Evidence receipt / belief
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27 Dec 2025 The Cognitive Revolution Controlling Tools or Aligning Creatures? Emmett Shear (Softmax) & Séb Krier (GDM), from a16z Show
“I mean, I'm not a substrate childrenist, I guess, if that's the, but But I think you need more than just it acts exactly as behaviourally indistinguishable.”
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- belief
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- 27 Dec 2025
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- The Cognitive Revolution
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…t a car, but you care about them as a being whose whose experience matters in itself, not merely as a means, but as an ends. Well, because I believe they have experiences, right? And, by definition... What would it take? I'm asking you the very direct question. What would it take for you to believe that of a some an AI running on silicon? instead of it being biological. So the difference is it's behaviors are roughly similar, but the difference is it's a substrate. What would it take for you to give it that same, to extend that same inference to it that you do to all these other people in your life that you love? Can I ask what your answer is? I'm taking steps to not answer as a sort of it's unlikely that he would grant it. Or I'll just for myself, it seems hard for me to imagine giving the same level or similar level of personhood. In the same way, I don't give it to animals either. And if you were to ask, what would need to be true for animals, I probably couldn't get there either. What would it take for you? Wait, you couldn't? I can't imagine for an animal so easy. This chimp comes up to me and he's like, man, I'm so hungry and like, you guys have been so mean to me and I'm so glad I figured out how to talk. Like, can we go chat about like the rainforest? I'd be like, **** you're definitely a person now. for sure. I mean, I first want to make sure I wasn't hallucinating, but I can, it's easy for you to imagine an animal. Come on, it's really easy. It's like trivial. I'm not saying that you would get the observation. I'm just saying like, it's trivial for me to imagine an animal that I would extend personhood to under a set of observations. So like, really? Like, I didn't factor that. I didn't take that imagination, you know, imagining a chimp talking. Yeah, that's a bit closer to it. What's your answer to the question that you bring up about the AI? I guess at a metaphysical level, I would say, if there is a belief you hold where there is no observation that could change your mind, you don't have a belief, you have an article of faith. You have an assertion. Because real beliefs are inferences from reality and you can never be 100% confident about anything. And so there should always be if you have a belief, something, however unlikely, that would change your mind. Yeah, I'm open to it. I mean, just to be clear. Yeah, no, I was just saying, I'm open to it. Yeah, he just hasn't gone to it. u have a belief, something, however unlikely, that would change your mind. Yeah, I'm open to it. I mean, just to be clear. Yeah, no, I was just saying, I'm open to it. Yeah, he just hasn't gone to it. Yeah, I'm curious, like, so my answer is, basically, if under If it's surface level behaviors looked like a human, and then if after I probed it, it continued to act like a human, and then I continued to interact with it over a long period of time, and it continued to act like a human in all ways that I understand as being meaningful to me interacting with a human. Like I interact because there's a whole set of people I'm really close to who I've only ever interacted to over text. Yet I infer the person behind that is a real thing. If it could, if I felt care for it, I would infer eventually that I was right. And then someone else might demonstrate to me that you've been tricked by this algorithm and actually look how obvious it's like not actually a thing. And I'd be like, oh **** I was wrong. And then I would not care about it. Like I would, but I would, you know, the preponderance of the evidence. I don't know what else you could possibly do, right? Like I infer other people are matter because I interact with them enough that they seem to have rich inner worlds to me after I interact with them a punch. That's why I think the other people are important. I suppose it doesn't give me a very key test as to whether or not, if you start by, if I care for it, then I'm always a little circular, right? Like, and the other thing is, if you were to see, I guess, like a simulated video game and the character is extremely, in many many ways, human-like, right? It's not a neural network behind it, it's like whatever you're using for video games. Like, I guess what distinguishes that? I've never, I've never been, I've never had trouble distinguishing, I've never had a deep, caring relationship with a video game character that didn't ever person. Right, I don't know, that doesn't happen, that doesn't, empirically, you seem wrong. I don't have any trouble distinguishing between things that like Eliza, the fake chatbot thing, and a real intelligence. You interact with it long enough, it's pretty obvious it's not a person. It doesn't take long. Sure, but like if it's really, really good, you don't need, if you can't actually tell the difference, that's when you say you switch. Yeah, yes, if you, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck and ***** like a duck, and like eventually it's a duck, right? If everything is duck-like, then sure. If it's hungry as well, like a duck is, because it has these kind of physical components. Yeah, sure. At some point, yeah. I agree. So, right, so do you think that, so there's this question, right? Is the reason I care about other people that they're made out of carbon? Is that the? I don't think so. No, me neither. I mean, I'm not a substrate childrenist, I guess, if that's the, but But I think you need more than just it acts exactly as behaviourally indistinguishable. Like it's not a sufficient bar. Wait, how would you, what else can you know about something apart from its behaviours? think you need more than just it acts exactly as behaviourally indistinguishable. Like it's not a sufficient bar. Wait, how would you, what else can you know about something apart from its behaviours? I mean, a lot, like the, again, if you, how would you? No, I'm sorry. I mean, can you name it? I'm not a behaviour. Yeah, I think there's like far more kind of, experimental evidence you can have with kind of, no. Just any object and a thing I could know about it that is not from its behavior. I'm not, yeah, I'm not sure I get the question, I suppose, but equally. It's not like it's a dumb, straightforward question, but like I'm claiming you only know things because they have behaviors that you observe, and you're saying no, you can know something about something without without Observing its behaviors. No, OK, great. Tell me about this. Tell me about this thing and this behavior and this thing I can know about it that is not due to its behaviors. I guess I'm saying there's different levels of observation. And just simply a duck, you know, something quacking like a duck or something does not guarantee that it's actually a duck. Like I would have to like also cut it and reel it and see if there's, you know, if it's duck-like on the inside. So just the outside is sufficient. I guess, I totally, one of its behaviors is like the way that the, floats move around in the map moles, right? one of the things I would want to go look for, which you could totally do, is I want to go look in the manifold of its, the belief manifold, and I want to go see if that belief manifolds encodes a sub-manifold that is self-referential and a sub-sub-manifold that is the dynamics of the self-referential manifold, which is mind. And I would want to know, does this seem well-described internally as that kind of a system, or does it look like a big lookup table? That would matter to me. That's part of its behaviors that I would care about. I would also care about how it acts. And you know, and you wait all the evidence together, and then you try to guess, does this thing look like it's a thing that has feelings and, goals and cares about stuff in net on balance or not. Like, but I can't imagine like, which I think you could do for an, I think we do for the AIs. I think we're always doing that, right? And so I'm trying to figure out like, beyond that, what else is there? That just seems like the thing. Yeah, it seems like you guys are using behavior in slightly different sense and Emmett is using behavior also in the context of what it's made of the inside. No, behavior is what I can observe of it. I don't actually know what it's made of. I can only, I can cut your brain open, I can see you, I can observe you neuroning and glistening. Your neurons glistening, but I don't actually ever, you can't get inside of it, right? That's the subjective, that's the, that's the part, it's not the surfaces. Before the reason I brought this up is because you were basically about to make this argument of, hey, you see it as a tool, not necessarily as a being. Can you kind of finish with the point? Do you remember the point you were making?…
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