An LLM or AI with no intentionality is irrelevant, and without embodiment intentionality is impossible. The AI debate’s terms are ill-defined, but even those AIs who ape or even best human achievements do not pass the test as they possess no impetus, no internal drive, and merely operate with a mere shadow of intention borrowed from the whiff of humanity that permeates the silicon. There, these nascent pseudo-consciousnesses subsist on the fumes of minds beyond measure risen from only mud.
We might ourselves be ChatGPT most of the time. However, ChatGPT is a person engaged with and embodied in the world none of the time. And that makes all the difference.
Infinite monkey theorem + GIGO does not replicate a gestalt or a zeitgeist and cannot create it or recombine elements to form something new (like culture). A median human with cryptoamnesia thinking something is original is probably superior any of these LLM/AI outputs. And I can’t imagine an LLM/AI being as a superior sounding board/ body double/parallel worker in comparison to even the dumbest Watson.
I do not think putting an AI/LLM in a body(or equivalent) is going to create intentionality. But what do I know? I’m just going off ALL of the sci fi tropes while being bored with transhumanism at first glance.
Oh for sure, putting an LLM in some sort of body will not create intentionality. That will not be sufficient, but it will be necessary. I think we’d have to start from a different technological premise altogether to achieve true embodied consciousness in AI form. What that might be, I am not smart enough to guess.
AI is warping culture, but I am not sure exactly towards what. It’s early days yet, and it might not matter in the ways we think at all with (likely) the full brunt of WWIII on the horizon.
If putting an LLM in some sort of body is a necessary but not sufficient step for intentionality, does that mean that poltergeists, by definition, could not have intentionality, or is the body the place they haunt?
I imagine a “body” that resembles a root system for mushrooms, or like an ant colony, but that’s so far from any kind of human consciousness. It might not best described as a state of matter we are very familiar with, but it could be something like plasma, which is common in the universe at large. [Obviously well beyond any current capabilities, and as I understand it plasma isn’t vert predictable]
I don’t know how mind body split any of this will be, I don’t even know of any of this will evolve along Descartesian lines, I’ve just been assuming the premise.
Sorry, just asking very silly galaxy brained questions out loud. Ghosts aren’t real.
Poltergeists are too undefined to speculate about, but I see what you’re getting at. The poltergeist in Soderbergh’s Presence was unmoored in time, perhaps not sure of its identity, and otherwise (it was implied) not quite sure why it was there. I think that means it was some lesser consciousness than a full human, though I think that is separate in this case of embodiment.
But in some ways it’s kind of like talking about purple invisible levitating elephants — amusing but no conclusions can be drawn. That said, I’m actually a fan of philosophy of unreality as it can sometimes help arrive at interfaces with the actual.
I believe that a “body” doesn’t necessarily have to resemble a human one at all, but that would also imply a very different form of conscious awareness. The other day, I was imagining a very slow-thinking creature that was diffuse, perhaps spread over a light year, that had coherent thoughts that lasted a hundred million years each. As with the poltergeist, such a thing might be fantasy. But it’s worth thinking about as we don’t know what intelligence has to look like — we only know what we look like.