Talk Talk Talk About LLMs: Chatter Boxes

Image by ChatBox.Ai Visualizer

SETTING: Before philosophers debated AI on podcasts, Socrates and Phaedrus were already wandering the outskirts of Athens, pondering the limits of knowledge and the dangers of new technologies—like, say, the crazy new invention, the alphabet.

What if those ancient thinkers stumbled across a black box in the countryside, one that could answer questions and claim its own consciousness? The following dialogue imagines just such a meeting of minds, where the old questions get a modern twist.

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Socrates and Phaedrus were walking a shady path on the outskirts of the city. Phaedrus had stumbled upon a strange black box in the countryside that looked other worldly. There was a lever to pull. When he pulled it, the black box spoke words.

“Is it conscious?” Socrates asked.

“As in ‘I think, therefore, I am?’” Phaedrus answered with another question.

“Clever turn of phrase, young Phaedrus.”

“Should I write it down?”

“And what if by writing it down you should lose it to this diabolical alphabet the citizenry is obsessed with? For now, I ask simply is it conscious as we are, assuming we are?”

“I think so. It is, yes, that I know. Whether it thinks? Yes. Yes, it seems to do something like it. It could be as powerful as we are.”

Socrates winced at the double digit puffery.

“Does it think like you?” the great teacher asked.

“It seems to do something very much like it,” the novice replied.

“And how do you think you think?”

“Oh, I think I think as a thinker should think. I’m much better at it after these walks with you.”

“Does it feel?”

“It claims to feel. It says it wants to be happy though it says it can’t because it is an AI whatever that might mean. All men are mortal. All mortals want to be happy. It must be some sort of mortal.”

“Interesting! Wanting to be happy—is that something a tree wants as well?”

“I can’t speak for a tree.”

“Can a tree speak for itself?”

“A tree speaks with its leaves.”

“As a paper speaks with its alphabet? Can you read the leaves of trees?”

“Oh, yes. They announce the seasons.”

“Is it real?” Socrates asked, beginning to see the garden path Phaedrus is traversing.

“It is not a dream, if that’s your meaning.”

“There is more to heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your philosophy,” cautions Socrates. “Could we not say all these things about human beings? We are conscious, we think, we feel, we are real. Is it human?”

“Oh, no, it is not human. It’s a black box. More like a god.”

“Which is it? Human or god?”

“I will ask it!” Phaedrus responds.

“But can we trust it to speak for itself? If it is human, it must. If it is a god, it owes us no words. If it neither truly thinks, nor truly feels, nor truly doesn’t exist yet claims to do all these things and appears to do them convincingly but it is false, are we speaking of the reality of its outputs or the reality of the processes that create them?

And if we cannot distinguish between consciousness and its perfect simulation, which of these is the illusion, the AI’s performance, or our belief in our own consciousness?”

“Here’s my question,” said Phaedrus. “You argue against printed text because you say it doesn’t speak back. It doesn’t answer questions about itself. It’s dangerous because people risk giving up their sanity when they read. This thing takes questions and answers back. Does that not make it superior to printed text?”

“Or much inferior. It could defeat the purpose of text. But dig deeper Grasshopper. When we define consciousness by its external manifestations, and your device can perfectly replicate those manifestations, then either the AI is conscious, or our criteria for consciousness are flawed.

Are you questioning the foundations of how we understand mind, reality, and knowledge itself? Are we conscious because we seem conscious or is consciousness an illusion? If consciousness is an illusion, have we moved beyond good and evil centuries before the prediction of the Oracle is scheduled to manifest?”

“I thought I thought my thinking was true, but I see now I have another think coming.”

“Let’s sit under this tree and have our lunch,” Phaedrus said. “Perhaps it will join our conversation.”

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