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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 9090363" data-attributes="member: 7023840">I think that one of the reasons we are getting a certain type of pushback ... not the issues related to ethics, or to jobs ... but the specific pushback that, "Oh, they are just copying stuff. WE THINK!"  ... is that at a very deep level, people are uncomfortable because these AIs call into question not whether or not they are thinking, but whether we are.If you keep up with neuroscience (as I am sure some of us have), you know that there's a lot of well-known material out there that should give us pause. For example, there is a LOT of research that shows that a lot of the information that our bodies receive (sensory information) is never consciously perceived, yet nevertheless affects how we think. More importantly, our bodies can, and will, react to things before we can consciously act- and then our brain will "fill in" the idea that we acted after we already acted.In other areas, it has long been known that our brains have localized (and specialized) areas to process certain things that we think of as conscious thought. An easy one is facial recognition. We like to think that when we see someone, we (as in some consciousness) recognizes that person; that's not true. Instead, there's an area of the brain devoted to facial recognition; if it gets damaged (as can happen during a stroke or injury) people lose the ability to identify other people. In some cases, damage to the area can result in Capgras syndrome (the belief that people you know have been replaced by an identical impostor) because you still have the ability to recognize people, but have lost the ability to form the connection to the emotional response.Thinking about these things ... thinking about thought, is not a comfortable experience for many people. When confronted with the latest generation of AI that can accomplish many things that were once in our wheelhouse, then, a lot of people are forced to react with a kneejerk reaction-Yeah, whatever. BUT THEY AREN'T THINKING!That's a comfortable dodge. Because it assumes the answer. What is it that "they" aren't doing? Well, it's what we do! But ... what is it that we do, exactly? This doesn't answer questions, by the way. There is a difference between training a neural net on gigantic troves of information that we produced, as opposed to a person "learning" by experience and sensory information. But as we are seeing these models advance quickly, the questions people ask themselves can get more uncomfortable. What is "understanding" a connection, after all? Isn't that just having another connection?IMO.</blockquote>

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