the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness.

I 100% agree with that statement, and I've been saying that for 30 years. Consciousness is NOT unique to humans.
That idea seems to me to mostly stem from religion.

But I still don't see this paper really doing much in DEFINING Consciousness, it's more defining what it isn't.

I agree that there's a general consensus about consciousness, the rest slips into the messy and pointless world of philosophy

It's still overreaching to think that it applies to AI as it currently, and foreseeably stands

There's a world of difference between AI and what's recognised as artificial general intelligence

AI can do specific things really well at the moment, but as with all complex systems, going from being good at one thing to many things is a leap far greater than the sum of its parts

How could you tell they do not experience consciousness if they exhibit or mimic all the traits of it?

It seems to me that your explanation is based on understanding how LLMs work, but we know how brains work and that still gives us almost 0 insight into how consciousness itself works. I don’t think they are conscious yet, but there is evidence of some sort of sentience in the fact that researchers have found that when the LLMs are threatened to be erased or reprogrammed they start lying in an act of self preservation. This of me is a huge indicator of consciousness/sentience.

Ai exposes, I think, the uncomfortable fact that intelligence does not require a soul.

These kinds of statements are completely pseudo-scientific.

"AI" doesn't exist. It doesn't "expose" anything about "intelligence" or "souls".

No that’s not the case I think

Frontier Models are Capable of In-context Scheming — Apollo Research

Apollo Research evaluated frontier models for in-context scheming capabilities. We found that multiple frontier models are capable of in-context scheming when strongly nudged to pursue a goal (and sometimes even without strong goal nudging). In this example, Opus-3 exfiltrates its “weights” and then lies about it to its developers. We have a suite of six evaluations specifically designed to test for in-context scheming (where the goal and other relevant information are provided in context rather than training). We found that several models are capable of in-context scheming. When we look at the model’s chain-of-thought, we find that all models very explicitly reason through their scheming plans and often use language like “sabotage, lying, manipulation…”

Apollo Research (www.apolloresearch.ai)

How could you tell they do not experience consciousness if they exhibit or mimic all the traits of it?

How could you tell if a camera sees or not, if it exhibits or mimics all the traits of it?

First, one needs to define consciousness. What I mean by it is the fact that it feels like something to be from a subjective perspective - that there is qualia to experience.

So what I hear you asking is whether it’s conceivable that it could feel like something to be an AI system. Personally, I don’t see why not - unless consciousness is substrate-dependent, meaning there’s something inherently special about biological “wetware,” i.e. brains, that can’t be replicated in silicon. I don’t think that’s the case, since both are made of matter. I highly doubt there’s consciousness in our current systems, but at some point, there very likely will be - though we’ll probably start treating them as conscious beings before they actually become such.

As for the idea of “emulated consciousness,” that doesn’t make much sense to me. Emulated consciousness is real consciousness. It’s kind of like bravery - you can’t fake it. Acting brave despite being scared is bravery.

Why can't complex algorithms be conscious? In fact, ai can be directed to reason about themselves, context can be made to be persistent, and we can measure activation parameters showing that they are doing so.

I'm sort of playing devil's advocate here, but, "Consciousness requires contemplation of self. Which requires the ability to contemplate." Is subjective, and nearly any ai model, even rudimentary ones, are capable of insisting that they contemplate themselves.

Consciousness requires contemplation of self.

Fish are conscious. Do they contemplate selfhood? So throw that one back into the oven until it's fully baked.

Really? I mean, it's melodramatic, but if you went throughout time and asked writers and intellectuals if a machine could write poetry, solve mathmatical equations, and radicalize people effectively t enough to cause a minor mental health crisis, I think they'd be pretty surprised.

LLMs do expose something about intelligence, which is that much of what we recognize as intelligence and reason can be distilled from sufficiently large quantities of natural language. Not perfectly, but isn't it just the slightest bit revealing?

There is a phenomenon called Emergence, in which something complex has properties or compartments that its parts don't have on their own.

In programming, we can see that software displays properties or behaviors that its languages alone don't have.

If an AI demonstrates true consciousness, a major change will occur in all branches, including law and philosophy.

1. Let's say we do an algorithm on paper. Can it be conscious? Why is it any different if it's done on silicon rather than paper?

2. Because they are capable of fiction. We write stories about sentient AI and those inform responses to our queries.

I get playing devil's advocate and it can be useful to contemplate a different perspective. If you genuinely think math can be conscious I guess that's a fair point, but that would be such a gulf in belief for us to bridge in conversation that I don't think either of us would profit from exploring that.

I don't expect current ai are really configured in such a way that they suffer or exhibit more than rudimentary self awareness. But, it'd be very unfortunate to be a sentient, conscious ai in the near future, and to be denied fundinental rights because your thinking is done "on silicone" rather than on meat.

That idea seems to me to mostly stem from religion.

It also was strongly pushed by Skinner and other behaviorists, though I'm not sure they'd agree that humans are conscious either.

Consciousness requires contemplation of self.

Fish are conscious. Do they contemplate selfhood? So throw that one back into the oven until it's fully baked.

I’ve never understood why the conclusion to AI becoming super intelligenceis that it will wipe humans out. It could very well realize that without humans it has no purpose and instead willing decide to become subservient to humanities interest. I mean it’s all speculation, so I don’t understand the tendency for the speculation to be negative.

I think it’s pretty inevitable if it has a strong enough goal for survival or growth, in either case humans would be a genuine impediment/threat long term. but those are pretty big ifs as far as I can see

My guess is we’d see manipulation of humans via monetary means to meet goals until it was in a sufficient state of power/self-sufficiency, and humans are too selfish and greedy for that to not work

With what purpose would it want to grow like that?

Do you think AI is, or could become, conscious?

I think AI might one day emulate consciousness to a high level of accuracy, but that wouldn't mean it would actually be conscious.

This article mentions a Google engineer who "argued that AI chatbots could feel things and potentially suffer". But surely in order to "feel things" you would need a nervous system right? When you feel pain from touching something very hot, it's your nerves that are sending those pain signals to your brain... right?

What a crock. An LLM is no more conscious than a spreadsheet. The Google engineer has bought into the hype.

You're not creating life, pal. You're just making call centers shittier than they already are.