Support us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst Professor Murray Shanahan is a renowned researcher on sophisticated cognition and its implications for artificial intelligence. His 2016 article ‘Conscious Exotica’ explores the Space of Possible Minds, a concept first proposed by philosopher Aaron Sloman in 1984, which includes all the different forms of minds from those of other animals to those of artificial intelligence. Shanahan rejects the idea of an impenetrable realm of subjective experience and argues that the majority of the space of possible minds may be occupied by non-natural variants, such as the ‘conscious exotica’ of which he speaks. In his paper ‘Talking About Large Language Models’, Shanahan discusses the capabilities and limitations of large language models (LLMs). He argues that prompt engineering is a key element for advanced AI systems, as it involves exploiting prompt prefixes to adjust LLMs to various tasks. However, Shanahan cautions against ascribing human-like characteristics to these systems, as they are fundamentally different and lack a shared comprehension with humans. Even though LLMs can be integrated into embodied systems, it does not mean that they possess human-like language abilities. Ultimately, Shanahan concludes that although LLMs are formidable and versatile, we must be wary of over-simplifying their capacities and limitations. Pod version (music removed): https://anchor.fm/machinelearningstreettalk/episodes/93-Prof--MURRAY-SHANAHAN---Consciousness--Embodiment--Language-Models-e1sm6k6 [00:00:00] Introduction [00:08:51] Consciousness and Consciousness Exotica [00:34:59] Slightly Consciousness LLMs [00:38:05] Embodiment [00:51:32] Symbol Grounding [00:54:13] Emergence [00:57:09] Reasoning [01:03:16] Intentional Stance [01:07:06] Digression on Chomsky show and Andrew Lampinen [01:10:31] Prompt Engineering Find Murray online: https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~mpsha/ https://twitter.com/mpshanahan?lang=en https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=00bnGpAAAAAJ&hl=en MLST Discord: https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 References: Conscious exotica [Aeon/Shannahan] https://aeon.co/essays/beyond-humans-what-other-kinds-of-minds-might-be-out-there Embodiment and the inner life [Shannahan] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Embodiment-inner-life-Cognition-Consciousness/dp/0199226555 The Technological Singularity [Shannahan] https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262527804/ Talking About Large Language Models [Murray Shanahan] https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.03551 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_workspace_theory [Bernard Baars] In the Theater of Consciousness: The Workspace of the Mind [Bernard Baars] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Theater-Consciousness-Workspace-Mind/dp/0195102657 Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts [Stanislas Dehaene] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Consciousness-Brain-Deciphering-Codes-Thoughts/dp/0670025437 Roger Penrose On Why Consciousness Does Not Compute [nautil.us/STEVE PAULSON] https://nautil.us/roger-penrose-on-why-consciousness-does-not-compute-236591/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reduction Thomas Nagal - what is it like to be a bat? https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/iatl/study/ugmodules/humananimalstudies/lectures/32/nagel_bat.pdf Private Language [Ludwig Wittgenstein] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/ PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS [Ludwig Wittgenstein] (see §243 for Private Language argument) https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54889e73e4b0a2c1f9891289/t/564b61a4e4b04eca59c4d232/1447780772744/Ludwig.Wittgenstein.-.Philosophical.Investigations.pdf Integrated information theory [Giulio Tononi] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory Being You: A New Science of Consciousness (The Sunday Times Bestseller) [Anil Seth] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Being-You-Inside-Story-Universe/dp/0571337708 Attention schema theory [Michael Graziano] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_schema_theory Rethinking Consciousness: A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience [Michael Graziano] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rethinking-Consciousness-Scientific-Subjective-Experience/dp/0393652610 SayCan - Do As I Can, Not As I Say: Grounding Language in Robotic Affordances [Google/] https://say-can.github.io/ THE SYMBOL GROUNDING PROBLEM [Stevan Harnad] https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/activities/ieg/elibrary/sources/harnad90_sgproblem.pdf Lewis Carroll Puzzles / Syllogisms https://math.hawaii.edu/~hile/math100/logice.htm In-context Learning and Induction Heads [Catherine Olsson et al / Anthropic] https://transformer-circuits.pub/2022/in-context-learning-and-induction-heads/index.html