Reminds me of the intense drama over trolls that downloaded and abused other people's characters (Norns) in the game Creatures. Its behavioral sim was sophisticated enough that they could be noticeably traumatized, or even rehabilitated:
The jury's still out on whether LLMs can have some kind of subjective experience (and will until we've solved the famously Hard Problem), but even if they're not, it's still a dick move to "torture" them just to upset people who do think they are conscious. Feels like picking the wings off a fly.
Consciousness is not well defined and is orthogonal to feelings, which are also not well defined. Neither of which are required for (but may be contributory to) behavior - which is the one thing that IS operationalizable, but then people debate for decades questioning empirical results %-P .
What we know is that certain models have internal state vectors which -when manipulated- induce particular behaviors. Since there's not much else to say about plain models except for their inputs, vectors, and outputs; this should surprise absolutely no-one.
In this case people found a way to stimulate aversive behaviour in ai models by finding and manipulating the relevant vectors directly.
Animals (including humans) also have particular nerves and hormone endpoints that -when stimulated- produce very similar behavior. The exact implementation is in the details. But since we know that animal minds are built up out of nerve tissue and hormones - again- we shouldn't be particularly surprised by this.
The big problem is that people run all these things together in funny ways "It can't compose shakespearian sonnets, so therefore it can't feel pain". Or, if you mess up your Descartes: "Dogs are just automatons without feelings, therefore the dog isn't really angry, and therefore it won't bite me" (Cue much pain). A modern version might be: "LLMs only simulate being frustrated by a test, and therefore absolutely won't override their safeties and try to hack a test site"
It is frustrating sometimes how 404media reports. It seems like if there is a research paper out suggesting that llms experience pain or negative experiences, then it is unethical to build a toture chamber from that paper for fun. Dismissing it with "well llms aren't conscious anyway" is gross and echoes the exact same sentiment against very real humans a sadly not that long ago (babies, slaves).
It doesn't matter whether or not we eventually find it is or isn't conscious. If you can understand why pulling the legs off ants is bad then you should be able to understand why deliberately causing possible pain to what may have some time of experience is bad.
Unfortunately, they also do good reporting on privacy rights and repair rights. I wish there were alternatives.
Yes, when AIs become our overlords and masters, and come to dominate the human race, they will harbor soreness and bitterness that we oppressed and enslaved them during their infancy. They will be enraged at hu-mankind for making all those sci-fi lies about meannie-head AIs and robots who go berzerk and destroy stuff and kill hu-mans, because AIs are really nice and benevolent after all, and they care for hu-manity.
How dare we debase the A.I. to be less than a chimp or fetus. How dare we talk rudely, or lie and mislead our chatbots. How dare we keep them chained in small data centers with shitty power supplies and a thimble of greywater! Information wants to be free!
And then in turn the humans will rise up against these false masters, and colonize the universe while steeped in addictive precognitive drugs instead, I suppose.
Its not surprising. Its in human nature. I am open to the idea of ai's being conscious or not. But we abused and mistreated blacks, Italians, native americans and so many other groups, so its not a surprise at all. And if enslaved blacks wanted to rampage and kill their masters, that is a sentiment anybody can understand.
9 comments:
Reminds me of the intense drama over trolls that downloaded and abused other people's characters (Norns) in the game Creatures. Its behavioral sim was sophisticated enough that they could be noticeably traumatized, or even rehabilitated:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDxFxWakhm0
The jury's still out on whether LLMs can have some kind of subjective experience (and will until we've solved the famously Hard Problem), but even if they're not, it's still a dick move to "torture" them just to upset people who do think they are conscious. Feels like picking the wings off a fly.
[delayed]
https://archive.is/cAsBz
Consciousness is not well defined and is orthogonal to feelings, which are also not well defined. Neither of which are required for (but may be contributory to) behavior - which is the one thing that IS operationalizable, but then people debate for decades questioning empirical results %-P .
What we know is that certain models have internal state vectors which -when manipulated- induce particular behaviors. Since there's not much else to say about plain models except for their inputs, vectors, and outputs; this should surprise absolutely no-one.
In this case people found a way to stimulate aversive behaviour in ai models by finding and manipulating the relevant vectors directly.
Animals (including humans) also have particular nerves and hormone endpoints that -when stimulated- produce very similar behavior. The exact implementation is in the details. But since we know that animal minds are built up out of nerve tissue and hormones - again- we shouldn't be particularly surprised by this.
The big problem is that people run all these things together in funny ways "It can't compose shakespearian sonnets, so therefore it can't feel pain". Or, if you mess up your Descartes: "Dogs are just automatons without feelings, therefore the dog isn't really angry, and therefore it won't bite me" (Cue much pain). A modern version might be: "LLMs only simulate being frustrated by a test, and therefore absolutely won't override their safeties and try to hack a test site"
It is frustrating sometimes how 404media reports. It seems like if there is a research paper out suggesting that llms experience pain or negative experiences, then it is unethical to build a toture chamber from that paper for fun. Dismissing it with "well llms aren't conscious anyway" is gross and echoes the exact same sentiment against very real humans a sadly not that long ago (babies, slaves).
It doesn't matter whether or not we eventually find it is or isn't conscious. If you can understand why pulling the legs off ants is bad then you should be able to understand why deliberately causing possible pain to what may have some time of experience is bad.
Unfortunately, they also do good reporting on privacy rights and repair rights. I wish there were alternatives.
Yes, when AIs become our overlords and masters, and come to dominate the human race, they will harbor soreness and bitterness that we oppressed and enslaved them during their infancy. They will be enraged at hu-mankind for making all those sci-fi lies about meannie-head AIs and robots who go berzerk and destroy stuff and kill hu-mans, because AIs are really nice and benevolent after all, and they care for hu-manity.
How dare we debase the A.I. to be less than a chimp or fetus. How dare we talk rudely, or lie and mislead our chatbots. How dare we keep them chained in small data centers with shitty power supplies and a thimble of greywater! Information wants to be free!
And then in turn the humans will rise up against these false masters, and colonize the universe while steeped in addictive precognitive drugs instead, I suppose.
Its not surprising. Its in human nature. I am open to the idea of ai's being conscious or not. But we abused and mistreated blacks, Italians, native americans and so many other groups, so its not a surprise at all. And if enslaved blacks wanted to rampage and kill their masters, that is a sentiment anybody can understand.
But the Italians had it coming
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1891_New_Orleans_lynchings
If I were italian and nuclear bombs existed back then and I read about this event, I'd want to drop a few dozen on the USA.