We have big brains for exactly one reason only: bigger brains bestowed reproductive success upon our species.

Evolution doesn't give a shit about the meaning of 'consciousness'. It just pushed us farther and farther along a trajectory that led to modern humans (and other animals).

This take suggests, then, that consciousness might be an epiphenomenon -- an aspect of the system that comes about outside of the pressure to reproduce and thrive. It arises unbidden, and we don't have any a-priori information as to its purpose or effect on reproductive success.

Put another way: we have a correlation (the smartest things seem to be conscious) but not causation. Consciousness may arise naturally in any system above some intelligence threshold. Perhaps it arises early in the evolutionary cycle, and does in fact have an impact on species success. We really have no way of knowing what is the chicken vs the egg (Smart things become conscious, or consciousness promotes intelligence). Or maybe some smart things are conscious and others are not.

Looking at this from an AI perspective, in some sense it doesn't matter which scenario is true, if all you care about is results. The AI equivalent of "Shut up and compute" (riffing on Feynman's "Shut up and calculate").

Where this gets tricky is when we haul in the baggage of ethics and morality into the picture. Is it OK if our AI system is treated poorly by human standards? If it is conscious, does that imply an ability to suffer, and/or to feel pleasure? If the answer is yes, does that not make the case for considering their moral status?

In the end, we need to decide if the evidence points to AI as being a form of "philosophical zombies", to which we need not attribute moral status, or they are like us -- presuming we are not zombies ourselves!

I finally had a brain fart in the umpteenth interview and was not offered a job.

Cray cray

Practical ramifications: * Some of my 'black' shirts are blue when it's sunny * Popular desktop themes (solarized dark) have text that is completely unreadable

Will this tendency to reinvent the wheel survive the transition to AI-driven software development? What would be the impetus, when everyone is programming in English (or some other human language), and the 'compiler' has a higher IQ than the 'programmer'? Note that any new language will by definition not be in the corpus of information any frontier model was trained on.

I feel (fear?) we are basically locked in to a world where C, C++, Rust, Go, Python and Javascript will be the assembly code we compile to, and there will be no path or even raison dêtre to improve or innovate in the field of programming languages as we understand them today.

What I do suspect might happen is the AI's themselves propose changes to the base languages that improve their ability to code for us.

Strange times ahead.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47041886

Points: 4

# Comments: 6

When I write piece of code that is elegant, efficient, and -- "right" -- I get a dopamine rush, like I finished a difficult crossword puzzle. Seems like that joy is going to go away, replaced by something more akin to developing a good relatioship with a slightly quirky colleague who happens to be real good (and fast) at some things -- especially things management likes, like N LOC per week -- but this colleague sucks up to everyone, always thinks they have the right answer, often seems to understand things on a superficial level, and oh -- works for $200 / month...

Shades of outsourcing to other continents...

But the insights gleaned from that battle are (for Claude) lost forever as soon as I start on a new task.

The way LLM's (fail to) handle memory and in-situ learning (beyond prompt engineering and working within the context window) is just clearly deficient compared to how human minds work.

Another kvetch: using car seats in taxis. Maybe it's different now with Uber but 20 years ago the drivers hated it because you have to find the seat belt and secure the car seat...

Switch to Claude (IMSHO, I think Gemini is considered on par). Use a proper coding tool, cutting & pasting from the chat window is so last week.

Another way of looking at it: there are 4 states going in (0 or 1 on 2 pushers) but there are only 2 states of the 'memory' contraption, so you lose a bit on every iteration (like classical Boolean circuits)

Exactly wrong. See the halting problem