Search Ideas
Creativity isn't defined by its outputs but by its process. RNGs do not recognise or criticise ideas.
We could say a person is a program that can synthesize any possible explanation in finite time, excluding memory limitations. But this would again grant personhood to RNGs. For that matter, a counting program could just enumerate all possible binary strings up to its memory limit, in finite time...
A random number generator does not have universal creativity, because it is not a universal explainer: it can only generate explanations by accident. Universal explainers seek good explanations through conjecture and criticism.
Maybe... but "understanding" is too vague, I think. Doesn't understanding mean: can explain? But then this is just "can create any explanation" again. I think the core question is why a random program generator isn't a person, coming from Deutsch's definition of a person as a program that has explanatory universality -- can create any explanation (my thought here is that this definition isn't good enough on its own, given the random generator point).
Doesn't it? All explanatory knowledge is in the set of all possible programs, and a random program (or number) generator can generate any of those, given infinite time.
Even if variations are agnostic to any meaning or context of the knowledge, why are they still not implicit? Anything is implicit from anything else, if implicit just means: follows from when a given change is applied... The whole question is where the change is coming from... (?)
But an AI programmed to make random variations to its conjectures (English or otherwise) can only do so by choosing from an existing set of variations. Again, that knowledge is pre-existing. True evolution must involve variations to the substrate on which the knowledge is based; variations must be agnostic to the semantics of whatever they are acting upon, else they are already implicit from it, in which case their application does not constitute a truly novel conjecture (in the sense defining creativity).
If only some of the criteria are stored, and the rest are random, is it still evolution? Is evolution only happening if there is random variation? But we could program an LLM to do that as well...
If only some of the criteria are stored, is it still evolution? Then evolution is only the random part of the variation?
If only some of the criteria are stored, is it still evolution? Then evolution is only the random part of the variation?
Whatever new "explanations" it creates are derivable from (and by?) the knowledge in the training data. It isn't evolution if all of the variations and selection criteria are stored ahead of time. That's just a search process, as in the case of Move 37 per AlphaGo.
The definition of fitness for DNA also originated outside it, so this doesn't in itself suggest the system isn't actually creating new knowledge.
only people can create explanatory knowledge
How is an LLM not creating new explanatory knowledge (even if worse than the existing, by any measure), by varying some existing written explanation? It could even vary and select by some criterion of its "choice", thus realizing Popperian epistemology.
A person could create the same knowledge that biological evolution does, if only by simulating it. But it could still be true that only people can create explanatory knowledge. (That they can create all possible explanatory knowledge is Deutsch's criterion for personhood.)
"No unconscious creativity" seems the simpler option. But here we arrive again at biological evolution, which is unconscious, yet is creating knowledge. Does this serve as a distinction between explanatory knowledge and non? Explanatory knowledge can only be created by a conscious process?
Either there is no unconscious creativity, or only evolutionary/creative epochs with certain properties are conscious. The most obvious candidate for the property is complexity (in the sense of sophistication): only programs (existing knowledge) of a certain sophistication, once subjected to the evolutionary process, necessitates consciousness. Complex problem solving seems to require consciousness. Meanwhile, we do not seem to be conscious of "simpler" creative tasks, like... Like what? What is a "simple" creative task? What is an example of a creative task we perform unconsciously? How could we determine it was an act of creation (new knowledge), and not an act of deductive inference of the kind characterizing AI?
This suggests that all experience is determined by what programs are being subjected to evolution at any given time, the niches that are being adapted to. But why is not all creativity in the mind conscious? (All consciousness might necessarily be creativity).
But if the evolution is the defining feature of personhood, and the evolution is non-computational, then the personhood is non-computational. And consciousness would then not be a software property.
It could be simulated, but maybe it's very hard/intractable to do so. Maybe personhood harnesses physics to do the evolving, like a windmill harnesses the wind. Programs implemented such that the laws of physics cause them to evolve (unboundedly)?
Programs could be evolved non-computationally. But that process could itself still be simulated, per the Church-Turing-Deutsch Thesis.
By the Church-Turing Thesis, all computation can be specified/programmed. So the evolutionary aspect of a person can be specified/programmed, if it is computational.
The system may not have perfect knowledge of all programs present in it. The repeated independent emergence of winged flight in the biosphere comes to mind.
Because programs present in the system at one time could be no longer present at another time. Previously well-adapted programs could have decayed, been destroyed or consumed. So the same evolutionary path (approximately or not) could be travelled again, in principle.
But why would the system ever re-evolve to the satisfaction of a niche already satisfied previously? If the programs evolved by the evolutionary aspect of the person already exist, there is no more need for evolution of them.