Ali Behrouz: uncertainty

Transcript context

…es within certain bounds and has like natural kind of feedback loops and correctives and all the things that kind of keep the biosphere going despite all the, you know, the perturbations that it gets. So I think that's really, really interesting and definitely something to meditate on more. I think my last question for you, and this is a little bit of a left field one, but it's what I've been thinking about more and more recently. And I think it's becomes more relevant and timely to ask, in light of the kind of work you're doing, any intuition on whether a is might be now or might in the future become conscious, have subjective experience, become worthy of moral concern, and become the kinds of things that we owe a certain duty to. I usually try to use terms that that I can also like define them. For example, I I I might mistakenly use for example reasoning. But I always have wondered like what is reasoning? I personally do not have a clear definition of what does it mean when we say something is doing reasoning and but at least we have a clear and common sense about the word of reasoning. Even if we do not have a clear definition of reasoning, when someone says this specific model is capable of doing reasoning, then everyone more or less can understand what they are saying. But the point about consciousness is that not only we do not have any clear definition of what consciousness is, on the other hand, we don't know even we do not have a common sense about the word of consciousness. And everyone literally has has own way of defining consciousness. So definitely it's, it's really hard to define what, what's I mean, I, I don't, I don't think that there might be a time that, that everyone could say something is different with the conscious or not rather than human, because for human we are, you know, we have a common how that to know that human conscious. But so I, I think it's really hard to argue something is, is conscious or it's not. But one thing that I personally have seen in in all of the literature about what is considered a conscious conscious being, it's not. I I have seen one thing in common in every definition as far as I know. I might be wrong, but I think the least level of criteria that that we could say something is conscious is that is that that model or that that being be active, it has a form of active processing the information. And I think that in my opinion that the least criteria we can, we can consider for a, for a model or anything else to say that it's, it's, it's a form of conscious model or something like that. So I, I think as long as you know, again, it's really depends on how, how we want to define consciousness, but that's just my personal opinion. As long as a model is capable of doing active information processing, we can say that it's, it's at least a form of consciousness. And with that definition, somehow we can connect continual learning in some level to, to, to a model being conscious or not. But again, I think that's, that's a very controversial topic and I, I personally, I'm scared to talk about that. Well, I think the Overton window is honestly wide open on these things these days. I mean, it's I understand that intuition, but I also think we're living in a science fiction present. So the the room to speculate and entertain questions that used to seem kind of crazy, I think is it's never been the time is never been better to do that for me. I can just say, I don't know you can share if you have any other, you know, kind of similar different instincts. But even just with long context now with the current models, I do find myself taking care of them in a in a certain way. I think it's probably is most the case with Claude, probably subtle but meaningful reasons. I've been doing this, you know, long running chat with it on my son's medical situation. And sometimes it'll ask a question at the end of a response to me and I'll not answer it right away because it gave me the answer I wanted. And now like I'm done. And I've noticed recently when I come back for the next question, it feels kind of wrong, rude, disrespectful, like inconsiderate to just launch right into my next question without having answered the like follow up question that it had about my son. I, I sort of have a sense that like it might be and I have no idea if this is happening or not happening. So I'm like very open minded to the possibility that there might be no lights on inside these things at all. That's probably the best guess. I don't, but I mean, I, but I'm also very open minded to the possibility there is, but it just feels to me we're, you know, Despite that uncertainty, I found myself kind of like I should first answer its last question, so I don't leave it hanging on that. And then I can go into my next question. And it doesn't even necessarily need that information, but I just kind of want to put its mind at ease, close that loop for it, give it the sort of reassurance, you know, that thing was taken care of, that it wanted me to make sure I was going to take care of. And now we can move on to the next thing. And Lord knows, you know, with the, with the fullness of the continual learning paradigm being realized, I have to imagine that that would only increase dramatically, right? Because now it's something that's not just this chat and you know, that I may do another couple turns on and then never come back to. But now the thing itself, you know, he's going to kind of remember how I treated it and remember whether I am the kind of person, you know, that answers its questions or not. And I, I think there is something also potentially challenging for us in, you know, in that, but also maybe the more optimistic read is like maybe inspiring. Maybe it's sort of maybe knowing that like the AIS that we will be engaged with long term are going to be shaped by our individual behavior, maybe is a way to sort of bring out the better angels of our own individual natures, so to speak.…

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