You’ve tackled quite a task. Your conclusion was that carefully differentiating these concepts would forward understanding of human minds and alignment work. I think it’s also worth noting that the most difficult of these, phenomenal consciousness (or sentience, as you term it) is also the least important for alignment work. Differentiating intelligence and agency seems hugely clarifying for many discussions in alignment.
I’m disappointed to learn that Seth has phenomenal consciousness mixed with agency, since I’m quite biased to agree with his thinking on consciousness as a field of study.
Differentiating intelligence and agency seems hugely clarifying for many discussions in alignment.
You might have noticed I didn’t actually fully differentiate intelligence and agency. It seems to me to exert agency a mind needs a certain amount of intelligence, and so I think all agents are intelligent, though not all intelligences are agentic. Agents that are minimally intelligent (like simple RL agents in simple computer models) also are pretty minimally agentic. I’d be curious to hear about a counter-example.
Incidentally I also like Anil Seth’s work and I liked his recent book on consciousness, apart from the bit about AGI. I read it right along with Damasio’s latest book on consciousness and they paired pretty well. Seth is a bit more concrete and detail oriented and I appreciated that.
It would make it much easier to understand ideas in this area if writers used more conceptual clarity, particularly empirical consciousness researchers (philosophers can be a bit better, I think, and I say that as an empirical researcher myself). When I read that quote from Seth, it seems clear he was arguing AGI is unlikely to be an existential threat because it’s unlikely to be conscious. Does he naively conflate consciousness with agency, because he’s not an artificial agency researcher and hasn’t thought much about it? Or does he have a sophisticated point of view about how agency and consciousness really are linked, based on his ~~couple decades of consciousness research? Seems very unlikely, given how much we know about artificial agents, but the only way to be clear is to ask him.
Similarly MANY people including empirical researchers and maybe philosophers treat consciousness and self-awareness as somewhat synonymous, or at least interdependent. Is that because they’re being naive about the link, or because, as outlined in Clark, Friston, & WIlkinson’s Bayesing Qualia, they have sophisticated theories based on evidence that there really are tight links between the two? I think when writing this post I was pretty sure consciousness and self-awareness were “orthogonal”/independent, and now, following other discussion in the comments here and on Facebook, I’m less clear about that. But I’d like more people do what Friston did as he explained exactly why he thinks consciousness arises from self-awareness/meta-cognition.
You’ve tackled quite a task. Your conclusion was that carefully differentiating these concepts would forward understanding of human minds and alignment work. I think it’s also worth noting that the most difficult of these, phenomenal consciousness (or sentience, as you term it) is also the least important for alignment work. Differentiating intelligence and agency seems hugely clarifying for many discussions in alignment.
I’m disappointed to learn that Seth has phenomenal consciousness mixed with agency, since I’m quite biased to agree with his thinking on consciousness as a field of study.
You might have noticed I didn’t actually fully differentiate intelligence and agency. It seems to me to exert agency a mind needs a certain amount of intelligence, and so I think all agents are intelligent, though not all intelligences are agentic. Agents that are minimally intelligent (like simple RL agents in simple computer models) also are pretty minimally agentic. I’d be curious to hear about a counter-example.
Incidentally I also like Anil Seth’s work and I liked his recent book on consciousness, apart from the bit about AGI. I read it right along with Damasio’s latest book on consciousness and they paired pretty well. Seth is a bit more concrete and detail oriented and I appreciated that.
It would make it much easier to understand ideas in this area if writers used more conceptual clarity, particularly empirical consciousness researchers (philosophers can be a bit better, I think, and I say that as an empirical researcher myself). When I read that quote from Seth, it seems clear he was arguing AGI is unlikely to be an existential threat because it’s unlikely to be conscious. Does he naively conflate consciousness with agency, because he’s not an artificial agency researcher and hasn’t thought much about it? Or does he have a sophisticated point of view about how agency and consciousness really are linked, based on his ~~couple decades of consciousness research? Seems very unlikely, given how much we know about artificial agents, but the only way to be clear is to ask him.
Similarly MANY people including empirical researchers and maybe philosophers treat consciousness and self-awareness as somewhat synonymous, or at least interdependent. Is that because they’re being naive about the link, or because, as outlined in Clark, Friston, & WIlkinson’s Bayesing Qualia, they have sophisticated theories based on evidence that there really are tight links between the two? I think when writing this post I was pretty sure consciousness and self-awareness were “orthogonal”/independent, and now, following other discussion in the comments here and on Facebook, I’m less clear about that. But I’d like more people do what Friston did as he explained exactly why he thinks consciousness arises from self-awareness/meta-cognition.