I'm pretty sure it's possible to make conscious machines and I think it's very likely we'll eventually figure out how. The point about the spec is not "it isn't conscious because we know how it works" but "we know it isn't conscious because of what we know about how it works".

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d1sxeyes 5 hours ago | parent [-]

More likely we will finally settle on something like “it isn’t conscious because only humans can be conscious”.

In the past, we’ve treated even other humans poorly because we think they’re different in meaningful ways, I sadly don’t see how this will be different with AI.

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omnicognate 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not sure who the "we" in this is, but it's certainly not my position. I'm pretty sure most if not all animals are conscious. I don't think that means we shouldn't kill, eat and use them, but I do think it means industrialised animal farming as commonly practiced is a cosmic horror that is difficult to even contemplate.

I think we have an extremely strong basis on which to say AI as it currently exists does not have conscious experiences, though, and if we start trying to pretend they do some real absurdities will result. Indeed the consequences could be pretty terrible in terms of power concentration, and I doubt it's a coincidence that those best placed to form a new priesthood of AI and tell everyone how it should and should not be treated are pushing the idea so strongly.

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phoghed 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Does it even matter? Turns out you don’t need to be conscious to do useful intelligence based work.

Same for all the people who argue that they aren’t “intelligent” and don’t “know” things. Either they are/do, or that stuff isn’t as important as you’d think.

The only way it would matter is if you wanted to moralize about enslaving your computer or what it means to restart it.

	▲	omnicognate an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> if you wanted to moralize about enslaving your computer That is precisely the context of the debate. You seem to find it absurd, as do I, but the reason we're talking about whether LLMs are conscious in this thread has nothing to do with whether they are useful. It's because important people, such as Dario Amodei, are engaging in exactly the kind of moralising over "AI welfare" that you're scoffing at.