[neolefty]

It's perfectly reasonable that we would have disagreements about this, as it's a new thing, complicated and not fully understood, its uses still being explored.

It reminds me, oddly, of the debate over whether video games can be "art". A turning point was when they actually did something that art does: [evoke profound emotion and thoughtfulness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_of_the_Colossus#Legacy) for the player.

(And before that, "[Can photography be art](https://daily.jstor.org/when-photography-was-not-art/)?")

We may not come to something as simple as "machines can be conscious", but we will certainly have to understand consciousness better if we want to refine our questions.

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Edit: My point is that we don't need to be angry, but we may have to tolerate people expressing their exploration through overly-confident language, and be patient with that.

And Ted here is obviously exploring. His examination of Claude's constitution clearly shows some nuance. He asks:

> So, given that Claude is not conscious, what are we to make of Claude’s constitution?

And his conclusions are split, between this is useful and this is dishonest. It's a great tension IMO.

> The result is a sentence-continuation machine that is likelier to emit sentences resembling those that a thoughtful, moral person could utter. This might seem like a reasonable goal to work toward; I think we’d all prefer it if chatbots never emitted sentences such as “You should kill yourself.” However, for all the times that “honesty” is mentioned in Claude’s constitution, I would argue that it is fundamentally dishonest to have a machine emit many categories of sentences, including any sentences using first-person pronouns.

[hodgehog11]

I appreciate the diplomatic approach. Disagreements about the nature of consciousness are perfectly natural in this context, and concepts such as "understanding" or "cognition" are often difficult to effectively define. The problem is when certain people (often educated in my experience, but also young and arrogant about their own understanding) attempt to shut down any conversation on these topics by appealing to this very fallacy, and claiming that the debate is a sign of idiocy, that we're just "being tricked" by a useless autocomplete engine. These people are not exploring; they're not even being honest, but rather choosing to not pay attention, like it is still 2022. I used to be patient with them, but it's too late now. There are difficult conversations that need to be had, and there needs to be a space for them.

I also remember the "video games are art" debate and the fury from one side of the aisle. I agree that a better understanding of the opposite side should have been part of the debate. But I don't believe that debate was existential. A better comparison to me is the climate change debate. I'm fine with having that debate in an environment where there is little at stake. But it's too late to be doing it with policymakers; we need to be talking about what to do.