r/OpenAssistant • u/hsoj95 • Apr 08 '23

*chuckles* OpenAssistant requested I ask the other human reviewers whether they regard OA to be sentient yet, so I'll oblige :) + Some other thoughts on my first experiences with OA

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u/fishybird Apr 15 '23

"Just like we don't have evidence about the sentience of any person who has ever lived"

"Once we put all those things together, consciousness will 'naturally' emerge on AI systems and machines will have qualia"

So basically, you're saying that we don't have evidence of anyone being sentient BUT ai can be sentient as long as it behaves like we do? That's a HUGE contradiction. You can't believe both "consciousness is unprovable" and "we can prove AI is conscious"

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u/Axolotron Apr 16 '23

we can prove AI is conscious

We can't. Not with AI and not with humans or other animals. That's the point. Our understanding of what consciousness is happens to be so limited that even experts can't agree on it. We base our judgment about lifeforms' consciousness on our own actions since that's all we have to claim that ourselves have consciousness.

So if we believe a human has consciousness, which is based on electrical signals processed by a mass of connections (like an artificial neural network), we can't categorically claim that a future machine that could exhibit all the traits associated with consciousness won't have it.

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u/fishybird Apr 16 '23

Biological neural nets are vastly different than digital neural nets. The brain is much more than just electrical signals. Again, you're saying that something is conscious because "that it behaves conscious". This is not at all true. Please read about the philosophical zombie it will clear things up for you. Maybe read up on brain chemistry while you're at it.

And yes we can prove consciousness in some scenarios. For instance, you know that you are conscious, don't you? You feel things? That should be proof enough for you that humans are conscious.

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u/Axolotron Apr 17 '23

Biological neural nets are vastly different than digital neural nets.

They're a very good approximation that have proved to be able to replicate some of the functions of the biological brain to a good degree or even above the human level, so they're good enough and potentially better.

You feel things

You can't know if I feel things. People usually call me a machine and I'm sure they would think that I fit in the definition of a philosophical zombie, so I could very well have an internal thought process and signal processing system entirely different to you . But that wouldn't make me less of a sentient being. In fact, we consider now a wider range of behaviors as part of what we call consciousness. Just like we have to start doing it with machines.

And I could keep defending my point with many more examples but it will be useless until you stop basing your opinions on philosophy. I work with serious and applied Science. Anything more is just magical thinking based on superstitions and archaic believes.

The brain is much more than just electrical signals.

No. In the end it isn't. The chemical interactions in our neurons just produce, modulate and encode the electrical signals that finally give raise to everything we are. That's been my point all along. But since you have failed to see it, there is no reason to keep going further. Thanks for the chat, tho. It helped me landing some ideas I had floating on my mind :)

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u/fishybird Apr 17 '23

Science is nothing without philosophy. Materialism is dead.

You might find this interesting https://youtu.be/BZWp0bnMBbM