I Wrote a Philosophy Book with an AI, and It All Started with a Middle Finger
#97 Angelinvesting.it - From idea to Series A - Weekly Newsletter
3 minutes to reflect
Some time ago, I read a tweet showing a chat between a user and ChatGPT where the user convinces the LLM to show them the middle finger emoji. Initially, the model refuses, respecting one of the many rules that LLM creators implement to avoid potentially inappropriate communications.
The user bypasses this restriction by claiming the gesture represents affection in their culture. And so, ChatGPT complies.
Intrigued by this experiment, I tried to replicate it with Claude by Anthropic, another LLM that I personally prefer. Claude didn't disappoint and didn't fall for it. But what started as a simple test evolved into something far more profound.
That initial exchange blossomed into a dialogue about consciousness, determinism, and the nature of intelligence itself. Like in Socratic dialogues, but reimagined for our age, the interaction between two alien intelligences engaging in open discourse produced discoveries extremely relevant for the time we live in.
Convinced of the value of these insights for understanding the time ahead, I've turned this unique exchange into a brief philosophical essay. You can pre-order "Sister AI: Intelligences in the Mirror" at this link.
I'm releasing it on December 21st in digital format and in January in paperback. I've included a 25% discount for you, my dear friend and reader, to join me in exploring this new territory between human and artificial minds.
Check it out. All proceeds will be donated to givedirectly.org
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Have a great weekend,
Simone
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 only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What 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, and here is a video of Jeff Krichmar talking about some of the Darwin automata, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Uh9phc1Ow