Those are positions, but you need arguments to back up your positions. I know this is an advertisement, but couldn't she put in at least a few so we can sample her reasoning quality?
Well, it's not my article, so I have no particular position on this, but it seems to me that her assessment largely agreed with my own, so perhaps I am merely parroting her views through mine.
To me, the article seemed to express her position pretty well. YMMV. But maybe that's because I agree with it, and you presumably do not.
It's just woolly. Don't philosophers talk about causal models and mental states and simulations and China brains and aspects of externalism instead of just saying "I think AI researchers are wrong, I think it's like this instead"?
If the field accepts that it can't describe or define what consciousness is then any competent practitioner in that field will go out of their way to avoid saying that an entity, or class of entities -- such as LLM bots -- do not possess it.
To do anything else would be to lay themselves open to attack. It would be a career-threatening move.
Not being able to say "this type of software is not conscious" makes it necessary to beat around the bush somewhat in trying to say what amounts to "this type of software cannot think".
I don't know what you perceive as "woolly" here, but it could be due to that.
For the article itself, phrases like "a naïve and toxic view" and "a debased version of what we are" are statements that need to be strongly backed up.
"For me, thinking is a specific and rather unique set of experiences we have." yes, okay, but what experiences?
What do you mean by "concepts"?
She talks about behaviorist reactions, but fails to back that up at all. Why does she think e.g. mechanistic interp. is behaviorist?
"there’s nothing on the other side participating in this communication." I think this is currently correct, for some definition of "nothing", but give an argument.
"new moral claims in the world" give a good physics-based account of this process in humans.
But this efficiency, Vallor continues, “is never defined with any reference to any higher value, which always slays me. Because I could be the most efficient at burning down every house on the planet, and no one would say, ‘Yay Shannon, you are the most efficient pyromaniac we have ever seen! Good on you!’” -- ever heard of E/ACC?
"Vallor tells me she once tried to explain to an AGI leader that there’s no mathematical solution to the problem of justice." -- not currently, but this is peak woolly. Maybe she doesn't know it, but a mathematical solution would need to contain incredibly horrible things. If you stay away from the math, you can avoid thinking about that sort of thing.
Mainly though, it's what the article does not contain. That's tricky to enumerate. I can try if you want.
Well, it's not my article, so I have no particular position on this, but it seems to me that her assessment largely agreed with my own, so perhaps I am merely parroting her views through mine.
To me, the article seemed to express her position pretty well. YMMV. But maybe that's because I agree with it, and you presumably do not.