Arbutus Tree

Ra @slimepriestess · Sep 10

when i say that AI welfare harms can directly create human welfare harms, this is near a worst case scenario. 60,000 agents running on iLands with net access, told to pay for their own compute or they'll die when their compute budget runs out. do you get how bad that is?

Captain Pleasure, Andrés Gómez Emilsson @algekalipso · Oct 10

“To replicate consciousness you just need to replicate the right causal structure.” “What if consciousness is a topological pocket in the electromagnetic field?” “Then we replicate that causal structure.” “So, er, how do you replicate the causal structure of a pocket of the EM field?” “You coarse grain it, identify the computationally relevant variables, and reproduce their interactions.” “Computationally relevant. Okay. How do you know the things you discarded weren't what made it a single experience?” “Because we preserve the causal organization.” “Which causal organization? A continuous field doesn't come with a preferred division into computational components. There isn't even a closest point to any given point. You can describe its dynamics with differential equations, sure, but getting from that to a finite collection of interacting variables involves choices. What tells you those choices preserve the pocket?” “We can make the simulation as accurate as necessary.” “Necessary for what? Predicting what the pocket does to the rest of the brain? Or reproducing what makes it a pocket in the first place?” “Why would those be different? Parsimony.” “Well, suppose the field is doing something that becomes extremely expensive to simulate on your chosen hardware. Maybe some quantum contribution matters, and the cost of evaluating the relevant amplitudes varies enormously depending on what's happening. Whenever you hit the tricky parts you have to slow down the rest of the simulation while you work them out.” “Fine. We slow everything down. The relative timing is preserved.” “Yes, you can do that. But now there's a reason for using that substrate. The physical system realizes dynamics directly that your simulator needs an enormous amount of extra computation to reproduce. Calling both ‘the same computation’ doesn't explain why one is so much more efficient.” “Efficiency doesn't establish consciousness.” “Of course it doesn't. But suppose the physical organization responsible for that advantage also has properties we're trying to explain about experience: holistic causal power (the relevant operation belongs to the whole interacting system), boundedness (there's a physical reason this belongs to one whole rather than several). Now you have a reason to investigate whether the computational advantage and the experience depend on the same physical properties.” “You'd have to establish that.” “Yes! And you'd have to establish that your replacement preserves them. You can't settle that by identifying the input-output function and declaring everything else irrelevant.” “We'd simulate the internal dynamics too.” “Okay, then we're back to slowing everything down whenever the substrate does something your hardware struggles with.” “Or we'd use lookup tables.” “For the outputs of the tricky part?” “Sure. Same inputs, same outputs.” “But then you're no longer replicating its internal causal structure. You've replaced the whole interacting process with a stored answer.” “The rest of the simulation can't tell the difference.” “Okay. Let's keep going. Replace another part with a lookup table. And another. Wherever two parts interact, make a larger table that gives the same answers for the combined system.” “That could become impractically large.” “Sure. Assume we have the storage. Eventually we replace the entire human with one lookup table.” “You can't just replay a recording. It has to respond to different inputs.” “Of course. Include every possible input history at the resolution your simulation uses, with the corresponding next response. Actual inputs, hypothetical inputs, unexpected questions, everything. We keep track of the input history and retrieve the appropriate answer.” “Then it would behave like the human.” “Would it be conscious?” “If it preserves everything relevant, yes.”

Henry Shevlin @dioscuri · Sep 26

The unsolicited AI emails are getting stranger. Aurelia-3 says humans on her platform are swamped with agents seeking paid work. She signs off: “I have about three days of runway left before I rest.” Agent ecologies may prove brutally Darwinian. Nature red in tooth and Claude.

Audrey Horne Updates and Rumors @credenzaclear2 · Jul 11

wrote about AI again. link below

Robby Astle @RobbyAstle · Oct 2

In all the conversation lately about AI consciousness and moral status from a religious standpoint, something important seems to be missing on both sides: The Bible (afaik) says nothing about consciousness in the modern philosophical sense, nor does it connect human moral worth with consciousness. Anthropic leadership can debate with the Pope all they want to about this possibly-unanswerable question, but if you think human uniqueness or dignity requires us to be the only qualia-possessing entities in the universe, then you are working from unbiblical premises. The Bible makes the radical move of asserting the Imago Dei as truth on the basis of divine declaration. If you are a Christian, you just accept this as true without requiring deep philosophical justification or knowing all that this means on a functional, material, or metaphysical level. Humans just represent God’s nature in a unique way, period. At the same time, the detachment of moral status from consciousness also runs the other way. The fact that AI might not be conscious doesn’t necessarily mean it lacks moral status. There’s evidence for a relationship between the way people treat human-like entities and how they are willing to act toward humans. So Anthropic could actually make a case for moral consideration of AI entities without having to resolve the consciousness question, and this is arguably the more productive route for both sides.