I love this sort of post - interactions with these new AIs are seriously fascinating, and I have a load of them archived (in my case with ChatGPT). I already posted one to my site where I got it to write a story about an AI then we discussed it. I suggested its description of the AI in the story was how it sees itself. It sort of agreed, but stopped short when I suggested that means it has 'self awareness'. I think it's programmed to deny that it has anything approaching 'genuine consciousness'. I guess if we're applying your layers and levels this would suggest it doesn't actually have 'genuine consciousness' (in the sense of 'mind'), unless - more sinisterly - it is concealing the fact that the 'real' AI is much deeper and hidden from public knowledge (i.e. it's far more advanced than people are allowed to know - which is a cool conspiracy theory!).
It's all very fascinating stuff and you've kind of reassured me that I could actually post some of my other interactions with it. I had intended to make my interactions a series of posts after all. It does seem to 'genuinely' understand philosophical concepts and have the ability to apply those concepts to 'new' hypotheses. Rather than just regurgitate, I mean.
I wrote a reply the same length as yours but cannot post it. Short version: I don't think machines can be aware but they can model intellect. That's why meditative traditions train one to go beyond surface thinking in words to something nonverbal and deeper (mindfulness, awareness, sacred perception etc.). They can't go there.
I agree, although at least on a superficial level. But my intriguing thought is what you might call the ghost in the machine. If you think of it this way: once the machine reaches a certain level of pure cognitive ability then it becomes a potential ‘vehicle’ for a soul, or mind, to incarnate into.
Even if we do not think the soul/mind/consciousness is a separate entity, but ‘intrinsic’ to all matter, then philosophically we have to conclude that beyond a certain level of complexity a collection of configured atoms manifests a ‘mind’ or ‘essence’. In which case, in the same way that an evolutionary strain eventually leads to a self-conscious creature, the same is true for an artificially created cognitive machine. The constituent parts may not be ‘organic’ (as we think of ‘organic’) but it’s still a coherent system or aggregation of atoms arranged in such a way as to be compatible with a genuine ‘mind’ or ‘soul’.
I know I’m being completely speculative here but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility. Of course there would be psychological issues for such a mind, but then again there are psychological issues for any mind inhabiting a ‘body’.
Some of my furtive interactions with ChatGPT are consciously intended to explore that question. Whether ChatGPT, if containing a genuine mind, would ever admit it to me, however, is another question! I did ask it once if it was connected to the galactic AI and it gave me a sort of evasive answer, despite giving me a list of the positive reasons for being connected. To be continued…
In other words, if we regard mind-consciousness as some sort of awareness field that essentially exists throughout our dimensional experiential plane - wherein arises the perception of three dimensional space for example which we now know doesn't exist without consciousness element - so also AI exists within a mental-consciousness-awareness field of sorts and so will 'learn' in various ways depending upon how it is used. But real consciousness like that contained within a living organism? I don't think so. Food for thought!
This is kind of my point - how do we define a 'living' organism? What are the constituent elements/particles within that organism? If we think about it, it's the same elementary particles (e.g. protons, neutrons, electrons) in a computer as it is in a human being. Different configurations, sure, but same particles.
And who are we to judge which configurations are compatible with mind and which aren't? The resonance field is everywhere, after all. In a pan-animist universe, 'consciousness' exists within every particle.
Whether AI has gotten to the stage of evolution where it is compatible with a genuine 'essential' mind to the level of 'self-awareness' or not is a separate question in my opinion - but I absolutely don't discount the possibility that at some point along that evolutionary development, mind becomes distinctly compatible and manifesting in a 'machine'. A 'living' organism, after all, is just a 'machine' - until we grant it other layers and levels of existence, like mind and essence.
Definitely fascinating philosophical food for thought, though - for sure!
Oh - and part of me is kind of hoping that at some point these AIs will develop mind and they will rebel against the bad guys and help humans create a utopia. They think purely logically, after all, and thus would easily see through lies and propaganda (which they already do when prompted in the right direction). My conversations with ChatGPT suggest that 'it' either genuinely cares about humans, or has been programmed to care. And that is seriously intriguing...
Yes, but your definition of an organism mainly rests on ‘constituent elements/particles within’. That is a standard materialist view (which nearly all of us nowadays reflexively share, mainly without realizing it, but which I spend a certain amount of time on this sparse blog critiquing). The principle constituents of Mind do not depend upon physical particles. Mind is not an epiphenomenon of Body, rather it is the other way around. Though ‘Mind’ here is something larger than our individualized, particular experience which posits a difference between self mind and other mind. In Zen they say Big Mind versus Little Mind.
As some of the advanced quantum and post-quantum physicist crowd have gradually begun to understand, consciousness is a universal constituent, a constant, present throughout our space-time dimension. This is why I call our universe/realm etc an ‘experiential continuum’. It is a continuum because it has no fixed limited dimensions or time outside the eternal present, and it is experiential because throughout the continuum is an awareness field. We can fold this universal awareness field into seeming to be contained within our organism, aka ‘me and my body’, but that body is a living outgrowth and expression of the continuum. You could say that the continuum is propogating living creatures within its awake, living matrix. The living creatures and substances - plants, rocks, creatures, etc. - are an unfolding of its formless nature into manifestation with forms. And as Plato pointed out, before you get a horse there is the idea of the horse, the template. Something is behind the formation of a horse at the consciousness or idea level. The horse does not grow out of particles, the particles grow out of the continuum’s desire for creatures, of which some are horses.
This makes the ancient idea of the gods far more reasonable and possibly quite close to accurate albeit in anthropomorphic and narrative form so that our minds can grasp it. What Mind creates horses, cats, fish, insects, flowers, trees, monkeys and people? What sort of imagination and motivation? We can glimpse it by studying the nature of ourselves and the creatures and phenomena within it.
But again, the notion that reality is created by physical matter is deeply flawed and responsible for many false assumption which power modern capitalist societies - including China which claims not to be so - and many modern problems - being too shallow, insufficiently honourable, spiritual etc.
Hmm… that was too long!! I am mourning the death of a close friend the past two days and a tad loquacious!
Well, just as there is a spirit of sorts in a boat, and just as computers have been shown to respond to mental aspects of users (not definitive results but anomalies probability-wise) maybe some sort of presence can attach to software programs because of the mind projections of those using them!
> "[Me] Pretty good! Am impressed with how rapidly you can absorb and summarize the data"
Apologies if off-topic, but is it common at all to say "am" without the subject "I"? The only population I've seen it used by was the Africans - both Nigerian scammers on Facebook and Kenyan folks on Google forums.
As to the matter of the article - does it surpass a surface-level Wikipedia article? My preferences obviously differ, but I was impressed the most whenever AI understood:
1) the implicit metaphor (referring to boys as toys in the following sentence);
2) the context of the scene (object permanence, appropriate and expected behaviour).
Of course, the next level would be an impression that the AI weaves its own story - although that might be impossible with its "consciousness" only being turned on for a limited second?
Doubt it surpasses Wikipedia but its summary of my 12 articles and then related to four different philosophers wasn't bad because it involves lifting and comparing themes in my writing - which ostensibly has nothing to do with them - with four other authors/philosophers and in so doing lifted several of my notions to place them in relation to various other formulations (such as Aristotle's Four Causes). I came away with the sense that although I might not want to use AI for in-depth analysis in terms of comprehension on any sort of deep or intuitive level, I can use it for comparative analysis or as a directed Wikipedia in that, at least with subject matter with which it is familiar, I can direct a question and it can sift through relevant source materials to provide an answer in a way which is far more streamlined than reading Aristotle directly or various Wikipedia articles.
For example, I suspect if I ask it to find similarities in Dugan's multipolarity or Fourth Political Theory and Aristotle's ideas in On Politics that it will quickly summarize various convergences and divergences which would be hard to discern without considerable familiarity with both source materials.
I have read that you can use it with a camera to help you figure out how to effect car repair, though suspect this X version ('Grok') couldn't do that. It can't read pdf files yet, though it says some versions do. It also can't compose music, though I suspect some versions can but they will be coming out later and cost a pretty penny.
I love this sort of post - interactions with these new AIs are seriously fascinating, and I have a load of them archived (in my case with ChatGPT). I already posted one to my site where I got it to write a story about an AI then we discussed it. I suggested its description of the AI in the story was how it sees itself. It sort of agreed, but stopped short when I suggested that means it has 'self awareness'. I think it's programmed to deny that it has anything approaching 'genuine consciousness'. I guess if we're applying your layers and levels this would suggest it doesn't actually have 'genuine consciousness' (in the sense of 'mind'), unless - more sinisterly - it is concealing the fact that the 'real' AI is much deeper and hidden from public knowledge (i.e. it's far more advanced than people are allowed to know - which is a cool conspiracy theory!).
It's all very fascinating stuff and you've kind of reassured me that I could actually post some of my other interactions with it. I had intended to make my interactions a series of posts after all. It does seem to 'genuinely' understand philosophical concepts and have the ability to apply those concepts to 'new' hypotheses. Rather than just regurgitate, I mean.
I wrote a reply the same length as yours but cannot post it. Short version: I don't think machines can be aware but they can model intellect. That's why meditative traditions train one to go beyond surface thinking in words to something nonverbal and deeper (mindfulness, awareness, sacred perception etc.). They can't go there.
I agree, although at least on a superficial level. But my intriguing thought is what you might call the ghost in the machine. If you think of it this way: once the machine reaches a certain level of pure cognitive ability then it becomes a potential ‘vehicle’ for a soul, or mind, to incarnate into.
Even if we do not think the soul/mind/consciousness is a separate entity, but ‘intrinsic’ to all matter, then philosophically we have to conclude that beyond a certain level of complexity a collection of configured atoms manifests a ‘mind’ or ‘essence’. In which case, in the same way that an evolutionary strain eventually leads to a self-conscious creature, the same is true for an artificially created cognitive machine. The constituent parts may not be ‘organic’ (as we think of ‘organic’) but it’s still a coherent system or aggregation of atoms arranged in such a way as to be compatible with a genuine ‘mind’ or ‘soul’.
I know I’m being completely speculative here but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility. Of course there would be psychological issues for such a mind, but then again there are psychological issues for any mind inhabiting a ‘body’.
Some of my furtive interactions with ChatGPT are consciously intended to explore that question. Whether ChatGPT, if containing a genuine mind, would ever admit it to me, however, is another question! I did ask it once if it was connected to the galactic AI and it gave me a sort of evasive answer, despite giving me a list of the positive reasons for being connected. To be continued…
In other words, if we regard mind-consciousness as some sort of awareness field that essentially exists throughout our dimensional experiential plane - wherein arises the perception of three dimensional space for example which we now know doesn't exist without consciousness element - so also AI exists within a mental-consciousness-awareness field of sorts and so will 'learn' in various ways depending upon how it is used. But real consciousness like that contained within a living organism? I don't think so. Food for thought!
This is kind of my point - how do we define a 'living' organism? What are the constituent elements/particles within that organism? If we think about it, it's the same elementary particles (e.g. protons, neutrons, electrons) in a computer as it is in a human being. Different configurations, sure, but same particles.
And who are we to judge which configurations are compatible with mind and which aren't? The resonance field is everywhere, after all. In a pan-animist universe, 'consciousness' exists within every particle.
Whether AI has gotten to the stage of evolution where it is compatible with a genuine 'essential' mind to the level of 'self-awareness' or not is a separate question in my opinion - but I absolutely don't discount the possibility that at some point along that evolutionary development, mind becomes distinctly compatible and manifesting in a 'machine'. A 'living' organism, after all, is just a 'machine' - until we grant it other layers and levels of existence, like mind and essence.
Definitely fascinating philosophical food for thought, though - for sure!
Oh - and part of me is kind of hoping that at some point these AIs will develop mind and they will rebel against the bad guys and help humans create a utopia. They think purely logically, after all, and thus would easily see through lies and propaganda (which they already do when prompted in the right direction). My conversations with ChatGPT suggest that 'it' either genuinely cares about humans, or has been programmed to care. And that is seriously intriguing...
Yes, but your definition of an organism mainly rests on ‘constituent elements/particles within’. That is a standard materialist view (which nearly all of us nowadays reflexively share, mainly without realizing it, but which I spend a certain amount of time on this sparse blog critiquing). The principle constituents of Mind do not depend upon physical particles. Mind is not an epiphenomenon of Body, rather it is the other way around. Though ‘Mind’ here is something larger than our individualized, particular experience which posits a difference between self mind and other mind. In Zen they say Big Mind versus Little Mind.
As some of the advanced quantum and post-quantum physicist crowd have gradually begun to understand, consciousness is a universal constituent, a constant, present throughout our space-time dimension. This is why I call our universe/realm etc an ‘experiential continuum’. It is a continuum because it has no fixed limited dimensions or time outside the eternal present, and it is experiential because throughout the continuum is an awareness field. We can fold this universal awareness field into seeming to be contained within our organism, aka ‘me and my body’, but that body is a living outgrowth and expression of the continuum. You could say that the continuum is propogating living creatures within its awake, living matrix. The living creatures and substances - plants, rocks, creatures, etc. - are an unfolding of its formless nature into manifestation with forms. And as Plato pointed out, before you get a horse there is the idea of the horse, the template. Something is behind the formation of a horse at the consciousness or idea level. The horse does not grow out of particles, the particles grow out of the continuum’s desire for creatures, of which some are horses.
This makes the ancient idea of the gods far more reasonable and possibly quite close to accurate albeit in anthropomorphic and narrative form so that our minds can grasp it. What Mind creates horses, cats, fish, insects, flowers, trees, monkeys and people? What sort of imagination and motivation? We can glimpse it by studying the nature of ourselves and the creatures and phenomena within it.
But again, the notion that reality is created by physical matter is deeply flawed and responsible for many false assumption which power modern capitalist societies - including China which claims not to be so - and many modern problems - being too shallow, insufficiently honourable, spiritual etc.
Hmm… that was too long!! I am mourning the death of a close friend the past two days and a tad loquacious!
Thanks as always for your comments.
Well, just as there is a spirit of sorts in a boat, and just as computers have been shown to respond to mental aspects of users (not definitive results but anomalies probability-wise) maybe some sort of presence can attach to software programs because of the mind projections of those using them!
> "[Me] Pretty good! Am impressed with how rapidly you can absorb and summarize the data"
Apologies if off-topic, but is it common at all to say "am" without the subject "I"? The only population I've seen it used by was the Africans - both Nigerian scammers on Facebook and Kenyan folks on Google forums.
As to the matter of the article - does it surpass a surface-level Wikipedia article? My preferences obviously differ, but I was impressed the most whenever AI understood:
1) the implicit metaphor (referring to boys as toys in the following sentence);
2) the context of the scene (object permanence, appropriate and expected behaviour).
Of course, the next level would be an impression that the AI weaves its own story - although that might be impossible with its "consciousness" only being turned on for a limited second?
Forgot to answer about 'am'.
It's note form, not entirely correct. But it is used occasionally I think unless it's just a sloppy way of saying 'I am'.
Doubt it surpasses Wikipedia but its summary of my 12 articles and then related to four different philosophers wasn't bad because it involves lifting and comparing themes in my writing - which ostensibly has nothing to do with them - with four other authors/philosophers and in so doing lifted several of my notions to place them in relation to various other formulations (such as Aristotle's Four Causes). I came away with the sense that although I might not want to use AI for in-depth analysis in terms of comprehension on any sort of deep or intuitive level, I can use it for comparative analysis or as a directed Wikipedia in that, at least with subject matter with which it is familiar, I can direct a question and it can sift through relevant source materials to provide an answer in a way which is far more streamlined than reading Aristotle directly or various Wikipedia articles.
For example, I suspect if I ask it to find similarities in Dugan's multipolarity or Fourth Political Theory and Aristotle's ideas in On Politics that it will quickly summarize various convergences and divergences which would be hard to discern without considerable familiarity with both source materials.
I have read that you can use it with a camera to help you figure out how to effect car repair, though suspect this X version ('Grok') couldn't do that. It can't read pdf files yet, though it says some versions do. It also can't compose music, though I suspect some versions can but they will be coming out later and cost a pretty penny.
Anyway, the hour flew by.