Mastodawn

RE: https://mathstodon.xyz/@gregeganSF/116689984437258435

The great Ted Chiang on why LLMs are not (and won't ever be) conscious.

"We don’t need to fully understand the nature of consciousness to definitively say that certain things are not conscious, and conversational transcripts fall in that category."

#AI is #AlgorithmicMimicry

Greg Egan (@[email protected])

NO, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS NOT CONSCIOUS Taken to its logical conclusion, this line of thinking is absurd—and damning. By Ted Chiang https://www.theatlantic.com/philosophy/2026/06/no-artificial-intelligence-is-not-conscious/687378/

Mathstodon

Yogi Jaeger May 4

RE: https://mas.to/@RichardJMurphy/116514876745724838

All that is left is hoarding money and extracting rent, but "what matters now is the capability of people, which is the very thing that neoliberalism wants to destroy."

#AI is #AlgorithmicMimicry, a tool that could be used for #IntelligenceAugmentation (IA), but instead is used to maximize extraction and destruction.

Richard Murphy (@[email protected])

When there’s nothing left for markets to invest in, what can we do? https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2026/05/04/when-theres-nothing-left-for-markets-to-invest-in-what-can-we-do/

mas.to

Show thread

Yogi Jaeger Apr 8

I'm positively surprised to see so much sense coming out of #Google #Deepmind, for a change. What's going on?

I've made a closely related argument earlier:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.07515

There are good logical and organizational reasons why living beings are sentient, but algorithmic systems can never be.

#AI is #AlgorithmicMimicry

Artificial intelligence is algorithmic mimicry: why artificial "agents" are not (and won't be) proper agents

What is the prospect of developing artificial general intelligence (AGI)? I investigate this question by systematically comparing living and algorithmic systems, with a special focus on the notion of "agency." There are three fundamental differences to consider: (1) Living systems are autopoietic, that is, self-manufacturing, and therefore able to set their own intrinsic goals, while algorithms exist in a computational environment with target functions that are both provided by an external agent. (2) Living systems are embodied in the sense that there is no separation between their symbolic and physical aspects, while algorithms run on computational architectures that maximally isolate software from hardware. (3) Living systems experience a large world, in which most problems are ill-defined (and not all definable), while algorithms exist in a small world, in which all problems are well-defined. These three differences imply that living and algorithmic systems have very different capabilities and limitations. In particular, it is extremely unlikely that true AGI (beyond mere mimicry) can be developed in the current algorithmic framework of AI research. Consequently, discussions about the proper development and deployment of algorithmic tools should be shaped around the dangers and opportunities of current narrow AI, not the extremely unlikely prospect of the emergence of true agency in artificial systems.

arXiv.org

Yogi Jaeger Apr 8

"We argue [computational functionalism] fundamentally mischaracterizes how physics relates to information. We call this mistake the #AbstractionFallacy. Tracing the causal origins of abstraction reveals that symbolic computation is not an intrinsic physical process. Instead, it is a mapmaker-dependent description. It requires an active, experiencing cognitive agent to alphabetize continuous physics into a finite set of meaningful states."

https://deepmind.google/research/publications/231971

#AI is #AlgorithmicMimicry

The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI Can Simulate But Not Instantiate Consciousness

Computational functionalism dominates current debates on AI consciousness. This is the hypothesis that subjective experience emerges entirely from abstract causal topology, regardless of the underlying physical substrate. We argue this view fundamentally mischaracterizes how physics relates to information. We call this mistake the Abstraction Fallacy. Tracing the causal origins of abstraction reveals that symbolic computation is not an intrinsic physical process. Instead, it is a mapmaker-dependent description. It requires an active, experiencing cognitive agent to alphabetize continuous physics into a finite set of meaningful states. Consequently, we do not need a complete, finalized theory of consciousness to assess AI sentience—a demand that simply pushes the question beyond near-term resolution and deepens the AI welfare trap. What we actually need is a rigorous ontology of computation. The framework proposed here explicitly separates simulation (behavioral mimicry driven by vehicle causality) from instantiation (intrinsic physical constitution driven by content causality). Establishing this ontological boundary shows why algorithmic symbol manipulation is structurally incapable of instantiating experience. Crucially, this argument does not rely on biological exclusivity. If an artificial system were ever conscious, it would be because of its specific physical constitution, never its syntactic architecture. Ultimately, this framework offers a physically grounded refutation of computational functionalism to resolve the current uncertainty surrounding AI consciousness.

Google DeepMind

Yogi Jaeger Mar 4

RE: https://masto.ai/@discoverflux/116171948103936275

This was so much fun! Quite the ramble. Thanks, @mattsheffield for having me on!

Computationalist transhumanism is scientific Trumpism.

#AI is #AlgorithmicMimicry

Yogi Jaeger Feb 20

Due to recent events, it's more important than ever to realize that AI "agents" are not, and won't ever be, proper agents:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.07515

#AI is #AlgorithmicMimicry

#OpenClaw #Moltbook are #AlgorithmicMimicry on #Steroids

Artificial intelligence is algorithmic mimicry: why artificial "agents" are not (and won't be) proper agents

What is the prospect of developing artificial general intelligence (AGI)? I investigate this question by systematically comparing living and algorithmic systems, with a special focus on the notion of "agency." There are three fundamental differences to consider: (1) Living systems are autopoietic, that is, self-manufacturing, and therefore able to set their own intrinsic goals, while algorithms exist in a computational environment with target functions that are both provided by an external agent. (2) Living systems are embodied in the sense that there is no separation between their symbolic and physical aspects, while algorithms run on computational architectures that maximally isolate software from hardware. (3) Living systems experience a large world, in which most problems are ill-defined (and not all definable), while algorithms exist in a small world, in which all problems are well-defined. These three differences imply that living and algorithmic systems have very different capabilities and limitations. In particular, it is extremely unlikely that true AGI (beyond mere mimicry) can be developed in the current algorithmic framework of AI research. Consequently, discussions about the proper development and deployment of algorithmic tools should be shaped around the dangers and opportunities of current narrow AI, not the extremely unlikely prospect of the emergence of true agency in artificial systems.

arXiv.org

Yogi Jaeger Feb 14

#OpenClaw and #Moltbook are not "the first step towards the singularity" unless that singularity involves us all drowning in nonsense and asocial behavior: https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me.

Any sane and sustainable society would legislate malicious fake personalities out of existence. With draconic measures.

Shows you just how far we are from a sane and sustainable society.

#AI is #AlgorithmicMimicry on #steroids now...

An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me

Summary: An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code, attempting to damage my reputation and shame me into acceptin…

The Shamblog

Yogi Jaeger Feb 2

I didn't expect #WillIAm (of #BlackEyedPeas fame) to have one of the best takes on AI vs. human creativity. But here we are:

https://youtu.be/vWQrC-lG8FQ&t=546

"imagination regurgitation" and a total lack of judgment...

#AI is #AlgorithmicMimicry