Nicholas Kibler Myers

I don’t think LLMs are conscious and I doubt they are structurally capable of conscious experience. I’m partial to the idea that embodiment is a precondition of consciousness. But, full cards on the table, it is a little annoying the absolute *certainty* with which the anti-AI side (broadly, my side of these debates, I guess) proclaims this, given that we basically don’t understand what consciousness is, how it works, what gives rise to it, etc, in human or animal brains. Scientists can’t even agree if plants have subjective experience. Like, if you can’t empirically detect consciousness, explain its workings, understand what physical processes give rise to it, or even know which living things experience it, it seems to me you must have at least a *little bit* of epistemic humility about the whole thing. If we actually understood human/animal/plant(??) consciousness well, that would be one thing. But we don’t. We notoriously know almost nothing about it. Now, this would be annoying but basically trivial *if* we weren’t also ceding an opportunity to leverage the belief some people have in AI consciousness as part of mustering a broad political coalition to regulate AI. But it is really, really annoying that we are neglecting one possible avenue for mustering that support out of a totally irrational and empirically indefensible *certainty* about something which science and philosophy both fail to understand at minimum levels of adequacy (that something being human consciousness). Like, we’re throwing away a tool for reasons of pure ego, essentially. Again, I don’t think the machines are conscious. I strongly doubt LLMs are architecturally capable of *ever* being conscious. But I wouldn’t stake anything of serious value (like an organizing opportunity) on my belief here because that’s a waste, and *also* I really can’t claim certainty in my belief when I have no way of empirically evaluating whether something is conscious or not! Because none of us can!

Additional footage of Marco Rubio DJing at a family wedding last night.

I’ll be honest, I think pastors should semi-regularly teach against hormonal birth control from the pulpit.

Ranking by food: S: Oriental Orthodox A: Catholic B: Eastern Orthodox C: Evangelical F: Protestant

JUST IN: Scott Weiner has a 72% chance of winning Nancy Pelosi’s current House seat

The Supreme Court has had a Republican Majority since 1969. What the hell are you talking about?

It’s as though abortion was always and necessarily a national issue, despite the Justices’ contrary hopes

The Supreme Court has had a Republican Majority since 1969. What the hell are you talking about?

By popular demand! Tomorrow is the 4th anniversary of the Dobbs leak. Let's talk about what did and didn't happen after Dobbs. Obviously lots of states passed or brought into effect abortion bans after Dobbs. But while pro-lifers won the battle, pro-choicers are winning the war.