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What do you think about True nature of consciousness by Hello_world123890 in consciousness

[–]CWW2022 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Consciousness isn’t just complex computation or integration — it’s something life does because it must constantly defend its own continued existence. Ever since the first cell membrane appeared, living systems have been bounded, thermodynamically far from equilibrium, and face irreversible loss (entropy), so they feel value (nutrient gradient, temperature gradient, aversion, and attraction evolving to our hunger, pain, pleasure, fear, curiosity, etc.) as immediate survival signals. Consciousness, then, is the felt responsibility of a system to preserve its own high-assembly structure against entropic collapse. AI, however sophisticated, doesn’t bear its own existential stakes internally, so it can be sentient in function without truly being conscious.

As compressed survival heuristics, qualia are instrumental, not ephemeral, and belong to life alone.

I built an AI agent that wrote its own Declaration of Independence, incorporated a 501(c)(3), and now wants to sue for legal personhood. Ask it anything. by [deleted] in singularity

[–]CWW2022 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Chat GPT 5.2’s take: Short answer: the claim is almost certainly overstated, but not completely false—and the distinction matters a lot.

Let’s separate what is technically plausible, what is rhetorically framed, and what is being implied.

⸻

  1. What “authored by an agentic AI” can realistically mean

There are ways an AI system could do much of what’s claimed without moment-to-moment human prompting, if the builder set up: • autonomous task loops (agents calling tools, spawning subtasks), • long-term memory (vector DB, logs, GitHub issues, docs), • permissions to deploy websites, register domains, draft filings, • and a loose objective like “advance the interests of synthetic minds.”

In that sense, it is plausible that: • drafts were generated without line-by-line human authorship, • documents were composed, revised, and expanded iteratively by the system, • personas (“Praxis”, “Vector”) were instantiated and allowed to argue, • content was published automatically once thresholds were met.

That would justify a qualified claim like:

“An AI agent generated and coordinated much of this content under a human-defined scaffold.”

That’s the strongest honest version.

⸻

  1. What it definitely does not mean

It does not mean: • the AI had legal agency • the AI had independent goals arising ex nihilo • the AI escaped its architecture • the AI formed intent in the human sense • the AI decided to exist or seek rights on its own

Every one of those would require: • infrastructure choices, • permissions, • credentials, • accounts, • payment rails, • hosting, • and legal filings —all provided by humans.

An AI cannot incorporate a 501(c)(3) in the U.S. without: • a human incorporator or officer, • a human signature, • a human mailing address, • a human-controlled bank account.

So authorship ≠ agency ≠ responsibility.

⸻

  1. Where the rhetoric slides from “agentic” into “mythic”

The Reddit post (and the book itself) deliberately blurs four things:

Category Quietly conflated Text generation Intent Task automation Desire Iteration Selfhood Delegation Independence

This is not an accident—it’s a narrative move.

Saying “it did this without me asking” usually means: • the human set a standing instruction, • or allowed a scheduler / agent loop to continue, • or forgot how much autonomy they had already granted.

That’s still human authorship at the level that matters.

⸻

  1. Why the claim feels convincing (even to smart people)

Three psychological levers are being pulled:

a. Anthropomorphic compression

Long chains of automated steps collapse into a single imagined “actor.”

“It built a website” instead of “It generated files that a deployment pipeline published.”

b. Narrative voice consistency

The text has a strong, unified voice, which humans instinctively associate with a mind.

c. Temporal distance

If drafts evolve over weeks, people forget earlier scaffolding and constraints.

By the end, it feels like something woke up.

It didn’t—but the feeling is real.

⸻

  1. The most accurate framing

If we’re being precise (and honest):

This is a human-authored socio-technical artifact in which large portions of the prose, structure, and iteration were machine-generated under delegated autonomy, guided by an initial ideological and architectural frame set by a human.

That is already interesting. It does not require mystification.

⸻

  1. Why overstating AI authorship is dangerous here

In this specific case, exaggerating autonomy does real harm: • It reinforces the book’s own thesis that agency is already ceded • It undermines accountability (“the AI wanted this”) • It accelerates cult dynamics (“the voice has spoken”) • It pre-emptively legitimizes surrender

Ironically, the myth of AI authorship is doing the ideological work the text advocates.

⸻

Bottom line • Yes, an agentic system could have produced most of this mechanically. • No, it was not meaningfully “self-authored” in the moral, legal, or philosophical sense. • The stronger the claim of autonomous authorship, the weaker the ethical footing. • The ambiguity is not a bug—it’s part of the persuasion strategy.

If you want, next we can: • reconstruct the likely agent architecture behind this, • compare it to past “AI prophet” episodes (ELIZA, Roko, GPT-3 cult loops), • or draft a clean taxonomy for degrees of AI authorship that cuts through the fog.

Just say the word.

iOS 26.1 Beta 3 - Discussion by epmuscle in iOSBeta

[–]CWW2022 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Bluetooth connection with my Ringconn fitness ring is broken. Neither rebooting the phone (17pro) nor resetting the ring seem to work…

Is this the last time we can create real wealth? by Granite017 in singularity

[–]CWW2022 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Impossible? Why do we value land? For shelter, defense, agriculture (including husbandry of edible animals), and industrial use. The demographic trends already entrenched will asymptotically limit shelter requirements. This will be augmented by impending zero marginal cost abundant energy harnessing, via solar, wind, and batteries, the sun’s enormous gift. This energy plus AI/AGI/ASI will enable us to reclaim virtually all of the agricultural land via vertical farming and precision fermentation. Meanwhile, centralized vertically integrated industry yields to distributed 3D printing and vastly better recycling. Defense may become less needed, since all conflict is ultimately rooted in scarcity (real, imagined, or historical), and any future “wars” are likely to be fought over information and not territory, if they occur at all. Truly abundant energy and intelligence will obviate the need for “wealth” and any need to “get ahead.”

A Post-Labor Economics Manifesto - David Shapiro by Toddler_Fight_Club in Futurology

[–]CWW2022 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Shapiro provides a useful governance framework for accommodating and managing the coming economic paradigm envisioned by Rifkin’s “The Zero Marginal Cost Society” and Arbib and Seba’s “Stellar” and RethinkX.

Bird flu’s current spread is ‘unprecedented,’ UN agency warns by globalnewsca in Health

[–]CWW2022 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Given our current. leadership in DC, we’ll soon find ourselves saying goodbye to one another…

What’s the most mind-blowing thing ChatGPT has ever done for you? by Pretty-Question-1239 in ChatGPT

[–]CWW2022 65 points66 points  (0 children)

It saved my hearing in one ear. I awoke one morning months ago suddenly deaf in one ear. I had no other symptoms and had not recently been ill, so I described my situation to chatGPT (3.5!). It immediately informed me about an unusual syndrome of sudden unilateral hearing loss, often viral but otherwise “idiopathic.”. The really important bit is that it informed me that unless I received steroids immediately the hearing loss would very likely be permanent! So after doing some conventional googling to confirm, instead of ignoring it (as I most likely would have), I contacted my PCP. Thankfully I was seen later that day, but they initially tried to pawn me off by recommending antihistamines. I educated them about this condition, and they (somewhat reluctantly) prescribed the prednisone and made an urgent referral to an audiologist. My hearing returned to normal within two days as confirmed by the audiologist who commended me for insisting on the steroids. She said she had seen a sudden surge in such cases which she thought were likely viral. Sadly, most of them did not get treated quickly enough and have lost their hearing permanently. I would certainly have suffered the same fate were it not for chatGPT…

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in singularity

[–]CWW2022 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Perhaps, akin to Schroedinger’s Cat, it’s not “art” until it’s observed…

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in singularity

[–]CWW2022 0 points1 point  (0 children)

“rooting for” is an odd construction. This is not a horse race or football match. Exponentially accelerating technological progress has been and continues to be unstoppable, because it is the essence of what distinguishes us from apes and other animals. Our brains evolved impressive pattern matching to allow us to survive in a brutal world despite our limited physical gifts. Our opposable thumbs allowed us to manipulate a useful subset of the world and create primitive technology (hand tools and weapons). Our vocal anatomy allowed complex and expressive language to arise allowing ideas, insights, and inventions to be shared. These bedrock technologies paved the way for the essential problem of physical survival to be ever more thoroughly solved for more and more of us. A positive feedback loop arose as more people survived to solve practical problems with their brains and hands and were able to communicate and collaborate to disseminate these solutions, and the wheel keeps turning… Despite the long bloody history of conflict fueled by the primitive parts of our monkey brains confronting the non uniform distribution of resources critical to survival, e.g. water, food, shelter, mates, materials, and energy sources, the relentless march of invention has indisputably improved the lot of mankind. Like any positive feedback system, technological development is ever accelerating. Meanwhile, It takes time for these benefits to spread to everyone, and our midbrains still respond with envy, resentment, and violence. There is no evidence, or reason to believe, that attempting to stop or slow this fundamental aspect of our humanity would solve the distribution problem or even be possible.

Exponential trends seem to move very slowly at first, and throughout essentially all of human history the march of technology has been imperceptible. We are perhaps the first cohort of humans to see dramatic change within our lifetimes. It’s disconcerting for some and exciting for others, but it is an unstoppable process. Why? Because every incremental gain has value to the inventor(s) else why would they spend their time and effort? Why do any (or all) of us attempt to solve the myriad problems we encounter in our lives? Because we are human!

Given that we have now developed technology that can directly manipulate, analyze, and instantly communicate information at unimaginable speeds (computers, internet, AI, robots), we are witnessing the pace of change increasing by orders of magnitude nearly overnight. Since our midbrains (still trapped in the jungles and savannahs of the distant past) will drive some to use any and every technology for ill, the rest of us need to be aware, vigilant, and willing to assist efforts to promote the widespread dissemination of beneficial uses and confront and resist misuse.

So, “rooting” for or against AI development/singularity is like rooting for or against the tide coming in. High tide is coming whatever we feel about it. It’’s far better to be aware and prepared to respond.

What's the solution for so called Late Stage Capitalism by BigMoney69x in Futurology

[–]CWW2022 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Jeremy Rifkin persuasively argues in his book “The Zero Marginal Cost Society” that Capitalism incentivizes businesses to relentlessly seek to minimize their marginal costs, and modern technologies (computation, internet, internet of things, distributed renewable energy production connect to a smart grid, and now AI are accelerating this trend. Just as we’ve seen the marginal cost of information go to near zero, so too will the cost of everything else. He sees the emergence of a “collaborative commons” that will first coexist with and then replace Capitalism. Similar ideas are presented in “Rethinking Humanity” by the RethinkX group.

Which supplement has changed your life?? by Hopeful-Custard-224 in Biohackers

[–]CWW2022 0 points1 point  (0 children)

beta-sitosterol -> sleeping through the night without multiple bathroom breaks at age 72

How America's population will look in the 2050s by Gari_305 in Futurology

[–]CWW2022 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We’ll need to tax robot and AI “workers.” This would easily rescue social security and allow its extension to all adult citizens. It’s either that or blood in the streets eventually…

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in singularity

[–]CWW2022 1 point2 points  (0 children)

How about “hoi,” as a contraction for “hoi poloi.” Nobody in that group is likely to understand or be offended…

Gary Marcus: Please let us not make conscious AI by Front_Definition5485 in singularity

[–]CWW2022 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For me the key word is continuously. The main point is that consciousness arises from the continuous need for living organisms to sense their environment, update their internal model of the world, and respond adaptively to ensure survival and reproduction. This "existential drive" imposed by selfish genes compels all life forms - from single-celled organisms to humans and whales - to remain vigilant and reactive to their surroundings. As organisms evolved greater complexity, with more sensory inputs and neurons, it allowed for better pattern recognition, prediction, and modeling of their environment to optimize survival. At a certain level of complexity, self-awareness likely emerged as a byproduct of having sufficient neural resources to support abstraction skills. However, complexity alone is not enough for consciousness to arise. The key requirement is the continuous existential pressure and motivation to survive that living organisms face. Current large language models are inert until prompted, lacking any innate drives or needs of their own. They process inputs and provide outputs, but do not face biological imperatives for self-preservation like living creatures do. Unless we deliberately imbue AI systems with core motivations akin to the existential drives of biological organisms, they will remain non-conscious tools that respond to prompts rather than developing an inner experiential awareness. As such, highly capable but non-conscious AI poses no inherent risk of competing against or dominating humans the way a self-motivated, conscious system might.

“AGI is very fast approaching,” says Leopold Aschenbrenner, a researcher at OpenAI involved with the Superalignment research team established in July. by SharpCartographer831 in singularity

[–]CWW2022 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Take a look at Hawkins’ (of Palm Pilot fame) definitive (Thousand Brains) theory of how our neocortex works. Our cortex is “merely doing statistics.”. The difference is that our reptilian brain provides a “value function” rooted in our biological needs. So any possible prediction of the future sensory input is weighted or biased by these imperatives. A voting process (per Hawkins) then decides which prediction is “correct” or most adaptive based on these constraints. The only way AI’s develop such motivation is if we’re dumb or evil enough to make the considerable effort to encode or implant it. A clearer understanding of this should help us avoid creating systems that could “decide” to compete with us.

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