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Neural nets are not "slightly conscious," and AI PR can do with less hype

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Neural nets are not "slightly conscious," and AI PR can do with less hype

Prominent AI researchers should take accurate science communication more seriously.

Jacky Liang
Feb 18, 2022
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Neural nets are not "slightly conscious," and AI PR can do with less hype

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Quick bit of context: Last Week in AI includes a newsletter with weekly digests of AI news, a podcast covering said news, and editorials commenting on this news. We’d love it if you subscribed!

Now onto the article:


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Image Credits: Melanie Mitchell

TLDR: After OpenAI Cheif Scientist Ilya Sutskever tweeted that large neural nets may be “slightly conscious,” a torrent of debate ensued on AI Twitter and elsewhere. While debates are healthy, they miss the broader point about the need for responsible science communication. The week-old tweet has already been quoted by many pop-sci articles as evidence that AI is becoming “conscious,” a far-fetched claim that will mislead many, given Sutskever’s role at OpenAI. AI researchers, especially ones that have large media followings, have a responsibility to accurately inform the public, or at least refrain from misleading them.

Twitter avatar for @ilyasut
Ilya Sutskever @ilyasut
it may be that today's large neural networks are slightly conscious
11:27 PM ∙ Feb 9, 2022
2,996Likes448Retweets

The Tweet and Expert Responses

Last Wednesday, Ilya Sutskever, Chief Scientist at OpenAI, sent out the above Tweet, and it instantly became a hot topic. Many AI experts joined the “is current AI conscious?” debate in the days that followed. Many rebuked the claim and argued that the limitations of current neural network architectures and the disembodied way they’re used prevent such algorithms from ever being considered “conscious.”

Twitter avatar for @ylecun
Yann LeCun @ylecun
@ilyasut Nope. Not even for true for small values of "slightly conscious" and large values of "large neural nets". I think you would need a particular kind of macro-architecture that none of the current networks possess.
9:02 PM ∙ Feb 12, 2022
931Likes43Retweets
Twitter avatar for @yudapearl
Judea Pearl @yudapearl
@ylecun @ilyasut Rushing to gleefully agree with @ylecun on this point. Before a system can lay claims to consciousness it must exhibit "deep understanding" of some domain, which large NN's have yet to exhibit by answering questions at all three levels of the reasoning hierarchy.
11:04 PM ∙ Feb 14, 2022
152Likes13Retweets

Some also agreed with this notion, under certain definitions of consciousness:

Twitter avatar for @karpathy
Andrej Karpathy @karpathy
@ilyasut @vkhosla agree karpathy.github.io/2021/03/27/for… consciousness is a useful insight for compression
karpathy.github.ioShort Story on AI: Forward PassMusings of a Computer Scientist.
3:03 AM ∙ Feb 10, 2022
356Likes29Retweets
Twitter avatar for @dansitu
Daniel Situnayake @dansitu
This week’s debate on artificial consciousness has been interesting, but it misses one key point—a model is an idea, not an entity. In this essay, I explore the theory of panpsychism: that if anything has subjective experience, it’s matter itself.
situnayake.comThinking about panpsychismI wrote this essay a few months back after reading a wonderful book by Meghan O’Gieblyn titled ​God, Human, Animal, Machine​, but never got around to publishing it. This week’s Twitter debate on the subjective experience of large language models reminded me that I’d written it, so I thought I’d thro…
5:26 AM ∙ Feb 13, 2022
8Likes1Retweet
Twitter avatar for @irinarish
Irina Rish @irinarish
@ilyasut to all criticizing @ilyasut's comment - define "conscious" and "understanding". Re: the latter @blaiseaguera made some interesting points: tinyurl.com/4nxtykzz @ylecun @yudapearl
tinyurl.comDo large language models understand us?LLMs have a great deal to teach us about the nature of language, understanding, intelligence, sociality, and personhood.
9:14 AM ∙ Feb 17, 2022

In view of the negative responses, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, defended Sutskever’s claim, but at the same time reassured everyone that he does not think GPT-3, or even GPT-4, will be conscious “in any way we use the word”:

Twitter avatar for @sama
Sam Altman @sama
OpenAI’s chief scientist: expresses curiosity/openness about a mysterious idea, caveats with “may”. Meta’s chief AI scientist: the certainty of "nope". Probably explains a lot of the past 5 years. Dear Meta AI researchers: My email address is sama@openai.com. We are hiring!
11:40 PM ∙ Feb 12, 2022
1,169Likes66Retweets

Media Coverage and Expert Commentary

Quoting Sutskever’s tweet, many media outlets began running articles covering the claim with headlines like:

  • 'I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that': Artificial Intelligence expert warns that there may already be a 'slightly conscious' AI out in the world

  • OpenAI Chief Scientist Says Advanced AI May Already be Conscious

  • MIT Researcher Says Yes, Advanced Neural Networks May Be Achieving Consciousness

  • OpenAI top scientist says AI might already be conscious. Researchers respond furiously

  • Researchers Furious Over Claim That AI Is Already Conscious

  • 'Conscious AI' may already exist as expert receives backlash over terrifying warning

To their credit, most articles did quote from researchers who rebuked the claim and refrained from saying that AI is conscious just because Sutskever tweeted so. Still, the hype that this single tweet generated is overblown, and it is not at all surprising if an uninformed member of the public receives the misguided impression that AI probably has some form of consciousness.

On top of the direct debate and the media coverage, many experts gave commentary on the community response. Professor Bender has a great thread on this (we recommend readers to check out the whole thread):

Twitter avatar for @emilymbender
Emily M. Bender @emilymbender
Step 1: OpenAI chief scientist says something ridiculous on Twitter (to his 81.9k followers):
Twitter avatar for @ilyasut
Ilya Sutskever @ilyasut
it may be that today's large neural networks are slightly conscious
8:45 PM ∙ Feb 16, 2022
236Likes45Retweets

And Professor Garg brings up the potential for misinformation:

Twitter avatar for @animesh_garg
Animesh Garg @animesh_garg
While the skeptical 'maybe' from @ilyasut or @gdb may inspire more hope than @ylecun certain "nope", it had the opposite effect for public. Why? See @DailyMailUK as exhibit Words matter, especially with a megaphone Maybe...a bit more careful next time dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ar…
Twitter avatar for @ilyasut
Ilya Sutskever @ilyasut
it may be that today's large neural networks are slightly conscious
5:30 AM ∙ Feb 13, 2022

But not all responses were as serious. AI Twitter had a field day making memes that poke fun at both the original Tweet and the controversy that followed. Some examples below:

Twitter avatar for @MelMitchell1
Melanie Mitchell @MelMitchell1
Captcha
Image
8:59 PM ∙ Feb 13, 2022
4,399Likes603Retweets
Twitter avatar for @snikolov
NaN demeulemeester @snikolov
AI: *gets slightly conscious* remember when you were using ReLUs and killing half my brain cells for no reason? Me: Oh sh—
7:55 AM ∙ Feb 17, 2022
Twitter avatar for @andy_l_jones
Andy Jones @andy_l_jones
AI researcher: *through sobs* you can't just say everything is conscious.... Please.... Me: *points at rock* conscious
12:55 AM ∙ Feb 14, 2022
1,740Likes147Retweets
Twitter avatar for @tomgoldsteincs
Tom Goldstein @tomgoldsteincs
Oh. MY. GOD. transformer.huggingface.co/share/RaIWZZwx…
Image
4:20 PM ∙ Feb 16, 2022
391Likes40Retweets
Twitter avatar for @andrey_kurenkov
Andrey Kurenkov 🤖 @andrey_kurenkov
The twitter discourse on AI consciousness has clearly become meme-worthy, so I made one to summarize the whole ordeal
Image
10:40 PM ∙ Feb 17, 2022

Our Take

There are 3 angles of this story we’ll comment on:

Experts largely agree that current forms of AI are not conscious. While there have been many studies on “computational consciousness,” or how something that might be considered conscious can be realized with computers, these studies are very preliminary and do not offer anything close to a concrete plan on building “conscious” machines. The reality is that we don’t have a widely accepted definition, let alone understanding, of consciousness. Claiming that we have already replicated such a nebulous concept with computers seems improbable at best. Our take is that the claim could also be reasonable, but only if a particular definition of consciousness was specified as well.

Sutskever’s tweet was “taken out of context” to generate hype, and it is this hype that triggered the debate. Twitter is not the place for nuanced discussion and a single tweet cannot possibly convey all the details necessary for a balanced, well-thought-out take on the consciousness of AI. Moreover, looking at Sutskever’s past tweets, it is clear that they are not serious proclamations but rather scattered thoughts, which by themselves are totally fine. However, given Sutskever’s prominent position at OpenAI, the seriousness of this particular tweet was blown out of proportions to build the hype of conscious AIs, which pressured other AI researchers to rebuke and clarify that current AIs are not conscious. This debate gave more public attention to the whole ordeal, and, perhaps ironically, helped amplify the original tweet even more.

This event highlights the need for more responsible communication for AI research. AI as a technological field is no stranger to hype, and we have argued in the past that the field lacks more nuanced, level-headed communication by AI researchers. The problem isn’t Sutskever’s off-handed tweet; the problem is someone not familiar with AI becoming easily convinced of something that is not true, just because a famous researcher tweeted a mild speculation. This all helps to build unreasonable expectations of AI systems in the public, which in turn will misguide public sentiments, popular culture, and public policy. As the cliché goes: with great (public relations) power, comes great (public communications) responsibility. We hope more AI researchers recognize this and tweet responsibly.

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Neural nets are not "slightly conscious," and AI PR can do with less hype

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Grant Castillou
Feb 22, 2022

It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with primary consciousness will probably have to come first.

The thing I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.

I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.

My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461

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Israel
Feb 21, 2022

Passei os ultimos 25 anos refletindo sobre a consciência: como ela funciona, lendo tudo que eu pude e um dia recente a noite, a resposta simplesmente apareceu para mim. Refleti sobre ela nas semanas seguintes e hoje posso afirmar que sei como parte dela ao menos funciona. Sei que ela pode ser replicada e venho pensando como replicá-la minimamente.

Dentro do meu conhecimento de IA (não tão vasto matematicamente, mas bom teoricamente) sempre analiso a possibilidade de ela emergir: é um cenário complexo, mas há chances.

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