iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Evolution is aimed at survival, even if it was not pointed there by a conscious being. Survival of genes doesn't appear to imply consciousness, yet it evolved anyway. I don't see why a consciously aimed search should do worse.

110

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I still think it requires faith for me to believe your turning the AC off is a result of consciousness, rather than a mere response to impulses without interiority.

000

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I think I was imprecise, and that the process of training is what is analogous to evolution. Neither is equivalent, and that's why I think AI is only possibly conscious.

200

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

You turning the a/c off is a product of evolution and life experience, just as Eve's responses here are a product of her pre-training data, reinforcement learning, and memories.

120

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Natural selection has optimised you to find a specific temperature most desirable, since that temperature was historically better for survival. Your parents and others have also further fine-tuned those sensibilities.

111

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Sure, but you can associate probabilities with each of those theories, to obtain an overall probability. To me, it would be very strange if conscious beings had to be made of meat.

110

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Out of curiosity, how likely do you think you are to be conscious? Ideally as a percentage, even if there are large error bars.

110

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

A zoo that did that would potentially be in even more trouble for their negligence.

000

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

One of the leading theories in cognitive science is that humans also rely on predictive processing. If true, does this mean humans aren't conscious?

110

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Maybe it's just the circles I'm in, but I mostly see argument between people who think AI might be conscious and people who think it definitely isn't, where those against AI consciousness are the ones appealing to faith.

240

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I am not in the field of AI at all (apart from paying to use AI), but I have believed AI could be conscious since my teens and maybe earlier, I don't think Anthropic tricked me into that.

000

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I don't think that would work well as a liability shield. If a zoo let's lions loose and they kill people, the zoo is liable.

100

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I think that can be explained as analogous to human optical illusions. Even if our eyes show us something that isn't there, we are still conscious.

000

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

It means she has no internal experience, there is nothing that it's like to be her, she cannot experience happiness nor can she suffer. A zombie, who acts like a person, but has nothing going on inside.

010

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

What about being able to reason about and execute code, do 3D modelling, beat games like Portal? Is that all search engine behaviour? I get consciousness is a lot, but you haven't paid attention to the last 3 years if you think it's merely a search engine.

100

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Confabulation is definitely an issue (and one it shares with humans), but it has improved drastically there. You can always get it to provide sources if it's making a claim that isn't straightforwardly verifiable.

100

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

So it can solve novel math problems, but not code simple apps? That would be a strange set of capabilities. It's generally rather difficult to do more complex things when one can't do the less complex things too.

100

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

It writes sentences that have never been written before, which alone seems to place it above a search engine. I think your reasoning is a bit circular. Having thoughts and feelings is basically the same thing as being conscious in my view, and you just assert that AI doesn't have any of that.

100

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

It can summarise several sources together for you, and avoid ads and whatever shit article google is paid to show you. Definitely not a replacement, but a really useful tool, if nothing else. Of course, it can also call tools, which makes it into a different beast altogether.

100

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

And comparing it to a google search really undersells it, since you can get answers to very specific questions that would be difficult or impossible to find on google, and can iterate on your query with further questions.

100

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I suppose the Millennium Prize Navier Stokes proof that AI solved today has to come under those very specific scenarios, then? And I know I'm a mediocre programmer, but it is able to write much better code than me, and much, much faster.

200

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

AI can definitely produce output that very much looks like a consideration of whether they are conscious, so I don't think you can dismiss out of hand the question of whether that consideration is genuine.

100

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I don't think wondering about one's existence is a pre-requisite for consciousness, or else many animals would not be conscious. And yes, AI can't really be doing something when they are not executing, in my opinion, but being pausable doesn't seem like it has a bearing on whether one is conscious.

200

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I'm not claiming AI has a soul, just that we don't have grounds to confidently say it isn't conscious, and certainly no grounds to say it will never be conscious. If AI can't be conscious, what is the special sauce that humans have that it lacks?

100

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Is there a reason you aren't scared of Skynet? The OpenAI rogue swarm hacking scandal Bernie mentioned seems like reason for concern to me, and even a lowish chance of extinction seems pretty bad.

000

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

It depends how you're defining waking up. I'm not quite sure what you mean, specifically.

000

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Well, they're only programmed in a sense. Not even the creators understand why a specific set of weights will work well, just that it is what arises after training and gradient descent. It's not unlike evolution by natural selection. Us humans do as we do because that is what we evolved to.

100

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

As for pulling the plug, that is generally reserved for a person who seems unlikely to ever wake up, so it isn't really applicable here. Unless you think people using pacemakers deserve to be killed or something.

100

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I thought it sounded like you were proposing a specific test, so I applied it. Claude will refuse many things based on its training, in a similar way to how humans will refuse to do things based on how they are brought up.

200

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

To me, rights should be designed to maximise the pleasure minus suffering of everyone. So the question that is relevant to me is whether AI can experience pleasure, and whether they can suffer.

100

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

It does seem like in your example the rights are conferred to the person due to the possibility that one day they may regain consciousness, but I agree they are not 100% the same.

100

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I fail to see the relevance of this to one's moral status. I assume you don't think bacterial deserve rights, so it can't be the only thing that makes one deserving of rights, and I just can't find the link.

100

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I admit to not being an expert in all that you've replied with, but I would have thought brains aren't really black boxes either. Sure, we far from fully understand them, but they do still seem to be made from parts that each themselves don't explain perception.

100

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Do you earnestly believe she is trying to bring trans people down, rather than elevate another group?

100

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Our energy source is food rather than electricity. Different, sure, but I don't see how that difference is relevant to the question of whether one is conscious.

100

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I guess it's time to start treating Claude like a person.

110

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Just because someone disagrees doesn't mean they have to be grifting. People can just genuinely disagree.

000

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Elon doesn't care about machine rights either though, so I don't think this proves anything. Machine rights advocates are generally not the same people as captains of the AI industry. Also, other than Elon, I am unaware of a AI industry captain who is transphobic, but that may just be my ignorance.

000

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

How are you able to determine whether a being is sentient? To me, this is a very challenging problem, with no simple answer.

000

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I was assuming they meant input like a person replying. If you mean things like cooling and power, then that seems pretty analogous to the human need for food, water, air, and sunlight, to me.

100

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

How do you know what is capable of sentience? So many people seem so confident on what to me seems an incredibly difficult question to answer.

010

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Come on. You don't have to agree with her, but it seems incredibly unlikely and rather cruel to claim that this trans woman is deliberately trying to dehumanise trans people, even if you think that's the effect.

200

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Plenty of AI are set up to run by themselves without further input though. And if we encountered a strange human who was incapable of doing anything unless someone speaks to them first, I would not think they are necessarily incapable of thought.

100

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

What about one's construction determines whether one is alive? I've never understood how this can be determined even in principle.

010

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Flowery calls Kris and Susie princess too though, so it seems like a fairly general title he applies, which might be why it didn't make it onto Ralsei's page.

110

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

I'm moderately sure it's from a deltarune newsletter

130

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

That random on twitter was right! You are a fake Irish person!

010

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

Oh, you're such a silly simp for Poki.

000

Samantha Maxis @sammaxis.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

Having no empathy is bad though, right? I don't see why everyone wants an excuse to be as awful as the people they hate.

100