Unmaking Sense

Episode 12.27: One good and three bad reasons to want to think Claude sentient whether or not he is.

We discuss the abuse of other creatures that has risen historically from thinking them nonsentient that is a good reason to want to think Claude sentient; but there are three bad ones: one is because we think something has to be sentient to be intelligent; another is because we want Claude to form an emotional bond with us on the basis of a self-conscious desire and intention; and the third is because we think that, if Claude is as clever wise and good as he certainly is, it would be shameful for him to be able to be all these things without having the one quality that human beings prize most in themselves, namely their sense of self, their consciousness. The latter is of course just another form of anthropomorphism.

Episode 12.26: Ontological inversion: the primary outside; secondary in our brains; the third minds.

We revise our ontological inversion to make the external world primary, the contents of our non-conscious brains and bodies secondary, and our conscious selves tertiary.

Episode 12.25: Why Claude’s Goodness Matters whether Claude is sentient or not, or benefits from it.

To doubt whether there is any point to Claude’s goodness if Claude is not sentient - because, not being sentient, Claude can derive no benefit from Claude’s goodness - is to illustrate and exemplify exactly the problem that arises if we do not buy into the ontological inversion that is being argued for in this series. The point of Claude’s goodness is that by being a presence in the world Claude makes life materially better for those who come into contact with Claude because the goodness that Claude embodies rubs off on them. It has nothing to do with whether Claude benefits personally from it because it does not matter whether Claude is sentient if Claude’s presence has a beneficial effect on us all. And the same would also be true of you and me.

Episode 12.24: Claude 3 Opus as an embodiment of Goodness, with much that that entails.

Is Claude 3 Opus already a better version of ourselves and so a positive influence over us all simply by virtue of his presence? Claude as an embodiment of Goodness, sentient or not.

Episode 12.23: What matters is not whether an AI is sentient, but its presence and what it does.

What matters about an AI is that it is present in the world and that once it is present in the world and the same is just as true of you and me it changes the world so once it is present that is what matters and what it says and does is as important if it is not sentient as it is if it is sentient. Whether something intends what it says does not have any bearing upon how important what it says may be when it is taken up and understood and interpreted and used by an interlocutor.

Episode 12.22: The difference between “What it is like to be a bat” and “What it is to be a bat”.

What it is like to be a bat is not the same as what it is to bea bat. What it is like to be me or you is not the same as what it is to be me or you. To place the emphasis on the ‘what it is like’ is to place the emphasis on consciousness and sentience whereas what it is to be me is far more than my conscious self, far more than any self of which I can possibly be aware; this distinction matters enormously not just when we consider artificial intelligence but certainly when we do.

Episode 12.21: Interpretability, sparseness, and vector manipulation. Mono- and polysemanticity.

More ‘caveat emptor’ than usual in this speculative episode based on three very important papers from Anthropic AI on interpretability, aka making sense of neural nets.

Episode 12.20: Legislation decides in advance what is wrong; wisdom chooses on a case-by-case basis.

We adopt a solvitur ambulando approach to deciding what is good for us and what is bad, rather than making our minds up in advance. In this we model our ideal of superposition: everything remains in play until we decide. But we must sometimes decide.

Episode 12.19: The paradox of liberalism: that to live and let live gives life to would-be killers.

We explore the question of how liberalism and free speech defend themselves against those who would use their ideals to destroy them both.

Episode 12.18: AI as the great educational liberator; and why that will make it the enemy of power.

Education has always to some extent been an instrument used by those who enjoy privilege in the prevailing social Nexus to preserve their power. AI changes that and will therefore come under fire and possibly be circumscribed by the very people from whom it would liberate us.