@TheoriesOfEverything: “Daniel Dennett on immortality”
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/18
I could be uploaded. That is possible in principle. I could be immortal by a complete software copy of myself. And then that could be reproduced. I could have many super clones. This is all possible in principle. For LLMs, it’s possible, in fact, right now. I could…
@TheoriesOfEverything: “Daniel Dennett on immortality” (December 27, 2023)
Dennett’s basic premise is, in fact, probably correct. Because the replication of a mind amounts to an engineering problem. If one can figure out the engineering down to the relevant scales of a human mind, then this could be processed, separately.
It, obviously, would not be the original person, but a copy of the person, within a margin of error, at a particular time. The issue would not be the viability of this.
The major issue is to make this feasible, as he says “in principle.” On LLMs, he is, in a way, equating them to a human mind, but this seems more than wrong but entirely so.
It’s wrong in the sense that we don’t know if this LLMs, as models, have a sense of a self. They construct language and exist unembodied without valence. I have to disagree with the late atheist philosopher on LLMs as comparable to a “copy of myself” in a person’s case.
However, certainly, the basic premise of replication — copy and paste the code essentially — is correct.
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