[FRIAM] GPT-3 and the chinese room

[Jon Zingale]

>From my perspective, it is helpful to consider a larger history of the
consciousness debate. In what could be considered
*the beginning of theend* of African slavery in the west, natural
philosophers would seek to
find in the physiology of black men structures to explain their
*inferiority*
and in some extreme cases their *inhumanity*. Neal Stephenson, in his
*BaroqueCycle* (~)trilogy, caricatures *how embarrassing white people **be*
when in the
pursuit of the consciousness question. In the novel, a Nigerian born
linguist named Dappa attempts, through the power of words and ideas, to
argue for the freedom of enslaved people in the west (circa the 1660s).
Meanwhile, many spectators look on and muse about how nearly human Dappa's
arguments sound, but ultimately *must not be confused* with the utterances
of a *reasoning being*. Stephenson highlights the cruelty and tyranny that
enterprises like these can create. The Turing test generally reeks of
this sort of pursuit. Rather than beginning with the assumption that the
other experiences and then wondering what that experience is like, we set up
an endless procession of tests which on the one hand we hope will *converge*
in the limit to understanding, and which on the other will *entertain* us
in the meantime. The Turing test has appeared to me to be a horrible
diversion from the discovery of more promising methodologies. One day,
perhaps there will be a construction that passes all acceptable Turing
tests, and this day will be a sad day because we will likely still have no
answers to our initial investigations regarding what it is to be conscious
and what it is to *experience as another does*. Perhaps, the question will
be considered solved for *all time* and the potential needed to reopen
the topic exceedingly expensive. Somewhere, Minsky expressed remorse for
how some of his results in the field of AI had managed to close the general
AI question for decades, ultimately shifting the pursuit away from the hard
question and instead towards the pursuit of novel gadgets. In the spirit
of EricC's comments about the distinction of surface tension and PH, if
consciousness is a thing, then it should be so whether or not we all agree.
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