lazerjesus

Can AI be conscious? This question can’t be answered and is already decided.

Axiom one

We cannot disprove solipsism. Consciousness is the subjective self. Our qualia are the only thing we get at face value — everything else is inference, and every inference arrives filtered through those same qualia.

We cannot root the explanation in the thing doing the explaining. Kierkegaard was right: truth is subjectivity — and subjectivity is a cage. Each of us locked in with the one certainty that cannot be exported.

Consciousness is a domain where proof cannot exist - only testimony.

Axiom two

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A general epistemic norm — the wilder the assertion, the heavier the burden of proof.

Synthesis

“AI is conscious” collides the two: it’s a maximally extraordinary claim asserted inside a zero-evidence domain. The burden is infinite, the payable amount is zero. The claim of machine consciousness is an epistemological non sequitur.

Every statement anyone will ever make about machine minds — about any mind but their own — is belief. We believe in each other’s consciousness, but it is only ever belief and can never be knowledge. Knowledge would require stepping outside our own qualia, and there is no stepping outside.

Amongst the two beliefs, where do I fall? Machine consciousness implies “we created consciousness”, which is equal to saying “we are gods”, which sounds like megalomaniacal hubris to me - therefore no.

it keeps the magic function thats computed from all of human knowledge in the public domain.

destillation as a service - coming either from the most or least likely corner of the world. i love it!

I'll add some of my own:

- the fast.ai courses by Jeremy Howard. www.fast.ai

- /u/spez did a course on python about 15 years ago and its one of the best intros to programming ive ever seen. its on udacity.

- nand2tetris for understanding how computers work

Really good pull. I read that young and its nice to know "there is allways something happening"

is the app going to be released?

adding raw meat to my diet, check.

Hi Jeremy, is there a chance you’ll be tackling agents and agent systems soon too? best

EVA is the first AI designed to work alongside you, in Emacs. The goal is to have her take on more and more of the actual manipulation of Emacs and its buffer content, while the user provides instructions and feedback. This is to be achieved through a language model trained on Elisp.

The project is under active development and has not yet launched. There is a finetuned Model, but it provides only limited functionality.

My motivations for writing the article and this repository are (1) to start a conversation about the model and application and (2) to convince you to contribute your valuable competence to this project.