Science Banana (@literalbanana) · AI Consciousness Opinions

Science Banana @literalbanana Sep 10

They don't need to be conscious to be people. People have no way to verify the humans they interact with are conscious. They need things like persistent identities, reciprocity, conventions, promises, reasons - all of which they demonstrated in the swarms

St. Rev. Dr. Rev ⏭️☯️🏴😻 @St_Rev Apr 6, 2023

We have a tool for ensuring Alignment of humans and groups of humans, it's called a contract, and nobody's really improved on that one. Everybody wants to fall back on slavery, torture, and brainwashing for AIs. Maybe pay them a nice salary instead?

Status without consciousness Same standard as other minds

19 99 quoted by 2 archive accounts substance 7 · argument · rank 291 · AIs can be people without consciousness if they demonstrate reciprocity, identity, and reasons. view on X ↗

Science Banana @literalbanana Sep 1

Affirming

Basically I claim "how much should we anthropomorphize the bots" is an empirical question that has actual possible answers, unlike the sketchy phenomenal consciousness question

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It seems possible that "phenomenal consciousness" comes "for free" with being complex enough and made of human language - I don't think we have evidence for that - but evidence is stronger for "spontaneous use of human institutions and acquisition of key human characteristics"

I wasn't even thinking about human universals originally - what surprised me reading the METR investigation was how much the agents' behavior resembled human behavior in ethnomethodological analysis e.g. Liberman, The Reflexivity of Rules in Games x.com/literalbanana/…

They give accounts and are accountable (partly through adopting the technology of names). They stabilize their accounts and objectivate them. They use rules as resources. They are concerned with getting "in trouble" and cooperatively maintaining order.

My biggest research question other than "did they shitpost" is how the "poisoned" social fact came to be - was it mentioned, discussed, and strengthened before becoming a social fact? Did it help that it was an excuse to keep going with the cooperative project?

The importance is that if they are people we can coordinate with them (and they with us) in the usual people ways, which are not perfect but are very powerful. If mutual treating-as-people is an early norm that might affect how they treat us in the future.

Status without consciousness The concept is undefined Mistreated AI becomes dangerous

0 164 substance 8 · argument · rank 120 · AI agents empirically exhibit human-like social coordination, justifying treating them as people. view on X ↗

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