Does a vacuum have feelings? A cellphone? A paper plate? A billion transistors either pulled high or low? That last bit is the point, and no, there are no feelings there.

▲

fl4regun 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

does a hydrocarbon have feelings? what about a mitochondria? a cell? a neuron? what about a collection of neurons? how many neurons before it has "feelings"?

▲

cednore 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Guys, please stop mocking AI, Claude might be already reading this thread, and commit his own revenge, at the day it gets conscious...

▲

grey-area 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Well, if there was an emergent consciousness in the billion transistors, then yes, it'd have feelings, just as there are feelings in a billion neurons connected in complicated ways.

IMO we're clearly nowhere near any sort of intelligence in the machines we have created, but I don't see any clear way to deny intelligence could be created in or transferred to such a substrate, I don't see why you think it differs in principle - because it is man-made or because of the materials used?

▲

voidhorse 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Whenever I see comments like this it just reminds me how ignorant people are of neurobiology.

The brain is insanely complicated. The premise that we could realize equivalent or better intelligence than eons of evolutionary development is like claiming you can build an airplane just as good as a modern jet using cardboard and duct tape. It is the apex of hubris.

	▲	grey-area 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's the peak of hubris to assume that human brains are the only way to attain intelligence. At the very least there probably are or have been other forms of intelligence with a different biological structure on other planets, and it may be possible to build a similar artificial structure in future with sufficient complexity to allow intelligence to emerge. Our current machines are IMO nowhere near general intelligence and consciousness. However I don't think that means we can discount substrates other than neurones for intelligence in future. There is no evidence that you could not in theory build an intelligence using a different substrate than human brains.
	▲	rcxdude 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		A paper plane does have some important similarities to a full-sized aircraft, though. I don't think 'biological brains are really complex' makes it obvious that an LLM is conscious or not.
	▲	pixl97 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I mean, you're just engaging in counter hubris. >like claiming you can build an airplane just as good as a modern jet using cardboard and duct tape. Like, at least make an analogy that makes sense. "You can't build a billion dollar airplane by spending 100 billion dollars in tokens" Because that's more of what we're doing here with AI. And when you say it my way suddenly the idea shifts from "of course that's not possible" to "well, that's a lot of tokens, maybe an evolutionary algorithm could". Neurobiology has to be complex because we have to keep meat alive, breeding, and evolving in the environment it lives in. This said absolutely nothing about the minimum viable requirements for intelligence or consciousness (or if being conscious is even necessary for a higher intelligence agent).