Good post. Emotions and feelings are partially physiological, i.e., mediated by hormones, neurotransmitters, and such. Without a biological body, it's unlikely that something would be able to feel the way we and other organisms do.
With that said, regarding reasoning, I am becoming increasingly open to the possibility that the symbolic way in which we reason might not be the only form of reasoning. Perhaps the statistical way in which LLMs “reason” is a legitimate, albeit different, form of reasoning as well, and we should expand our definition and understanding of it. If not, we will fail to account for AI’s growing achievements in the sciences. Maintaining that AI does not reason while it solves the world’s toughest maths problems is not an easy position to defend.
Thanks for commenting, Or. And I agree with you about reasoning. I've definitely had AI exchanges where the reasoning has been extremely impressive, and even revealed some of my own blind spots. But this has mostly been in technical work. I'm less convinced about its abilities in other areas, where our humanity and lived experience play a big part.
Good post. Emotions and feelings are partially physiological, i.e., mediated by hormones, neurotransmitters, and such. Without a biological body, it's unlikely that something would be able to feel the way we and other organisms do.
With that said, regarding reasoning, I am becoming increasingly open to the possibility that the symbolic way in which we reason might not be the only form of reasoning. Perhaps the statistical way in which LLMs “reason” is a legitimate, albeit different, form of reasoning as well, and we should expand our definition and understanding of it. If not, we will fail to account for AI’s growing achievements in the sciences. Maintaining that AI does not reason while it solves the world’s toughest maths problems is not an easy position to defend.
Thanks for commenting, Or. And I agree with you about reasoning. I've definitely had AI exchanges where the reasoning has been extremely impressive, and even revealed some of my own blind spots. But this has mostly been in technical work. I'm less convinced about its abilities in other areas, where our humanity and lived experience play a big part.
I found Anil Seth's The Mythology Of Conscious AI a great read: https://www.noemamag.com/the-mythology-of-conscious-ai/