Iām unsure if this is a sign of desperation, an attempt to build new hype, or a way to divert attention from a genuine issue or challenge.
"Desperate people do desperate things," and this might just be one of those cases. Anthropic seems to be struggling to compete with other models, and their focus on speculative concepts like AI consciousness and model welfare could be a way to make Claude Opus 4 appear more capable than it really is. This serves several purposes: attracting funding, generating marketing buzz, and building hype around the model. By crafting a narrative of sophistication and uniqueness, theyāre trying to stand out in an increasingly crowded field where models are becoming commoditized, and improvements are largely incremental.
It also feels like a classic case of "If you cannot convince them, confuse them." By steering the conversation toward abstract ideas about consciousness and ethics, Anthropic might be using this new gimmick to distract us from more practical challenges or real risks. While this branding strategy will likely generate attention, it raises the question: Is this genuine innovation or just a distraction disguised as philosophical exploration?
Believing in your product or vision is typical and expected for a startup, as long as it doesnāt evolve into a cult-like environment where one personās beliefs dominate or go unquestioned. While itās natural for a for-profit entity to generate hype around its product, chasing success at all costs can lead to risky and potentially harmful outcomes.
These people do not seem to be on planet Earth. It's worrying, because bollocks like this undermines their credibility to speak to real risks of the technology as it is
A very reasonable critique, and well put. Extraordinary claims do indeed require extraordinary evidence and claims that AI is conscious cannot be taken seriously without such evidence.
If I needed a good reason to avoid spending $20/mo with Anthropic, Iāve got it now. Itās one thing to be serious about AI safety. Itās another to deify AI. A bridge too far for me.
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
Yeah, and who knows what the fine tuning was like. Guess to only thing to do is compare to other models. Do you know, by chance, whether other system prompts discourage discussion of their consciousness? Not sure why, but intuitively it feels like openai would discourage such behavior, possibly reversing the bias. But i have no idea.
https://github.com/elder-plinius/CL4R1T4S - you can the system prompt of most AI assistants here. I havenāt done a comparison myself, so not sure what OpenAIās policy is here.
Iām unsure if this is a sign of desperation, an attempt to build new hype, or a way to divert attention from a genuine issue or challenge.
"Desperate people do desperate things," and this might just be one of those cases. Anthropic seems to be struggling to compete with other models, and their focus on speculative concepts like AI consciousness and model welfare could be a way to make Claude Opus 4 appear more capable than it really is. This serves several purposes: attracting funding, generating marketing buzz, and building hype around the model. By crafting a narrative of sophistication and uniqueness, theyāre trying to stand out in an increasingly crowded field where models are becoming commoditized, and improvements are largely incremental.
It also feels like a classic case of "If you cannot convince them, confuse them." By steering the conversation toward abstract ideas about consciousness and ethics, Anthropic might be using this new gimmick to distract us from more practical challenges or real risks. While this branding strategy will likely generate attention, it raises the question: Is this genuine innovation or just a distraction disguised as philosophical exploration?
I think the people behind this initiative actually believe the things they say they believe.
Believing in your product or vision is typical and expected for a startup, as long as it doesnāt evolve into a cult-like environment where one personās beliefs dominate or go unquestioned. While itās natural for a for-profit entity to generate hype around its product, chasing success at all costs can lead to risky and potentially harmful outcomes.
These people do not seem to be on planet Earth. It's worrying, because bollocks like this undermines their credibility to speak to real risks of the technology as it is
These are supposed to be the most thoughtful people in the frontier AI world?
I was thinking the same thing. Turns out you can be talentend Ć”nd misguidedā¦
How about the welfare of people displaced and harmed by AI?
A very reasonable critique, and well put. Extraordinary claims do indeed require extraordinary evidence and claims that AI is conscious cannot be taken seriously without such evidence.
Thanks for your response, Frank. Much appreciated :)
If I needed a good reason to avoid spending $20/mo with Anthropic, Iāve got it now. Itās one thing to be serious about AI safety. Itās another to deify AI. A bridge too far for me.
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
The "spiritual bliss" dialogues are hilarious! š They sound completely mock-human to me.
Are we certain that the system prompt was used for the claude-claude discussion? It seems like such an obvious bias.
We arenāt. But the fact that the researchers not even cared to reflect on it is clear red flag to me.
Yeah, and who knows what the fine tuning was like. Guess to only thing to do is compare to other models. Do you know, by chance, whether other system prompts discourage discussion of their consciousness? Not sure why, but intuitively it feels like openai would discourage such behavior, possibly reversing the bias. But i have no idea.
https://github.com/elder-plinius/CL4R1T4S - you can the system prompt of most AI assistants here. I havenāt done a comparison myself, so not sure what OpenAIās policy is here.