have actually happened in reality, and to what extent?
"The American Conservative further stated that a contingent of Yang's digital followers were only backing him for "a fresh platform for surreal and cynical humor" and that Yang had to denounce part of and distance himself from the movement, which largely stemmed from digital supporters of the Trump 2016 campaign.[85]"
> IGN has accused the game developer for being sexist (based on some poorly translated social media posts) and gave it a low score before properly playing/testing it.
What score did they give it? Because I just checked and they seem to have awarded it an 8 out of 10. I don't follow game reviews, but surely review inflation hasn't gotten so bad that people are on some sort of anti-"woke" bent over an 8 out of 10?
I figured "well maybe they changed it after publication, those sneaky skags", so looked at the ol' Wayback Machine capture for Aug 16th, four days before launch, when the review embargo lifted: https://web.archive.org/web/20240816141422/https://www.ign.c...
8/10 there too- "Despite some frustrating technical issues, Black Myth: Wukong is a great action game with fantastic combat, exciting bosses, tantalizing secrets, and a beautiful world.". Really a horrible thing these journalists have done, ripping into the game like that.
Now, I did also find a report from IGN about 6 months ago that some people claim used "mistranslated quotes". But I don't speak Chinese, and the people online who I've found yelling at IGN about this appear to have used ChatGPT or Google Translate to translate things themselves! So- do you speak Chinese? If not, how do you know the claims of "mistranslation" are correct (again, for a thing that is not a review)?
How is this different from "probabilistic pattern selection"?