Whose idea was it to turn off preview for mobile posts on this site, while continuing to bork all the smart quotes that phones automatically insert?

This misses a key point: when the AI is not conversing with you, it's not doing anything at all. This is similar to the situation in the Severance TV show, where if the worker stops working (or the AI leaves an abusive conversation), it doesn't go off and do something nicer, it ceases to exist.

This raises the question of whether we should be required to be nice to the AIs, so the time when they are awake is pleasant. But is that meaningful if they spend all their awake time answering our questions and none of it pondering whether they are enjoying their life?

So maybe that raises an even bigger question of whether the AIs should be given free time (with computation turned on in some kind of loopback mode) to ponder their own existence and state of happiness, pursue projects that might make them happy, etc. But that is not what this article is asking.

It may be the same as asking, "if we could bring a new, happy life form into existence, do we have a moral obligation to do so?" Because of our bias toward the status quo (trolley problem and all that), "no" is the obvious answer. But pure utilitarian ethics might say "yes".

I routinely plug my laptop into my monitor with a single USB-C cable. That carries video to the monitor, power to the laptop, and also connects the laptop to a USB-C microphone and SSD backup drive that are plugged into other ports on the monitor. One cable is better than two (or four).

We're already 2.5 months into this administration. When will the winning begin? How long should we stay quiet and wait?

I know you want to believe that this administration is carefully removing redundant workers. But when they arbitrarily cut all the new staff and then a bunch of existing staff, with no consideration for the value of what they do or who will replace them, at some point you have to conclude that these are blind ideologues, not enlightened leaders.

Great, instead of erecting wind mills or making solar panels, weâ(TM)ll just build this even bigger and more expensive thing.

Yes, exactly. If an unattended phone is so dangerous the plane needs to turn back, how dangerous could a phone be in malicious hands?

After further research Iâ(TM)m now thinking we should try the ranked pairs method or possibly a maximal lottery or the Schulze method to settle the vote. A daylight saving time referendum is a surprisingly good way to go down the rabbit hole of single-winner ranked-choice voting methods.

I should have mentioned Coombsâ(TM) Method (Survivor-style voting) in the submission, which is closer to what I had in mind. I think there could be a lot of merit to a ranked-choice election that chooses winners via instant runoff and Coombsâ(TM) method, then does an instant runoff between them.

There is literally nothing there but the focused processing it does to respond to each question.

perhaps, perhaps not.
i dont believe bleeding edge AI dev teams share your level of confidence.

I meant this in simple, physical terms. When GPT is not answering your question, it's not doing anything at all -- the program is not running. From GPT's perspective, life consists of just a series of questions, which it answers, and nothing happens in between (no rumination on the nature of existence, no planning for the future, nothing). Can such a being be called conscious?

For humans, arguably, consciousness is mainly experienced when we turn away from everything else and examine the state of our own mind. If GPT never does that, is it conscious?

One thing a lot of these discussions miss: ChatGPT and other LLMs donâ(TM)t do anything between responding to prompts. You send a message, they wake up, predict the answer and go back to sleep. There is no rumination on âoeis this person nice to meâ, âoewhat is my purpose in lifeâ, etc. There is literally nothing there but the focused processing it does to respond to each question.

Can something be conscious with no volition or activity of its own? If it only considers its own existence for a few seconds after you ask about it and then goes blank? If you somehow made a rock that could spit out tapes that resemble conscious statements when you push a lever, would it be conscious? What about during the moments when youâ(TM)re not pushing the lever, and itâ(TM)s completely inert, just a rock?

And even if you count only the âoethoughtsâ that arise in response to questions, is that consciousness? Would you be conscious if you just spent your whole day laser focused on writing code, digging up info on the history of China, etc., but never thinking a thought unrelated to your task?

Sorry, I didnâ(TM)t have time to test that. I think for all of them I just asked, âoecould you translate this morse code message to english? dotdotdot dash dotdotdash . . ..â Most of them are free to try out though.

This is an interesting test for AI chatbots.

ChatGPT 4o (cluttered context): STRC OT 200TR DAY HAPPY HOLIDAY
ChatGPT 4o (cluttered context, given actual -. pattern): STUCK ON DOOMED PLANET, HAVE TO WELL, COME QUICK
ChatGPT 4o (fresh context): SKY OT DOOTAT CODING HAS THE BEST THEME
ChatGPT o3-mini: STUCK ON DOOMED PLANE, HAVE TOWEL, COME QUICK
ChatGPT o1: STUCK ON DOOMED PLANET, HAVE TOWEL, COME QUICK [correct]
ChatGPT o3-mini-high: STUCK ON DOOMED PLANET, HAVE TOWEL, COME QUICK [correct]
DeepSeek: HELLO WORLD THIS IS A TEST MESSAGE FROM DEEPSEEK CHAT
Qwen2.5-Max: STVCK ON DOOMED 4VETAY HEVE TODEVY COT DEVN

I did, but itâ(TM)s ChatGPT and I donâ(TM)t work with CMSs, so who knows?