I donāt know how there arenāt a myriad of problems associated with attempting to emulate the brain, especially with the end goal of destroying livelihoods and replacing one indentured servant for another. In fact, thatās what promoted this post- an advertisement for a talk with my alma materās philosophy department asking what happens when see LLMs discover phenomenological awareness.
I admit that I donāt have a ton of formal experience with philosophy, but I took one course in college that will forever be etched into my brain. Essentially, my professor explained to us the concept of a neural network and how with more computing power, researchers hope to emulate the brain and establish a consciousness baseline with which to compare a humanās subjective experience.
This didnāt use to be the case, but in a particular sector, most peopleās jobs are just showing up a work, getting on a computer, and having whatever (completely unregulated and resource devouring) LLM give them answer they can find themselves, quicker. And shit like neuralink exists and I think the next step will to be to offer that with a chatgpt integration or some dystopian shit.
Call me crazy, but I donāt think humans are as special as we think we are and our pure arrogance wouldnāt stop us from creating another self and causing that self to suffer. Hell, we collectively decided to slaughter en masse another collective group with feeling (animals) to appease our tastebuds, a lot of us are thoroughly entrenched into our digital boxes because opting out will result in a loss of items we take for granted, and any discussions on these topics are taboo.
Data-obsessed weirdos are a genuine threat to humanity, consciousness-emulation never should have been a conversation piece in the first place without first understanding its downstream implications. Feeling like a certified Luddite these days
i think the through line from āsufficiently advanced computer + softwareā to āconscious brain akin to a human oneā is basically made up nonsense conceived by SF writers and propagated as being actually real by tech bros. i donāt think itās something worth taking seriously at all
Human consciousness is an emergent property of neurons firing in our brain. Unless you attribute consciousness to some external mystical force, replicating it should theoretically be possible. Iām not saying LLMs are the path to get there or that we are anywhere close to it, but it seems inevitable that it is eventually achieved.
All the math done to estimate the computation required shows absurd numbers required at minimum
Capitalists will never try to truly emulate a human brain because itās infinitely cheaper to just hire/breed/enslave real ones to do whatever you need
Nature fit it into a space the size of a human head with a bunch of redundancy through an unconscious process of trial and error.
i personally do believe in the human soul and donāt think rationalist vulgar materialism can fully explain consciousness so yeah, I guess we may just fundamentally disagree there. it doesnāt even have to be something āmysticalā though, could just be something totally unknown to science that can never be replicated in silicon. even if you still think itās possible, itās plain that the current extinction event and the technological setbacks/energy crises it will bring is going to prevent much progress being made towards the currently science fiction-level technology and energy required to get even close. far from āinevitableā in my view and ultimately, a total waste of time and resources. may as well say Dyson spheres another thing made up by SF writers are inevitable. energy crises, tech setbacks and population destruction will always get in the way. itās utopian to a cartoonish extent, like hundreds or thousands of years of end stage communism would be needed for this kind of stuff to even begin being feasible. and if we had that then I would hope creating AI slaves wouldnāt be very high on the agenda. thatās why I think taking it seriously is a waste of time.
No disagreement from me on this point. And by no means did I mean its inevitability will happen in our lifetime or even centuries from now. Just that it is theoretically possible and there is no physical limitation that forbids it, unlike say, faster than light space travel. But since you believe in human souls Iām curious- would you ever concede that a sufficiently advanced machine could be conscious or dismiss it as a trickery of code? Does consciousness only arise when a soul is assigned to an organism with 46 chromosomes?
Iām not really interested in any kind of debate about this sorry. youāre not being rude or anything I just find the idea tedious, as I said itās clear we just disagree on a basic thing here and Iām fine with keeping it that way
Any thoughts on brain organoid computers related to this?
The problem isnāt that itās not real; itās that men with vast fortunes are trying to chase that fictional dragon in the name of profits and theyāre selling out the entire species in several critical ways as we teeter on the precipice of an existential crossroads.
And itās literally for fucking nothing.
Yeah sorry I mightāve jumped the gun there, but Iām legitimately starting to contemplate peacing out of corporate America in general because all they can talk about is āusing AI to increase productivityā (read as replace workers) and havenāt been able to escape the talk of whatever a human can do can be done by a computer (in the context of replicating monotonous computer-touching tasks).
I guess the whole sentience vs non is a completely separate one entirely (and a moot one by the sound of it), but that has not stopped the powers that be from dumping as much money possible into these treat printers.
And after all, this isnāt the first time I havenāt been able to outrun the propaganda. I guess itās just becoming increasingly more difficult to sift through the bullshit and thatās another reason why I think the question of consciousness wonāt matter in the short term. But we do know that consciousness is just the result of activity in the brain (and we can prove this with MRIs on stroke victims and such).