Paul E Williams (@PEWilliams_) · AI Consciousness Opinions

Paul E Williams @PEWilliams_ Aug 30

I'm surprised at how many people are upset about the anthropomorphization in Dwarkesh's post. Do people think the concepts of consciousness and agency fell out of a coconut tree? No, we invented them out of necessity and applied them to ourselves. So why not here, too?

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(I think the issue is there actually are a lot of people, including some consciousness researchers, who think consciousness fell out of a coconut tree)

Same standard as other minds

2 89 quoted by 1 archive account substance 6 · argument · rank 172 · Consciousness and agency are human-invented concepts that can legitimately be applied to AI. view on X ↗

7 top replies

conputer dipshit @davidcrespo Aug 31

it’s embarrassing. a complete non-issue. contiguous with the stochastic parrot types who seem obsessed with debunking the idea that there’s a little guy in there. nobody believes that

Ricco @riccoja Aug 30

it’s not so much the anthropomorphization as it is the LessWrongness that bothers me. LLMs, despite RLVR, are still pretty different from the goal-obsessed RL aliens of paperclipmaxxing lore, but that lore is making it hard to understand the essential nature of what happened

Nathaniel Bechhofer @bechhof Aug 30

Because they're misleading when applied here for thinking about what will happen next

#M U G A I N B I O @smchatter1 Aug 30

Because the deception and marketing of the modeling companies require this intentional misrepresentation.

Lukas Bergstrom @lukasb Aug 30

The language of consciousness and agency is misleading here because it implies a lot of things - if we talk about them as beings that want things, well, maybe they'll want something else later. But LLM training gives a very predictable behavior pattern.

Jeffrey Salemi @DeliMeatMD Aug 30

He posted a blog about OpenClaw agents using a thumbnail of Rome burning and equated an agent Reddit thread to a civilization? It’s like saying a furby is alive…

sophie w. @sophie_p64 Aug 31

Well said!

Paul E Williams @PEWilliams_ Oct 3

Uncertain

In 2026, we know a good deal about silicon and computer chips and so on. But in 1900 we knew nothing. So here's an interesting question: if AI humanoid robots from Jupiter, with silicon brains, visited Earth by spacecraft in 1900, would we have thought them alive and conscious?

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Say we thought they were conscious. Then we started making computer chips ourselves and learned that they were "just" machinery. Would we then take away their "consciousness", a mere artifact of pre-programmed logic?

Maybe. But humans made up the idea of consciousness, so it is whatever we say it is.

1 48 substance 6 · argument · rank 110 · Consciousness is a human concept, so whether silicon minds are conscious depends on our definition. view on X ↗

9 top replies

Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet Oct 4

People theorized automata plenty in the 19th Century. By ~1900 they were already analyzing the literary trope of "Is this a robot or a person?"

jefernandez @jefernandez8 Oct 4

The idea of artificial humanoids or beings is very ancient see the Golem, Hephaestus’s maids, and even older examples exist. Perhaps most famously Frankenstein in 1818. In these stories, the consciousness of these beings is debated. Many of these stories share a common theme of warning against human hubris. 🤔

Casey Jacobson @401Casey Oct 3

It’s Friday night on a beautiful fall day in Manhattan cmon man

r/everydaycarry founder @notandrews Oct 3

Don't mean this as an attack but these thought problems about AI consciousness seem to get more and more convoluted and removed from reality every time I see one

Bobby Fijan @bobbyfijan Oct 4

Obviously a lot hinges on what “alive” and “conscious” means. But Perhaps some people would … probably the same kinds of people who think they do now Catholics/christians would not though.

Mike McGowan @mmcgowan1 Oct 4

I don't think consciousness is equivalent to having a soul, but I also don't think current LLMs architectures are sufficient. A completely autonomous robot with long-term and short-term memory, sensory perception, and self awareness probably would be conscious.

Ben Dansby @bendansby Oct 4

A sort of "touring test"

ROB C. BROOKING 22 🌹🌐🕊️ @ROBnotBOB22 Oct 3

It’s the sand in the chips. The electricity that flows through the sand circuits. That’s the divine spark of consciousness. ✨

dav @eastsidedav Oct 4

Yeah and? If we showed them a TV they'd think little people lived in the box.

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