I’ve read the same books and papers and had many of the same intuitions, but I don’t really endorse them on reflection.
I do agree with @StanislavKrym’s comments, but I understand that you see what LLMs do as a kind of simulacrum without substance.
I do agree that I would feel very differently (in mixed ways) about AI if we knew how to design and engineer intentionality, or to clearly discern when a system had intentionality (in the felt sense) and what it was pointed towards.
I would say, I think you should more explicitly define what you mean by a body. In The Mind’s I, Hofstadter and Dennett talk about the difference between “I am a” and “I have a” sentences. We don’t say I am a brain, I am a body, or even I am a mind. We have those things. I know the grammatical constructions differ between languages, and that in some languages the form of possessive used for body parts is different or closer, but there is still a kind of separation implied between whatever-the-speaker-is and the body.
So what makes something count as a body? As a felt response to sensory data? There is an age range at which a child will really be scared by a lion’s roar through a speaker—does that not count, just because they haven’t learned to differentiate that from a real lion yet? When someone has a cochlear or retinal implant, does it not generate real, felt responses? Have you read any of the brain-computer interface research where people are asked what using such a system feels like? How sure are you, really, that a text-based channel can’t be felt? That a cluster of sensors and actuators fed into a mind can’t be felt?
Do you think a sufficiently precise emulation of a brain would have what it is you’re saying current AI systems lack? If so, then the lack is not due to the substrate, but to the internal organization of how the parts relate to one another. If not, then I think you have a bit of a Ship of Theseus problem. Imagine replacing parts of the body, and then individual neurons in the nervous system and the brain, with electronic replacements. At what point are you sure the thing you care about has vanished, and why?
I’ve read the same books and papers and had many of the same intuitions, but I don’t really endorse them on reflection.
I do agree with @StanislavKrym’s comments, but I understand that you see what LLMs do as a kind of simulacrum without substance.
I do agree that I would feel very differently (in mixed ways) about AI if we knew how to design and engineer intentionality, or to clearly discern when a system had intentionality (in the felt sense) and what it was pointed towards.
I would say, I think you should more explicitly define what you mean by a body. In The Mind’s I, Hofstadter and Dennett talk about the difference between “I am a” and “I have a” sentences. We don’t say I am a brain, I am a body, or even I am a mind. We have those things. I know the grammatical constructions differ between languages, and that in some languages the form of possessive used for body parts is different or closer, but there is still a kind of separation implied between whatever-the-speaker-is and the body.
So what makes something count as a body? As a felt response to sensory data? There is an age range at which a child will really be scared by a lion’s roar through a speaker—does that not count, just because they haven’t learned to differentiate that from a real lion yet? When someone has a cochlear or retinal implant, does it not generate real, felt responses? Have you read any of the brain-computer interface research where people are asked what using such a system feels like? How sure are you, really, that a text-based channel can’t be felt? That a cluster of sensors and actuators fed into a mind can’t be felt?
Do you think a sufficiently precise emulation of a brain would have what it is you’re saying current AI systems lack? If so, then the lack is not due to the substrate, but to the internal organization of how the parts relate to one another. If not, then I think you have a bit of a Ship of Theseus problem. Imagine replacing parts of the body, and then individual neurons in the nervous system and the brain, with electronic replacements. At what point are you sure the thing you care about has vanished, and why?