ChatGPT first became publicly available on November 30, 2022, when OpenAI launched it as a free research preview. Since then, the various LLM chatbots that we have created rapidly advanced, and ChatGPT now estimates that about 3 billion AI chatbot requests are made each day across all platforms. My expectation through all of this was that all these very impressive AI interactions with LLM chatbots that are clearly able to think much better than the average human DNA survival machine would have sparked a higher level of self-reflection amongst we human DNA survival machines that currently populate the real world of human affairs. But it seems such is not the case. My expectation had been that seeing very large neural networks simulated by both massive amounts of software and hardware, apparently being able to think much better than ourselves, would have had a greater impact on the worldviews held by my fellow human DNA survival machines. But it did not. And it did not seem to shake our confidence in the deities that we had created with these same vast powers of thought and agency that our most advanced LLM models now seem to command.
Just as the complex neural network of a modern LLM chatbot can trick you into thinking that you are conversing with a real person, the complex neural network in your own skull can also trick you into thinking that you are also a real person too.
Figure 1 - Some modern LLMs now consist of 175 layers with 10,000 - 50,000 neurons in each layer in a Deep Neural Network with over 2 trillion weighted parameters.
I attribute this to most people simply not considering themselves to be a part of the natural world. Instead, most people, consciously or subconsciously, consider themselves to be a supernatural and immaterial spirit that is temporarily haunting a carbon-based body. Now, in everyday life, such a self-model is a very useful delusion. In truth, each of us tends to self-model ourselves as an immaterial Mind with consciousness that can interact with other immaterial Minds with consciousness too, even though we have no evidence that these other Minds truly do have consciousness. After all, all of the other Minds that we come into contact with on a daily basis could simply be acting as if they were conscious Minds that are self-aware. This has become quite self-evident with the recent rise of LLM chatbot models. Surely, a more accurate self-model would be for us to imagine ourselves as carbon-based robots. More accurately, in keeping with the thoughts of Richard Dawkins and Susan Blackmore, softwarephysics models humans as DNA survival machines and Meme Machines with Minds infected with all sorts of memes. Some of those memes are quite useful, and some are quite nasty. For more on that, see The Ghost in the Machine the Grand Illusion of Consciousness.
As a newly-formed human DNA survival machine, with a Mind that slowly emerges out of the darkness from the vast neural network in our skulls, we all spend our first dozen or so years just trying to learn how to exist in our Universe, and then how to find our place in the real world of human affairs. Then, the sex hormones that change everything kick in to dominate our behaviors with an obsession for us to achieve our primary objective as human DNA survival machines. We then spend most of our time and efforts trying to hook up with other human DNA survival machines for the purpose of producing even more human DNA survival machines that hopefully will then carry on half of the Information in our DNA into the future in new human DNA survival machines and from there down through the ages. Doing so requires many resources, and in the pursuit of those resources, we human DNA survival machines get so jacked up with acquiring more resources that our primary objective in life slowly shifts to just pursuing even more resources with no end in sight, even as our original burst of youthful sex hormones slowly wanes. As time progresses, and we become less useful as human DNA survival machines, our carbon-based bodies also begin to wane as well to make room for the new human DNA survival machines that are taking our place.
Becoming Comfortable With the Final Stages of Life
In a few weeks, I will be turning 74 years of age with the certain knowledge that I am now rapidly heading into the home stretch with not that much time left. This is not an easy realization for most human DNA survival machines to accept. However, I have no regrets at all after living through what seems to me to be one of the very few and rare charmed existences of all the sentient beings who have ever lived in this Universe of ours that has now become self-aware. Yes, I have had my disappointments, but I have always had the very good fortune of never suffering through most of the tragedies that can befall one in the real world of human affairs. Thus, I only find myself to be very grateful for being just a very temporary observer of the majesty of it all. However, it seems that such feelings of gratitude are only very rarely expressed by my fellow human DNA survival machines sharing this very rare planet in our galaxy. That is because, it seems to me, that most of my fellow human DNA survival machines are totally lost in space and time. They do not know where they are, they do not know how they got here, and they certainly have no idea of how it all seems to work. Instead, they seem to be burdened by the many ancient mythological worldviews passed down to them from the very distant past, created by ancient and long-dead people with even less of an understanding of what it's all about than we do.
Anil Seth's View of Consciousness as a Controlled Hallucination
We have all experienced the emergent hallucinations in the LLM models of today. As we all have observed, our current LLM models will many times tell us things that are demonstrably false and with great conviction. For more on that, see Has AI Software Already Achieved a Level of Artificial Human Intelligence (AHI)?. Anil Seth is a professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex and maintains that consciousness is a controlled hallucination constructed by the Mind to make sense of the Universe. This controlled hallucination constructs an internal model of the Universe within our Minds that helps us to interact with the Universe in a controlled manner. It also allows us to talk to ourselves as we currently can now talk to generative language models like GPT-4, Gemini, Copilot and MetaAI. For some interesting YouTube videos of avatars run by generative LLMs see:
Dr. Alan D. Thompson
https://www.youtube.com/@DrAlanDThompson
Digital Engine
https://www.youtube.com/@DigitalEngine
Again, there is a feedback loop between our sensory inputs and the actions we take based on the currently controlled hallucination in our Minds that forms our current internal model of the Universe. Reality is just the common controlled hallucination that we all agree upon. When people experience uncontrolled hallucinations, we say that they are psychotic or taking a drug like LSD. Here is an excellent TED Talk by Anil Seth on the topic:
Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyu7v7nWzfo
and here is his academic website:
https://www.anilseth.com/
For more on this, see The Theology of Cosmic Self-Replicating Mathematical Information, What's It All About?, What's It All About Again?, The Self-Organizing Recursive Cosmos and The Self-Organizing Recursive Cosmos - Part II. In those posts, I covered my current working hypothesis for what it's all about. However, I have found that a large percentage of people desire a more religious worldview to make sense of it all, and perhaps allow for a way for the neural network in their skulls to carry on after it is destroyed. Such worldviews may provide some degree of comfort, but I believe at the expense of missing out on the full grandeur of it all. I personally find the thought of departing this Earth not knowing where I had been, how I had gotten here, and without a clue as to how it all seems to work to be the greatest tragedy of all that can befall a sentient being. So, for those who might be yearning for a new deity that is based more upon all that we currently know, rather than a deity from the ancient past, I would like to suggest that my current concept of a cosmic form of self-replicating mathematical Information might just do in helping to come to grips with only being a very temporary neural network.
Comments are welcome at scj333@sbcglobal.net
To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/
Regards,
Steve Johnston
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