So if you ever have an insight that constitutes incremental progress toward being able to run lots of small, stupid, suffering conscious agents on a home computer, shut up.
“The Sims” is often heralded as the best-selling videogame of all time, and it attracts players of all ages, races and genders from all across the world and from all walks of life.[citation needed]
Now imagine if the toons in the game could actually feel what was happening to them and react believably to their environment and situation and events?
I’m sure I don’t need to quote the Rules of Acquisition; everyone here should know where this leads if word of such a technique gets out.
Now imagine if the toons in the game could actually feel what was happening to them and react believably to their environment and situation and events?
There have always been those who would pull the wings off flies, stomp on mice, or torture kittens. Setting roosters, fish, or dogs to fight each other to death remains a well-known spectacle in many rural parts of the world. In Shakespeare’s day, Londoners enjoyed watching dogs slowly kill bulls or bears, or be killed by them; in France they set bushels of cats on fire to watch them burn. Public executions and tortures, gladiatorial combat among slaves, and other nonconsensual “blood sports” have been common in human history.
The average individual could not hold private gladiatorial contests, on a whim, at negligible cost. Killing a few innocents by torture, as public spectacle, is significantly less than repeatedly torturing large groups, as private entertainment, for as little as the average individual would have paid for their ticket to the cockfight.
Also, some people reckon the suffering of animals doesn’t matter. They’re wrong, but they wouldn’t care about most of your examples (or at least they would claim it’s because they increase the risk you’ll do the same to humans, which is a whole different kettle of fish.)
Now imagine if the toons in the game could actually feel what was happening to them and react believably to their environment and situation and events?
Now imagine if the toons in the game could actually feel what was happening to them and react believably to their environment and situation and events?
Why do you always have to ask subtly hard questions? I can just see see your smug face, smiling that smug smile of yours with that slight tilt of the head as we squirm trying to rationalize something up quick.
Here’s my crack at it: They don’t have what we currently think is the requisite code structure to “feel” in a meaningful way, but of course we are too confused to articulate the reasons much further.
Thank you, I’m flattered. I have asked Eliezer the same question, not sure if anyone will reply. I hoped that there is a simple answer to this, related to the complexity of information processing in the substrate, like the brain or a computer, but I cannot seem to find any discussions online. Probably using wrong keywords.
related to the complexity of information processing in the substrate
Not directly related. I think it has a lot to do with being roughly isomorphic to how a human thinks, which requires large complexity, but a particular complexity.
When I evaluate such questions IRL, like in the case of helping out an injured bird, or feeding my cat, I notice that my decisions seem to depend on whether I feel empathy for the thing. That is, do my algorithms recognize it as a being, or as a thing.
But then empathy can be hacked or faulty (see for example pictures of african children, cats and small animals, ugly disfigured people, far away people, etc), so I think of a sort of “abstract empathy” that is doing the job of recognizing morally valuable beings without all the bugs of my particular implementation of it.
In other words, I think it’s a matter of moral philosophy, not metaphysics.
Well, I can’t speak for the latest games, but I’ve personally read (some of) the core AI code for the toons in the first game of the series, and there was nothing in there that made a model of said code or attempted any form of what I’d even call “reasoning” throughout. No consciousness or meta-awareness.
By being simulated by the code simulating the game in which they “are”, they could to some extent be said to be “aware” of certain values like their hunger level, if you really want to stretch wide the concept of “awareness”. However, there seems to be no consciousness anywhere to be ‘aware’ (in the anthropomorphized sense) of this.
Since my priors are such that I consider it extremely unlikely that consciousness can exist without self-modeling and even more unlikely that consciousness is nonphysical, I conclude that there is a very low chance that they can be considered a “mind” with a consciousness that is aware of the pain and stimuli they receive.
The overall system is also extremely simple, in relative terms, considering the kind of AI code that’s normally discussed around these parts.
Now imagine if the toons in the game could actually feel what was happening to them and react believably to their environment and situation and events?
The favourite Sim household of my housemate was based on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. Complete with a graveyard constructed in the backyard. Through the judicial application of “remove ladder” from the swimming pool.
Why would them feeling it help them “react believably to their environment and situation and events”? If they’re dumb enough to “run lots of small, stupid, suffering conscious agents on a home computer”, I mean.
Of course, give Moore time and this objection will stop applying.
We’re already pretty close to making game characters have believable reactions, but only through clever scripting and a human deciding that situation X warrants reaction Y, and then applying mathematically-complicated patterns of light and prerecorded sounds onto the output devices of a computer.
If we can successfully implement a system that has that-function-we-refer-to-when-we-say-”consciousness” and that-f-w-r-t-w-w-s-”really feel pain”, then it seems an easy additional step to implement the kind of events triggering the latter function and the kind of outputs from the former function that would be believable and convincing to human players. I may be having faulty algorithmic intuitions here though.
Well, if they were as smart as humans, sure. Even as smart as dogs, maybe. But if they’re running lots of ’em on a home PC, then I must have been mistaken about how smart you have to be for consciousness.
“The Sims” is often heralded as the best-selling videogame of all time, and it attracts players of all ages, races and genders from all across the world and from all walks of life.[citation needed]
Now imagine if the toons in the game could actually feel what was happening to them and react believably to their environment and situation and events?
I’m sure I don’t need to quote the Rules of Acquisition; everyone here should know where this leads if word of such a technique gets out.
There have always been those who would pull the wings off flies, stomp on mice, or torture kittens. Setting roosters, fish, or dogs to fight each other to death remains a well-known spectacle in many rural parts of the world. In Shakespeare’s day, Londoners enjoyed watching dogs slowly kill bulls or bears, or be killed by them; in France they set bushels of cats on fire to watch them burn. Public executions and tortures, gladiatorial combat among slaves, and other nonconsensual “blood sports” have been common in human history.
What’s the difference?
Scale.
The average individual could not hold private gladiatorial contests, on a whim, at negligible cost. Killing a few innocents by torture, as public spectacle, is significantly less than repeatedly torturing large groups, as private entertainment, for as little as the average individual would have paid for their ticket to the cockfight.
Also, some people reckon the suffering of animals doesn’t matter. They’re wrong, but they wouldn’t care about most of your examples (or at least they would claim it’s because they increase the risk you’ll do the same to humans, which is a whole different kettle of fish.)
Not to mention the sizeable fraction of car drives who will swerve in order to hit turtles. What the hell is wrong with my species?
Link is broken.
… seriously? Poor turtles >:-(
Previous discussion of this on LW
It was mentioned recently on Yvain’s blog and a few months ago on LW (can’t find it right now).
How do you know that they don’t?
How do you know that they don’t?
Why do you always have to ask subtly hard questions? I can just see see your smug face, smiling that smug smile of yours with that slight tilt of the head as we squirm trying to rationalize something up quick.
Here’s my crack at it: They don’t have what we currently think is the requisite code structure to “feel” in a meaningful way, but of course we are too confused to articulate the reasons much further.
Thank you, I’m flattered. I have asked Eliezer the same question, not sure if anyone will reply. I hoped that there is a simple answer to this, related to the complexity of information processing in the substrate, like the brain or a computer, but I cannot seem to find any discussions online. Probably using wrong keywords.
Not directly related. I think it has a lot to do with being roughly isomorphic to how a human thinks, which requires large complexity, but a particular complexity.
When I evaluate such questions IRL, like in the case of helping out an injured bird, or feeding my cat, I notice that my decisions seem to depend on whether I feel empathy for the thing. That is, do my algorithms recognize it as a being, or as a thing.
But then empathy can be hacked or faulty (see for example pictures of african children, cats and small animals, ugly disfigured people, far away people, etc), so I think of a sort of “abstract empathy” that is doing the job of recognizing morally valuable beings without all the bugs of my particular implementation of it.
In other words, I think it’s a matter of moral philosophy, not metaphysics.
Information integration theory seems relevant.
Well, I can’t speak for the latest games, but I’ve personally read (some of) the core AI code for the toons in the first game of the series, and there was nothing in there that made a model of said code or attempted any form of what I’d even call “reasoning” throughout. No consciousness or meta-awareness.
By being simulated by the code simulating the game in which they “are”, they could to some extent be said to be “aware” of certain values like their hunger level, if you really want to stretch wide the concept of “awareness”. However, there seems to be no consciousness anywhere to be ‘aware’ (in the anthropomorphized sense) of this.
Since my priors are such that I consider it extremely unlikely that consciousness can exist without self-modeling and even more unlikely that consciousness is nonphysical, I conclude that there is a very low chance that they can be considered a “mind” with a consciousness that is aware of the pain and stimuli they receive.
The overall system is also extremely simple, in relative terms, considering the kind of AI code that’s normally discussed around these parts.
I used to torture my own characters to death a lot, back in the day.
EDIT: Not to mention what I did when playing Roller Coaster Tycoon.
The favourite Sim household of my housemate was based on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. Complete with a graveyard constructed in the backyard. Through the judicial application of “remove ladder” from the swimming pool.
And this is all without any particular malice!
Why would them feeling it help them “react believably to their environment and situation and events”? If they’re dumb enough to “run lots of small, stupid, suffering conscious agents on a home computer”, I mean.
Of course, give Moore time and this objection will stop applying.
We’re already pretty close to making game characters have believable reactions, but only through clever scripting and a human deciding that situation X warrants reaction Y, and then applying mathematically-complicated patterns of light and prerecorded sounds onto the output devices of a computer.
If we can successfully implement a system that has that-function-we-refer-to-when-we-say-”consciousness” and that-f-w-r-t-w-w-s-”really feel pain”, then it seems an easy additional step to implement the kind of events triggering the latter function and the kind of outputs from the former function that would be believable and convincing to human players. I may be having faulty algorithmic intuitions here though.
Well, if they were as smart as humans, sure. Even as smart as dogs, maybe. But if they’re running lots of ’em on a home PC, then I must have been mistaken about how smart you have to be for consciousness.