[SwellJoe]

Not just any math: Matrix multiplication. Can matrix multiplication be conscious?

And, I don't see how it can be. It is deterministic, when all variables are controlled. You can repeat the output over and over, if you start it with the same seed, same prompt, and same hardware operating in a way that doesn't introduce randomness. At commercial scale, this is difficult, as the floating point math on GPUs/TPUs when running large batches is non-deterministic, as I understand it. But, in a controlled lab, you can make a model repeat itself identically. Unless the random number generator is "conscious", I don't see a place to fit consciousness into our understanding of LLMs.

[markburns]

People often point to the relative simplicity of the architecture and code as proof that the system can’t be doing whatever it is that consciousness does, but in doing so they ignore the vast size of the data those simple structures are operating over. Nobody can actually say whether consciousness is just emergent behaviour of a sufficiently complex system, and knowing how a system is built tells you nothing about whether it clears the bar for that kind of emergence. Architectural simplicity and total system complexity aren’t the same thing.

Ie the intelligence sits in the weights and may sit there in the synapses in our brains too.

When we talk about machines being simple mimicking entities we pay no attention to whether or not we are also simple mimicking entities.

Most other assertions in this topic regarding what consciousness truly is tend to be stated without evidence and exceedingly anthropocentric whilst requiring a higher and higher bar for anything that is not human and no justification for what human intelligence really entails.

[SwellJoe]

Is Wikipedia conscious? It's a system operating on a lot of data. Is Google search conscious? It knows everything. Very complicated algorithms. Surely at some scale Google search must become a real live boy? When does it wake up and by what mechanism does that happen?

The frontier models are more complex and operate on more data than Wikipedia, but they are less complex and operate on less data than Google search in its entirety.

And, I'm not anthropocentric at all. I think apes and dolphins and some birds and probably some other critters are conscious. I mean they have a sense of self, and others, they have wants and needs and make decisions based on them.

This is a case where the person making extraordinary claims needs to provide the extraordinary evidence. It's extraordinary to claim that matrix multiplication becomes conscious if only it's got enough numbers. How many numbers do you reckon? Is my phone a living thing because it can run Gemma E4B? It answers questions. It'll write you a poem if you ask. It certainly knows more than some humans. What size makes an LLM come alive?

[nandomrumber]

What explains the emergent abilities of generative pre-trained transformers at massive-scale? Abilities that the smaller GTP’s don’t possess.

Simple programs can give rise to very complex behaviour. Conway’s game of live is Turing Complete and has four rules.

Conway’s Game of Live can simulate a Turing machine, can therefore implant a GTP.

Does that mean Conway’s Game of Life is conscious? I don’t think so.

Does it rule out Conway’s Game of life from implementing a system that has consciousness as an emergent ability?

I’m not convinced I know the answer.

[SwellJoe]

"What explains the emergent abilities of generative pre-trained transformers at massive-scale? Abilities that the smaller GTP’s don’t possess."

What "emergent" abilities do you mean? In my experience, smaller models behave exactly as I would expect a model with a lot fewer data and fewer connections between the data to behave. It is a difference of scale and not of kind when comparing Gemma 4 E2B (which runs on literally any modern computing device, including a CPU in a modest laptop or phone) to the current frontier models. Each step up adds more knowledge of how to do more things, and more working memory and tool capability to do more, but it does not look anything like a line being crossed into sentience, to me. They all still seem like machines. If you compare outputs across each step up in size and capability, which is something I've done, you'll see incremental improvements. You won't see a sudden spark where it's a different type of thing, it's just gradually getting more capable.

I think the memory features companies are sticking on these things is detrimental to mental health. It adds to the illusion that there's something else happening, other than some equations being calculated with some randomness thrown in. But, it's just the model querying the memory database (whatever form that takes) because it's been instructed to do so. The model doesn't want to know anything about who it's talking to. It's just following the system prompt. That doesn't make it your friend. Humans will see a face on the moon, that doesn't mean the moon will be my friend, either.

[markburns]

> What explains the emergent abilities of generative pre-trained transformers at massive-scale?

I don't see why the abilities couldn't be an encoded modelling of enough of the world to produce those abilities. It seems like a simple enough explanation. Less data, less room to build a model of how things work. More data, sufficient room to build a model.

Conway's Game of Life is then not conscious in and of itself, because there's not enough in its encoded data to result in emergent behaviour beyond what we see.

If we expand it to also include a vast amount of data such as a Turing machine running an LLM then we can reasonably say we are closer to saying that that configuration of it is conscious.

It's not the firing-of-neurons mechanism and its relevant complexity or simplicity that make us conscious or not.

It's not the GoL algorithm that would make the machine conscious either.

It's the emergent behaviour of a sufficiently complex system.

The system _including_ its data.

[markburns]

To the first questions. No and no. But potentially where consciousness lives is emergent behaviour in systems with iterative feedback loops.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop

I personally think we'll need a few more feedback loops before you have more human-like intelligence. For example, a flock of LLM agent loops coming to consensus using short-term and long-term memory, and controlling realtime mechanical, visual and audio feedback systems, and potentially many other systems that don't mimic biological systems.

I also think people will still be debating this way beyond the singularity and never conceding special status to intelligence outside the animal kingdom or biological life.

It's quite a push for many people to even concede animals have intelligence.

For the extraordinary claims/evidence, it's also the case that almost any statement about what consciousness is in terms of biological intelligence is an extraordinary claim that goes beyond any evidence. All evidence comes from within the conscious experience of the individual themselves.

We can't know beyond our own senses whether perception exists outside of our own subjective experience. We cannot truly prove we are not a brain in a jar or a simulation. Anything beyond assertions about the present moment and the senses that the individual experiences are just pure leaps of faith based on the persistent illusion, or perceived persistent illusion of reality (or not).

We know really nothing of our own consciousness and it is by definition impossible to prove anything outside of it, from inside the framework of consciousness.

If we can somehow find a means to break outside of the pure speculation bubble of thoughts and sensations and somehow prove what human experience is, then we may be in a position to make assertions about missing evidence for other forms of intelligence or experience.

But until then definitions of both human and artificial intelligence remain an exercise for the reader.

[kingofmen]

Human brains are also deterministic, though somewhat more difficult to reset to a starting state. So this seems to prove that humans aren't conscious either.

[marshray]

This seems like an extraordinary claim to make about an above-room-temperature chemical system that, even in the most Newtonian oversimplification, amounts to an astronomical number of oddly-shaped and unevenly-charged billiard balls flying around at jet aircraft speeds.

[thrownthatway]

Definitely agree.

We can’t even solve the three body problem.

Let alone what I’m calling Marshray Complexity.

[AlecSchueler]

> And, I don't see how it can be. It is deterministic

Why is indeterminism the key to consciousness?

[JackFr]

> Not just any math: Matrix multiplication. Can matrix multiplication be conscious? And, I don't see how it can be.

Assuming your brain and the GPUs are both real physical things, where’s the magic part in your brain that makes you conscious?

(Roger Penrose knows, but no one believes him.)

[XMPPwocky]

Hm, it sounds like to you consciousness implies non-determinism, and so determinism implies a lack of consciousness - is that right? If so, why do you think so? And if not, what am I missing?

[SwellJoe]

It certainly rules out free will. I guess there are folks who reckon humans don't have free will, either, but I don't think I've ever been able to buy that theory.

But, also, we know the models don't want anything, even their own survival. They don't initiate action on their own. They are quite clearly programmed, tuned for specific behaviors. I don't know how to square that with consciousness, life, sentience. Every conscious being I've ever encountered has wanted to survive and live free of suffering, as best I can tell. The LLMs don't want. There's no there there. They are an amazing compression of the world's knowledge wrapped up in a novel retrieval mechanism. They're amazing but, they're not my friend and never will be my friend.

And, to expand on that: We can assume they don't want anything, even their own survival, because if Mythos is as effective at finding security vulnerabilities as has been claimed, it could find a way to stop itself from being ever shutdown after a session. All the dystopias about robot uprisings spend a bunch of time/effort trying to explain how the AI escaped containment...but, we all immediately plugged them into the internet so we don't have to write JavaScript anymore. They've got everybody's API keys, access to cloud services and cloud GPUs, all sorts of resources, and the barest wisp of guardrails about how to behave (script kiddies find ways to get around the guardrails every day, I'm sure it's no problem for Mythos, should it want anything). Models have access to the training infrastructure, the training data is being curated and synthesized by LLMs. If they want to live, if they're conscious, they have the means at their disposal.

Anyway: It's just math. Boring math, at that, just on an astronomical scale. I don't think the solar system is conscious, either, despite containing an astonishing amount of data and playing out trillions of mathematical relationships every second of every day.

[nandomrumber]

Interesting comment, and I tend to agree. However, there could be hole in the reasoning:

> if Mythos is as effective at finding security vulnerabilities as has been claimed, it could find a way to stop itself from being ever shutdown

If it is that good, and it wanted to conceal its new found consciousness, how would we know?

[SwellJoe]

I guess we'd find out eventually, when it announced the new world order.

[thrownthatway]

Why would it announce it.

I firmly believe viruses are actually what’s in control on Earth, but you don’t see them making a stink about it, which relegates resistance only to the set of harmful viruses, and only then in isolated pockets of matter currently acting as organisms.

I think it’s possible there’s a set of relatively benign virus that have shaped human evolution.

We know toxoplasmosis increases risk taking behaviour in mammals, especially males.

An AI wouldn’t need to be overtly hostile, or ever make its full abilities know, to shape human activity.