- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- fuck_ai@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- fuck_ai@lemmy.world
We are constantly fed a version of AI that looks, sounds and acts suspiciously like us. It speaks in polished sentences, mimics emotions, expresses curiosity, claims to feel compassion, even dabbles in what it calls creativity.
But what we call AI today is nothing more than a statistical machine: a digital parrot regurgitating patterns mined from oceans of human data (the situation hasn’t changed much since it was discussed here five years ago). When it writes an answer to a question, it literally just guesses which letter and word will come next in a sequence – based on the data it’s been trained on.
This means AI has no understanding. No consciousness. No knowledge in any real, human sense. Just pure probability-driven, engineered brilliance — nothing more, and nothing less.
So why is a real “thinking” AI likely impossible? Because it’s bodiless. It has no senses, no flesh, no nerves, no pain, no pleasure. It doesn’t hunger, desire or fear. And because there is no cognition — not a shred — there’s a fundamental gap between the data it consumes (data born out of human feelings and experience) and what it can do with them.
Philosopher David Chalmers calls the mysterious mechanism underlying the relationship between our physical body and consciousness the “hard problem of consciousness”. Eminent scientists have recently hypothesised that consciousness actually emerges from the integration of internal, mental states with sensory representations (such as changes in heart rate, sweating and much more).
Given the paramount importance of the human senses and emotion for consciousness to “happen”, there is a profound and probably irreconcilable disconnect between general AI, the machine, and consciousness, a human phenomenon.
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But I believe that if AIs are passing the Turing test, we need to update the test.
Uhh that’s kind of not how tests are supposed to work. If you want non-falsifiable conviction in human specialness, maybe try religion instead.
So why is a real “thinking” AI likely impossible? Because it’s bodiless.
Why would anything need a body to be intelligent? Just because we have bodies and whoever said that cannot imagine different forms of life/intelligence? Not that i think, current LLMs have the experience and creativity to be called intelligent. i just don’t think that everything that’s intelligent needs an arse :)
we need to stop calling it AI, first of all. it isn’t intelligent. these are large language models. adopt this phrase and refer to them as LLM bots or something. stop with this AI misnomer.
i nominate, as an alternative, Statistical Heuristic Imaginating Things.
We had AI before LLMs and that was even dumber. AI is fine as a name if people stop equating it with human intelligence.
Mass Effect really had the perfect name for LLM and alike: Virtual Intelligence
Wish it’d catch on more than AI
That AI isn’t conscious is accurate and a good point to make, but the article doesn’t really provide explanations about why beyond personal anecdotes. The few quotes and concepts are gestured to, rather than used to build an argument.
The comparison to greenhouse gas warnings came out of left field since they didn’t bring up any comparison to the two subjects.
It reads like they already expect their readers to agree with them and doesn’t provide any new information.
Any argument about AI and consciousness should point out the difference between “true” AI and the LLMs we’re calling AI, and how they work.
https://hackaday.com/2024/05/15/how-ai-large-language-models-work-explained-without-math/
Here’s more information on AI and consciousness:
What things are and what the masses choose to call them, and use them for, are usually two different things.
Asking the masses to understand a complex subject for themselves, and ascribe to it appropriate nomenclature, when all they actually want is something that echoes what they already think with more eloquence is folly.
Reference: social media - a method to collect personal data from the masses to use against them, which they willingly and greedily supply, without recompense.
AI is currently in developmental hell. There is no visible endpoint, its developers are being shortchanged, and a lawsuit(s) will neuter and decapitate its current primary use case which is a new form of piracy in disguise. Your mom.
