Not every human is a person

The following work is an extract (with minor edits) from a post by Devon Eriksen.

When we began fueling old language models with massive amounts of modern GPUs, some people briefly thought we had discovered true Artificial Intelligence.

What we actually discovered was Natural Stupidity. 

Up until this point in history, we assumed that almost all humans, regardless of intellectual capacity, were fully sentient beings. Fully sapient. Fully self-aware. 

Whatever term you want to use for that basic notion that when you talk to them, there's something listening that corresponds, literally or metaphorically, to a soul. 

We assumed all humans were people. 

Why?

Because they could use language. 

Since we had never witnessed a non-biological machine having anything resembling  a real conversation, most of us just assumed, without thinking about it too hard, that if language use was proof of sentience. 

That if someone could talk, there was self-awareness looking out from behind his eyes. 

But sometimes, that's just not true. 

We can know that because we've created something, a device, a toy, that isn't a person, doesn't have a literal or metaphorical soul, and yet it can use language just fine. 

And it sound eerily like certain humans we meet on occasion. Typically not at science fiction conventions or chess club meetings. 

See, modern language models consist of vast simulated neural nets trained on an equally vast array writing samples from the internet. Mostly the internet. 

And treating those writings as sample goal states means that these neural nets are being trained not to be self-aware, think thoughts, have a point, express an idea, speak with a coherent thesis, or any action that would express sentience. 

No, they are being trained to sound like the writing samples. 

To sound like a human being. 

And that we have sample after sample after sample of how something talks when the lights are on, but no one is looking out the window, then we can recognize that a lot of humans talk like that, too. 

Their speech doesn't coalesce around a coherent point. Each sentence relates to the one before, but not to much else. They will cheerfully contradict facts they know, use words they don't understand, change topics or philosophical positions in midsentence. 

The only overarching goal is that the patter sounds people-like. 

It was more than a few years ago that some people started making jokes about "NPCs" (non-player characters), complete with funny meme cartoons. But we are realizing the horrifying truth. 

They weren't joking. Even if they thought they were. 

NPCs are real. 

No, that's not shocking enough. Let me make sure you understand. 

Some humans aren't people. They don't have opinions, thoughts, or consciousness of their own. Anything that comes out of their mouths is a reflexive reaction to their programming. All of their words and actions are the mechanical result of processes that originate outside their heads. 

Allowing them to vote is an abomination. 

There. 

Now do you understand the full scope of the problem? 

Now we can see that humans don't use language because we're smart, we use language because we are hardwired to use language, and that it's entirely possible for someone to be quite glib while being less of an actual being than, say, Koko the gorilla. 

We always knew that some people were dumb, but I don't think we ever realized that they were actually soulless automatons until we had an actual, verifiable soulless automaton to compare them to. 

The philosophical problem this creates is that it undermines the whole philosophy of Western Civilization. 

Classical liberalism is based on certain key notions about the relationship of humans to the universe, which we encode in words and phrases like "liberty", "individual self-determination", and "human rights". 

And these concepts have served us very well indeed, within a certain limited scope. They've made us a powerhouse of innovation, and created a society with vast wealth and a very high quality of life. 

But, just like Galileo's telescope or an fMRI scan, LLMs confront us with an empirical result which invalidates our worldview. All men are not created equal. And not all of them are capable of handling the responsibilities inherent in having "human" rights. 

This is a huge problem for multiple reasons. 

First of all, it creates the threat of sliding back to the aristocratic systems of the old world. The American revolution happened because the philosophy of hierarchy was employed to elevate a group of British aristocrats over people who were their actual superiors in every respect. 

When you know that certain humans are better than others, you have to do something about that. But in order to do something about that, you have to decide who doesn't make the cut. And no one is detached enough to be objective about this, even if they are perspicacious enough to tell. 

So who could we possibly trust with the responsibility? 

Secondly, the philosophy of egalitarianism, while technically debunked, still led high-quality populations to unprecedented levels of awesome. How do we keep those benefits if we have to acknowledge the underlying rationale to be a lie? 

On the gripping hand, we can't just sweep the problem of non-sentient humans under the carpet. Because this isn't just an abstract observation. 

One of the West's political faction has taken classical liberalism to its furthest extreme, and wrested away the wealth, power, and control that certain high-quality people accumulated in building civilization, to give to mutaginous randos on the grounds that everyone is equal, everyone has hidden talents, and it's time to give someone else a turn. 

Well, it turns out those humans were out of power for a reason which had nothing to do with bigotry. They simply weren't equipped to make anything besides a mess. 

Until we have a new philosophy that acknowledges that humans are not equal, and some of them aren't even high-functioning enough to be allowed liberty or a political voice, the West will continue to decline. 

This is why I say and believe that the crisis of the West is philosophical.

We could take action to purge our society of corruption and decay, and begin a new era of greatness. We have the strength, and the talent, and the knowledge, and the resources. It would be the work of a few years... 

If only we had a coherent, settled, accepted vision of what actions are right to take, and which direction we all want the future to go. 

Right now, we are in clash of visions, not between the left and the right, not exactly, but between people who believe that merit is real and critical, and people who haven't given up on classical liberalism yet. 

And between and among them, a horde of programmable bio-robots, motivated only their animal appetites and the memes that run through them in waves.