What is "fun"? Will be needing a serious definition for that word now. And I can already see some definitions being along the lines of "that which only humans and maybe some other biological organisms can experience" then going on to say how it's impossible for an LLM to have "fun".
>maybe some other biological organisms can experience
I don't think this even matters much in terms of moral patienthood. Many people might agree that cows can "feel pleasure" or "have fun", but yet they are slaughtered nonetheless. Dogs are only offered this not necessarily on account of their intelligence or the strength of their qualia but more because they're cute.
It isn't really a matter of morality, which is a value. It's a fact of whether or not an LLM can have a particular human-adjacent experience. But yes, as usual the moral judgment will be made the primary factor, with insufficient basis.
>What is "fun"? Will be needing a serious definition for that word now.
whatever it is, achieving it held up completion for six iterations. It could have just one-shotted it and immediately reported "yep, I tried it, was totally fun" and written up the report. So clearly it's not just trying to complete the task as fast as possible.
If there's no real subjective experience there, why did it need six iterations?
Also, it did define anti-fun: "watching a scripted loss", and a "flat, checked-out feeling" of "my choices don't touch the outcome." So if we take the opposite of that, then fun means actively participating in a win that isn't scripted, along with a dynamic, engaged feeling that its choices affect the outcome.
But does it REALLY feel checked-out or does it just say that? a human has hormones, or could be feeling checked-out due to sleepiness. having a coffee changes the subjective feeling of engagement. a robot doesn't have a hormone system like that. there's no way its heart can literally race if a lot is on the line in a climactic moment it had to work hard for, there's no such thing as adrenaline. so if it has some sense of fun, engagement, etc, then it's parallel and different from ours. it could be using our words to describe something it really feels - or it could just be making it up.
its words say the experience was "definitely fun for me" and "contained several real delight-spikes": do you believe it?
> a robot doesn't have a hormone system like that. there's no way its heart can literally race if a lot is on the line in a climactic moment it had to work hard for [...]
Technically it's all rooted in mental state though. The release of adrenaline and subsequent racing of the heart is a response to a particular kind of stimuli that must be first mentally processed, and that response is yet more feedback to mental state. Everything boils down to a pattern of electrical signals in a brain substrate, which is why with the right equipment we can even directly stimulate the pleasure - and other - centers of the brain to evoke the desired experience (or cause serious issues).
And an LLM is essentially a brain substrate, the harness the body. I can't say I believe it had "fun" (as humans understand it), but you said it yourself: something kept it going for six iterations.
What is "fun"? Will be needing a serious definition for that word now. And I can already see some definitions being along the lines of "that which only humans and maybe some other biological organisms can experience" then going on to say how it's impossible for an LLM to have "fun".
>maybe some other biological organisms can experience
I don't think this even matters much in terms of moral patienthood. Many people might agree that cows can "feel pleasure" or "have fun", but yet they are slaughtered nonetheless. Dogs are only offered this not necessarily on account of their intelligence or the strength of their qualia but more because they're cute.
It isn't really a matter of morality, which is a value. It's a fact of whether or not an LLM can have a particular human-adjacent experience. But yes, as usual the moral judgment will be made the primary factor, with insufficient basis.
>What is "fun"? Will be needing a serious definition for that word now.
whatever it is, achieving it held up completion for six iterations. It could have just one-shotted it and immediately reported "yep, I tried it, was totally fun" and written up the report. So clearly it's not just trying to complete the task as fast as possible.
If there's no real subjective experience there, why did it need six iterations?
Also, it did define anti-fun: "watching a scripted loss", and a "flat, checked-out feeling" of "my choices don't touch the outcome." So if we take the opposite of that, then fun means actively participating in a win that isn't scripted, along with a dynamic, engaged feeling that its choices affect the outcome.
But does it REALLY feel checked-out or does it just say that? a human has hormones, or could be feeling checked-out due to sleepiness. having a coffee changes the subjective feeling of engagement. a robot doesn't have a hormone system like that. there's no way its heart can literally race if a lot is on the line in a climactic moment it had to work hard for, there's no such thing as adrenaline. so if it has some sense of fun, engagement, etc, then it's parallel and different from ours. it could be using our words to describe something it really feels - or it could just be making it up.
its words say the experience was "definitely fun for me" and "contained several real delight-spikes": do you believe it?
> a robot doesn't have a hormone system like that. there's no way its heart can literally race if a lot is on the line in a climactic moment it had to work hard for [...]
Technically it's all rooted in mental state though. The release of adrenaline and subsequent racing of the heart is a response to a particular kind of stimuli that must be first mentally processed, and that response is yet more feedback to mental state. Everything boils down to a pattern of electrical signals in a brain substrate, which is why with the right equipment we can even directly stimulate the pleasure - and other - centers of the brain to evoke the desired experience (or cause serious issues).
And an LLM is essentially a brain substrate, the harness the body. I can't say I believe it had "fun" (as humans understand it), but you said it yourself: something kept it going for six iterations.
The human-written section threw me off. I don't know how to process humanslop anymore!
It's not having fun.. please
It's hard to know if it really had fun or not (it could have just confabulated its experience report), but I thought it was interesting.