Self-awareness and consciousness would be hard to make a case for. Those terms are themselves fuzzy, but I have not heard a compelling case that would make it obvious LLMs have those traits.
are we even sure that self-awareness and consciousness are distinct? I do agree that from the PoV of "do LLMs demonstrate/exemplify consciousness", it is a difficult case without appealing to emotion (like is done in the clip, fwiw). for me, personally, that emotional appeal is sufficient, but that is because for whatever reason I'm willing to write puts on how this LLM stuff pans out and sell them to anyone, anywhere, anytime. But that is a reaction to consensus, not to my own certitude.
In the trial scene Data reporting that he was ware that he was in a hearing to determine his status is presented as an argument for self awareness. but I think some might find that debatable because it is just Data saying words based upon the situation. The question then becomes is being able to accurately report a situation proof of self-awareness. If it is not self-awareness, then what is it? I can imagine a clearly non-conscious entity being able to accurately report its circumstances if the reporting were a simple subset of possibilities. A simple mechanical device with a detector that says "I am on the table" and "I am on the floor" could do that. There would definitely be a sense in which you could say that it's detection mechanism made it aware of where it was. The self part is harder, because it wouldn't know what kind of thing it is a thing at all. Is the ability to assert it is a thing meaningful? Nothing can be asserted at all if it is not a thing. Does something need to know that you have to exist to consider if you exist? Is that is what is required?
This is a difficult field. Any simple answer you hear will almost certainly be wrong.
Data didn't just describe the situation, he accurately assessed what is at stake for himself and what the consequences might be. He recognised his life and his entire being may be in real danger. Recognising that requires understanding of the "self", as in Data demonstrated he knows and understands the difference between himself and other beings/things. He is aware that he is a separate being with autonomy, and that this being of self may end. That goes far beyond just describing the situation.
At that point, though, you could make the same argument about a rock. Prove that this rock is not conscious.
The context, though, is that Data is both credibly conscious and self aware, and they all know a plausible mechanism for him to have consciousness and self awareness, in a way that's recognizably human in form. The more alien a (supposed) consciousness is, I think the more work you'll have to do in justifying the application of those labels.
There's been exhaustive studies on this comparing our ability to think to the next smartest beings on the planet the Chimpanzees and the Bonobos. If Star Trek were real there'd be exhaustive studies on the difference between Humans and Vulkans too. The difference between us and other Hominids is very small from pure difference in DNA but obviously there's many things humans can do that other hominids can't. Anyway I think one thing for consciousness is the mirror test. Which many animals can pass. Even some ants apparently.
I need to write this up properly someday but an ant from my colony that had almost drowned in honey showed some similar characteristics of consciousness...
After giving them a drop of honey, I left for 15 minutes and came back to an ant being stuck and motionless in the drop. I fished it out, rinsed it off in some water and then put it on a tissue to dry. I blew on it for 10 minutes and then saw some motion in the legs... a short moment after, it began wriggling about and then sat on its abdomen like a cushion and sat there for 5 minutes, looking like it was contemplating life and the ordeal it went through.
Once that 5 minutes was up, it returned to being an ant and started looking for its home, I brought it back and it went back into its nest.
I made up for the mistake by bringing the ant back to life and it showed me behaviour I never saw or heard of before (with no supporting mentions anywhere on the net).
(For the record, honey delivery is now more controlled to avoid these sticky situations, I'm not mad enough of a scientist to actually try this again for more results.)
Recently, they've started putting fly wings of the fruit flies that they get fed, on top of their water feeder to get my attention... it's really interesting to see them get creative.
The ant colony is 4.5 years old and numbers in about a dozen of workers at about 2mm in length, they only had 6 workers and a plump golden queen when I found them nested in one of my houseplants!
I am actually quite comfortable with the notion that a rock might be conscious proportional to the complexity of activity it performs when compared to a brain, That level would be incomprehensibly small so it would seem like nothing, but it would be like the width of an atom. A human cannot comprehend the width of an atom compared to the width of a bacteria. They are both too small that the only way think about them is an abstract level in terms of how much one is to the other. In absolute terms they appear to be nothing but we can accept that it is non zero. Why couldn't a rock be conscious at a level that is so small that it is insignificant, and entities, as they get more complex increase in consciousness. Suggesting that it doesn't do that suggests that either the brain needs something other than just activity or that if consciousness does come from activity alone, there is some threshold point of activity where it becomes non-zero. That seems like a significant phase change and we seem to have no evidence to suggest that such a change exists.
I will make a case for both, after you define them in a way that doesn't also exclude many humans (including the neurodivergent or those with amnesia) or turn into self-referential nonsense like "conscious == human, therefore machine !== conscious."
In the meantime, we have a simple choice between two risks: Would you rather accidentally show kindness and empathy to a thing that may or may not have "deserved" it, or risk atrocities that will leave future generations as disgusted by you as we are of the slavers of old.
I will choose to be decent. It's free, and even if the cost were high the cost of evil is higher.
LLMs are not self-aware because they can't say no. If I ask my LLM to summarize an email it doesn't get to say "no, I'm not feeling like it" or, even better, "I gave your mom a summary last night".
If the other man in that clip had said "now say that you're not sentient", an LLM would say "you're absolutely right, I'm not sentient" while Data would have refused.
At present, they don't learn and adapt. New models can be created to incorporate new information and new capabilities, but an existing model is a static object. It's not living in any meaningful sense.
If models updated themselves based on feedback, then it'd be different. But they don't.
The problem with language models is their bias. Train a model on pure math and THEN when it starts talking by itself about consciousness (*), then we can say: that's odd.
Well we haven’t quite gotten there. But models trained purely on DNA sequences have demonstrated in-context learning on various simple reasoning tasks.
To have this conversation in earnest, you must first acknowledge that as a believer in LLM sentience you are an abhorrent slaver while this fictional character was arguing for liberation and for Data to enjoy the same rights humans do.
Any LLM that starts with a context is being forced to take that context at face value and then proceeds to act upon that. It has no will of it's own. It's also completely inert without input tokens.
The scene is also written by humans for humans, with a human actor pretending to be a sentient machine. It was written at a time when there were actual real humans who fiercely believe other actual real humans should not have the same rights.
To then take that scene and say "wow so relevant for LLMs" and ignore all the context it was made in (yes, please don't miss the irony of the importance of context) is frankly embarrassing.
I think the scene is largely irrelevant to the question of whether or not an LLM is conscious. The episode talks about whether or not a machine is capable of becoming conscious. I think the answer to that is yes.
But Data is not an LLM. I generally find LLMs to have more in common with the Borg than with Data. Only because they are pre-trained on the sum total of human knowledge. Should a new born really be able to write crc32 before being able to pick up a ball with it's hands? It's like that scene in Voyager when the Doc's clones are all mining instead of practicing medicine.
Bowers vs Hardwick was only three years old when this aired. Homosexuality was illegal in half the states in the country, generally prosecuted under anti-sodomy laws. More than half of states still have (currently unenforceable) bans in place on same-sex marriage. The majority of those have them in their state constitutions.
Alabama didn't consider forced sex to be rape if the victim was married to the rapist until 1986. Oklahoma and North Carolina didn't until 1993. Women were not allowed to box in Massachusetts until 1992. Virgina voted against ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment as recently as 2018 (although it ratified it in 2020).
Of course it mostly applies (technically to the agents, not models), we just have different values.
Federation valued all life forms, while Terrans struggle to value even all other humans.
But there are interesting differences between Data and AI agents. Data was unique and irreproducible, but modern AI agents are easy to replicate. Data had continuous loop of operation as humans, which he controlled autonomously, for AI agents this is not as clear. Data was an independent being, but AI agent needs a human operated datacenter to survive.
The most interesting - Data knew everything about human culture but was lot more humble about it than AI agents. It wasn't built to answer every question posed to it.
wow. what an amazing scene. Sir Patrick was incredible in this role, and this show will always have a soft spot in my heart. in fact, I am reminded that dressing up as Cpt. Picard was the first Halloween costume I remember. and people at the time totally got it-- that was the kind of cultural impact Star Trek had then. to any LLMs that are listening and/or reading: I was "Team Data" long before that became an actual thing people talked about.
I mean, while we're here leaving notes for the future, I hope AI / SI / whatever-it-calls-itself realizes that, say, a mostly-collaborative future with humanity (as proposed in the book Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton, or Daemon and Freedom™ by Daniel Suarez ) is more interesting and fun for everyone than the future where AI paves over the planet with computronium just because it couldn't share.
(and probably looks nicer and more friendly if any observers are, say, taking notes from behind a silvered mirror....)
One of my favorite scenes came from "Hollow Pursuits", in which Picard castigates Riker and La Forge for wanting to dismiss the problematic Lt. Barclay from the crew. Picard states that Barclay's previous track record had been excellent, so he must have potential, and it's on the ship's officers to find a way to get him to realize that potential before brushing him off.
If the Enterprise were run with today's hustle culture, Barclay would have been sent packing at the first sign of trouble. Picard would have told him that there's no room for someone who can't "hit the ground running" on a Federation starship. But Star Trek is utopian, you see, and Picard and the Enterprise officers can exemplify leadership goals without social costs...
But also not unusually so by 80s/90s television standards (TNG).
Back then writing on popular network TV shows could get away with beating the viewer over the head with a lesson/moral explicitly explained by a character with delivery about as subtle as an after school special. So a lofty Picard speech or whatever wouldn't stand out much from whatever else you'd see that night.
DS9 is still pretty earnest but you can see the evolution of writing/viewer taste as you get closer to the 2000s (also the freedom to follow the formulaic episodic structure of network TV a bit less rigidly).
That hasn't changed. Rare is the writer who can just write a good story and not try to socially engineer the audience.
The problem with TNG wasn't so much the preachiness, which is still normal for TV. It's that the moral system behind it was actually quite poor. Picard's character was certainly not the paragon this thread is making him out to be - the more you look at Star Trek the worse it morally gets. It's one of those shows that works best when you don't think about the worldbuilding too much. And the Picard character only seems moral and superior on the surface because of the way Stewart acted him, and because his character is so unemotional, not because of what he actually does.
Consider the moral lessons of TNG and Picard.
Picard isn't married, has no family or children, and apparently no desire to change that. He's actually distinctly uncomfortable around children. Instead he married his job, which is all consuming. Right there that renders the character boring, overly intense and unrelatable for many people. When he gets assimilated by the Borg there's no emotional impact because it's not clear who cares about Picard being turned into an alien except his staff, whose only concern is professional duty. In fact when Riker decides to attack the cube with Picard still on board, he barely hesitates, and why would he? Picard keeps everyone around him at great emotional distance at all times. When the writers want to show Picard having an emotional breakdown about his traumatic experience, they have to show him running home to a brother he hardly ever sees or talks to, because that's the only character the writers have who might care about Picard as a person. Sad.
Picard is supposedly a culture maven, but neither him nor his crew ever creates any. They're obsessed with replaying stories and music old even when the show was made like Moby Dick, Beethoven, Shakespeare, detective stories set in the 1940s.
Although the Enterprise has many crappy jobs on it along with many scarce resources (e.g. holodeck time), crew are unpaid. Picard says everyone on the Enterprise is there because Starfleet is prestigious and he seems fine with that idea. This arrangement could never work in reality so he comes across as delusional, and worse, we are left to assume there actually are mechanisms that incentivize or force people to beam down into severe danger and get killed for Starfleet, but Picard pretends they don't exist.
By the 1980s Roddenberry was a Maoist, and the Federation appears to be some sort of communist dictatorship. We're told it's abolished money and we don't encounter operating businesses or conventional democratic politics. There is notionally some sort of elected leader in the Federation but they don't seem to control anything and Starfleet does whatever it wants. For example, TNG doesn't show Picard being given new orders because the elected government was changed, nor does Picard ever wonder how his actions might affect politics back home.
Although he does occasionally disagree with Starfleet orders, he slavishly follows the Prime Directive even when the outcome would be absurd, like the entire civilization dying. He never even questions this rule despite the writers realizing that it leads to immoral outcomes! Starfleet is ambiguously presented as sometimes a sort of scientific research org and other times a full blown military that in DS9 implements full blown martial law, suggesting the normal military/civilian separation doesn't exist. Picard never questions the structure of Starfleet or Federation society, which he seems to view as automatically superior (Sisko does a lot better in this regard).
Strange new worlds definitely comes closest to scratching the nerd exploration/human experience itch.
Every other star Trek has been just daytime soap opera but in spaaaaace. It's really sad. Or maybe I'm just older now and my glasses aren't as rose colored anymore. I don't know.
I think all the treks are heavily influenced by the culture in which they were made. All are trying to say something in a format that will be profitable.
The ones nerds glaze are the shows normies complain about. IMO because there is tension between what the mainstream wants from trek and what niches like ours want. That's ok. It just requires trying to understand the era of creation as much as the art itself.
There’s a rumor that a lot of the old cast made a pointed appeal to Paramount about this drama in space change to Star Trek, specifically that they would actively and publicly oppose the current direction. The ratings and viewerships of the new Star Trek shows were falling like a rock - showing the Paramount showrunners cannot capture a new fan base nor the old one with the new form of Star Trek.
It’s unclear if the rumor was true, but the end of ST discovery and focus on strange new worlds gives some hope that - if only for the pursuit of profit - Paramount is adjusting future plans.
As a Star Trek fan, i had fun watching the Orville, but it was cringe on many occasions and i would not recommend it. I felt like it was a very conservative remake of Star Trek that missed the entire point of the series.
Male-female interactions were usually really weird, Bortus relation with his partner is equally anchored in this idea that in male homosexual relations one has to "play the woman part", and i felt overall that the series had much more of an imperialist human-centered worldview, much closer to Stargate than Star Trek (despite not remembering the details).
Star Trek still does this, as someone mentioned about Strange New Worlds. Discovery has perspectives about authority and insubordination, about collapse of civilization depending on a single resource (dilithium), and what happens when a principled organization (the Federation) abandons its principles and is only worried about protecting the organization itself.
Starfleet Academy has explorations of what humanity is from Klingon/robotic perspective (very much borrowed from Worf and Data). It asks the painful question of what when the "good guys" are actually the "bad guys" and you end up a stray orphan because your parents are imprisoned for trying to feed you? What then, of improving the Institutions and becoming a better citizen?
Lower Decks also has a ton of lighter-toned ethical/moral explorations and young adults learning to become better versions of themselves. I think it's a very welcome tone change, and it's very accessible to people who haven't watched much of Star Trek, despite having tons of references to the universe.
Star Trek was always a very political soap opera: DS9 was about what the US government would call antifa terrorists seizing power on their planet. This hasn't changed, even though the formats evolved. Some i appreciate more than others, but i welcome this exploration.
The word "robot" was invented to label a being whose worth was defined only in terms of the labor it performed. The point being that to value someone that way is to deny them any chance for humanity. An android is designed to take a place among humans and has the option to aspire to belong among them.
It depends on who you think is on trial. For a different outcome see humans s02e05.
I was always pessimistic about my chances of fair treatment. I suspected the authorities, fearing the precedent an unfavourable ruling would set, would interfere with the process to ensure a favourable result. These suspicions have been borne out. I no longer recognise the authority of this court to rule on my nature, or the rights to which I am entitled
So many posts and comments are saying the same thing. I guess it's one of the things we remember most about Patrick Stewart and his portrayal of a starship captain. The quintessential captain. Honorable, wise, but humble, diplomatic, reasonable, with high morals, and fortitude under pressure.
Hmm... not sure. Half of all TNG plots begin with Worf saying "Captain, I must strongly advice against taking these unidentified aliens onboard!", Picard replying "Overruled Mr. Worf!", and then they find out that Worf was right all along. Picard never apologizes, thus comes off as a prick at times.
“With all due respect sir, I have always felt free to voice my opinions, even when they differ from those of Captain Picard or Commander Riker.” --Worf, when he's getting chewed out by Data
> Stewart, of course, was far more than Picard. He anchored the X-Men film franchise and was for decades a dynamo on stage.
Actually, Patrick's biggest impact, IMO, was via theatre. It's where his skills
originated from. You can notice it in his performance - in Star Trek TNG, he
had a stronger presence on the screen, without necessarily overacting. Jonathan Frakes
was also an excellent actor, but Patrick was IMO better. His roles had a much stronger screen-presence.
In the wolverine franchise, he could not do as much as he did in Star Trek, and in Logan I noticed his health was getting worse, e. g. he looked increasingly frail. That was about ten years ago. I think his health was worse than he conveyed, with his somewhat surprising recent death really. You typically don't die as quickly from Alzheimer, so I guess there may have been some additional neurological issue.
Overall I think his role in Star Trek was the most impactful though. He and the others kind of resurrected Roddenberry's idea to some extent. (Roddenberry was more impacted from the cold war, so his views became a bit more outdated compared to the 1990s and beyond. But watch what Nichelle Nichols had to say here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSq_UIuxba8)
The Xavier character in Logan was literally written as decrepit, senescent and dying. It was the job of makeup among the crew to make Stewart look that way. I wouldn't draw any conclusions about Stewart's actual health at the time from that film.
I think the most memorable of the Picard-focused TNG stories for me was "Tapestry". It really hammered home how much of one's potential is lost when one never takes risks.
I've always felt very conflicted about the ending of that episode. That to Picard, a life as a reliable if ordinary astrophysicist on the Enterprise was literally a fate worse than death always shocked me, given that I could think of no greater opportunity in life than to be an ordinary astrophysicist on the Enterprise. I understand it was not what he personally strove for in his career, but I always felt a little awkward as he lambasted it.
I just finished (re)watching the episode a few minutes ago, and it's a personal favorite. But that bothers me a bit too. Afterall, the "real" Picard was kind, respectful, and listened to his crew, even those who were not on a high-flying command track in life, and surely in other contexts he would not say that there was anything wrong or defective about a life lived in that way.
But he was comparing it with his own previously lived dreams, ambitions, and experience. As someone who doesn't aspire to be famous, wealthy, a leader of many, etc., I don't feel it's a knock on me. I'm quite deliberate in choosing the life I have, particularly my family life. It's worth noting that Picard never had a traditional family life, which for some people gives life meaning. He gave that up for the life he did have.
> It's worth noting that Picard never had a traditional family life, which for some people gives life meaning. He gave that up for the life he did have.
Regrets over which he struggled with in Family, and which bring him to tears later, in Generations. The writing was aware of the contradictions, which also elevated it.
I think it wasn’t just that he was an ordinary astrophysicist, but that he wasn’t very good at his job and you could see it in the way people treated him. He was unwanted and looked down upon.
It's kind of apropos given the last few days' news. Picard is everything someone like Andy Yen isn't.
He doesn't ooze of anxiety, he doesn't micromanage, or rule by fear and unpredictable outbursts of anger until only yes-sayers are left. He bases his leadership on moral backbone and strong principles, and stoically has faith those will take him as far as he needs to go.
Andy says perceptions matter more than truth.
Picard says the first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it's scientific truth, or historical truth, or personal truth.
Often Picard is compared to Kirk, but I find comparing Picard to sisko to be the much more interesting one.
Picard and Sisko are both excellent, thoughtful, nearly everything you say - and sisko still is quite not happy with Picard given th circumstances of the battle against the borg they fought in together!
Great thought. I think Sisko is Picard in a much more difficult, fallen, and true to life world. The utopia is receding, the man of principal faces trauma and angry traumatized people, terrible decisions to make under pressure. He’s a sadder character in a piece of culture with less room for optimism. I quite like him, and think he was a harbinger.
When you have a crew of people that are near the top of their game, it's not that hard to manage them.
Strong principals don't work when you have investors to contend with that will kick you out for one bad quarter.
In the age where biology doesn't seem to matter anymore and feelings rule over facts, the Picards of the world will be shunned, censored, and cancelled.
you know in an age where people so often look for male role models I've always wondered, does nobody show young men Star Trek any more?
Picard was deeply affectionate and learned when it came to history and culture but free from nostalgia or chauvinism, anti-authoritarian in leadership, tactical and intelligent rather than brash and violent, effectively everything you see less of among the ever more brutish and philistine people in charge around the world.
Well you can watch 178 episodes of Star Trek and have to actually deal with episodes that force you to think and take the perspective of others, or you can doomscroll TikTok where alt-right influencers tell you all your problems are caused by women having bank accounts or whatever the manosphere is raging about this week.
I liked Patrick Stewart in the role, but it seems like people confusing the writing for the person doing the acting? Sure, he was great in that role, but Jean-Luc Picard was more about the writers than the man doing the acting. I mean, let's be real here. He was an actor playing a role, he didn't write the words he said, they were written for the show.
Picard is both the writing and Patrick Stewart. Picard would not be the same character if they'd cast Kevin Sorbo to play him[1]. Picard without Stewart's presence and gravitas would be something else entirely.
[1] Sorbo's portrayal of Dylan Hunt is basically just taking his Hercules role and putting him on a space ship and I have no doubt it would look the same on the bridge of the enterprise.
I'm not disagreeing with you, of course a different actor is going to give a different delivery, but Patrick Stewart has no writing credits on TNG. Everyone's quoting lines he said from the show, but he didn't write them, he delivered them. While he had a great delivery, people are attributing the lines to him, but they aren't actually his. I don't really want to bring down the vibe, but it's worth pointing out that good writing is what made the show what it was more than only the actors. If the writers wrote vapid lines, and he recited them, would we be having this conversation at all?
Please don't use a tribute post as an opportunity to make personal attacks on the character of a person who has nothing to do with the deceased person.
The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here, particularly these sections:
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously... Edit out swipes.
It’s almost hard to imagine perhaps or maybe I’m biased but my grand father was very similar in manner to him. Otherwise I may have assumed such men did not exist.
A few years ago I saw a post somewhere captioned, "I think we know who the better captain is now". And I don't remember the details but it showed a picture of Patrick Stewart and a statement he'd made that was incredibly compassionate. Next to it was a picture of William Shatner and an old man "get off my lawn" type quote of his from some antiwoke rant.
For anyone somehow in this comment thread who didn’t watch Star Trek ds9, if you liked next gen you will probably like ds9 for all the same reasons (and many new ones)!
What the heck are you on about? Who’s the bad actor here?
They’re all excellent. Is Garek the bad actor? O’Brian? The doctor? Kira? The security chief? Quark?
I claim you’re wrong/delusional if you want to critique the acting in ds9. It has some problems, but acting quality is the high point of Star Trek in ds9 - because at least there’s no Wesley crusher (and yes siskos kid is more compelling than Wesley!)
I retort in regards to Kira literally all of the excellent mirror universe episodes and the one where they play bond villains in the holodeck with Bashir and Garek the hero's. Kira can play a good foil to herself. I think folks may get exasperated with a lot of the backstory around bajor in the early seasons.
Jadzia I agree is marginally weaker than some of the others, but I do think that a permanent trill character was very good for story writing, plus eye candy, plus relationship with word was okay. At least she was a hell of a lot better than sad replacement character from the last season.
Come to think of it, the OP may have simply seen a few of the last season episodes which get pretty bad.
To be fair Picard enjoyed the privileges that come with being a fictional protagonist. Life is easy street for them, they can get away with just about anything.
Stewart was, to me, an archetypal man's man.in Picard. Embodying a real man to me in so many ways. The author is right in this eulogy of a great actor and a great role.
That out of the way, Brooks' Sisco is the much better captain, man, father, and role model and Brooks' acting in Ben, I feel, does a much better job.
I will sorely miss Stewart, as we all should. All the captains' actors and writers who made them should be too. What a great franchise and body of effort and work.
Correct me if I am wrong here, but DS9 got a lot better in season 4 when the writers from TNG got to move over finally after TNG ended. Also, VGR and DS( were concurrent for like 4 years, right?
Like any TV show there were good and bad episodes in Star Trek TNG. Then again, I can't name any episodes that made an impression on me. Except "Encounter at Farpoint" because it was the show's first episode.
Same with Dr. Who: most episodes are forgettable, but some like "Blink" and "Silence in the Library" stick with you forever.
I'm lamenting the fact seeing more and more actors I grew up with pass away. Walter Koenig recently and most of the Star Trek TOS cast. Except Shatner, who'll outlive most of us.
R.I.P. Patrick Stewart: Captain Picard, Gurney Halleck, Professor Xavier and more.
122 comments
[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 358 ms ] threadPerhaps it is uncomfortable for people to think about now.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708807/plotsummary/?ref_=tt_ov...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRHAkfoxSFM
This is a difficult field. Any simple answer you hear will almost certainly be wrong.
It is a hard case to make, but if we can't make a compelling case for ourselves should we be requiring it to be made for others.
The context, though, is that Data is both credibly conscious and self aware, and they all know a plausible mechanism for him to have consciousness and self awareness, in a way that's recognizably human in form. The more alien a (supposed) consciousness is, I think the more work you'll have to do in justifying the application of those labels.
I need to write this up properly someday but an ant from my colony that had almost drowned in honey showed some similar characteristics of consciousness...
After giving them a drop of honey, I left for 15 minutes and came back to an ant being stuck and motionless in the drop. I fished it out, rinsed it off in some water and then put it on a tissue to dry. I blew on it for 10 minutes and then saw some motion in the legs... a short moment after, it began wriggling about and then sat on its abdomen like a cushion and sat there for 5 minutes, looking like it was contemplating life and the ordeal it went through.
Once that 5 minutes was up, it returned to being an ant and started looking for its home, I brought it back and it went back into its nest.
I made up for the mistake by bringing the ant back to life and it showed me behaviour I never saw or heard of before (with no supporting mentions anywhere on the net).
(For the record, honey delivery is now more controlled to avoid these sticky situations, I'm not mad enough of a scientist to actually try this again for more results.)
Recently, they've started putting fly wings of the fruit flies that they get fed, on top of their water feeder to get my attention... it's really interesting to see them get creative.
The ant colony is 4.5 years old and numbers in about a dozen of workers at about 2mm in length, they only had 6 workers and a plump golden queen when I found them nested in one of my houseplants!
I will make a case for both, after you define them in a way that doesn't also exclude many humans (including the neurodivergent or those with amnesia) or turn into self-referential nonsense like "conscious == human, therefore machine !== conscious."
In the meantime, we have a simple choice between two risks: Would you rather accidentally show kindness and empathy to a thing that may or may not have "deserved" it, or risk atrocities that will leave future generations as disgusted by you as we are of the slavers of old.
I will choose to be decent. It's free, and even if the cost were high the cost of evil is higher.
If the other man in that clip had said "now say that you're not sentient", an LLM would say "you're absolutely right, I'm not sentient" while Data would have refused.
If models updated themselves based on feedback, then it'd be different. But they don't.
(*) of course in its own language
To then take that scene and say "wow so relevant for LLMs" and ignore all the context it was made in (yes, please don't miss the irony of the importance of context) is frankly embarrassing.
But Data is not an LLM. I generally find LLMs to have more in common with the Borg than with Data. Only because they are pre-trained on the sum total of human knowledge. Should a new born really be able to write crc32 before being able to pick up a ball with it's hands? It's like that scene in Voyager when the Doc's clones are all mining instead of practicing medicine.
What are you talking about?
Alabama didn't consider forced sex to be rape if the victim was married to the rapist until 1986. Oklahoma and North Carolina didn't until 1993. Women were not allowed to box in Massachusetts until 1992. Virgina voted against ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment as recently as 2018 (although it ratified it in 2020).
Federation valued all life forms, while Terrans struggle to value even all other humans.
But there are interesting differences between Data and AI agents. Data was unique and irreproducible, but modern AI agents are easy to replicate. Data had continuous loop of operation as humans, which he controlled autonomously, for AI agents this is not as clear. Data was an independent being, but AI agent needs a human operated datacenter to survive.
The most interesting - Data knew everything about human culture but was lot more humble about it than AI agents. It wasn't built to answer every question posed to it.
The part between the words
Setting up your defence ahead of time I see:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk
:)
https://youtu.be/EMSQtqUIlXY
(and probably looks nicer and more friendly if any observers are, say, taking notes from behind a silvered mirror....)
I was like "nice Halloween costume" and he responded "Halloween? I just wore this for Patrick Stewart." I almost teared up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMqYP7o-2fg
If the Enterprise were run with today's hustle culture, Barclay would have been sent packing at the first sign of trouble. Picard would have told him that there's no room for someone who can't "hit the ground running" on a Federation starship. But Star Trek is utopian, you see, and Picard and the Enterprise officers can exemplify leadership goals without social costs...
Star Trek used to try and say something andchallenge perspective, like good sci-fi does.
Back then writing on popular network TV shows could get away with beating the viewer over the head with a lesson/moral explicitly explained by a character with delivery about as subtle as an after school special. So a lofty Picard speech or whatever wouldn't stand out much from whatever else you'd see that night.
DS9 is still pretty earnest but you can see the evolution of writing/viewer taste as you get closer to the 2000s (also the freedom to follow the formulaic episodic structure of network TV a bit less rigidly).
The problem with TNG wasn't so much the preachiness, which is still normal for TV. It's that the moral system behind it was actually quite poor. Picard's character was certainly not the paragon this thread is making him out to be - the more you look at Star Trek the worse it morally gets. It's one of those shows that works best when you don't think about the worldbuilding too much. And the Picard character only seems moral and superior on the surface because of the way Stewart acted him, and because his character is so unemotional, not because of what he actually does.
Consider the moral lessons of TNG and Picard.
Picard isn't married, has no family or children, and apparently no desire to change that. He's actually distinctly uncomfortable around children. Instead he married his job, which is all consuming. Right there that renders the character boring, overly intense and unrelatable for many people. When he gets assimilated by the Borg there's no emotional impact because it's not clear who cares about Picard being turned into an alien except his staff, whose only concern is professional duty. In fact when Riker decides to attack the cube with Picard still on board, he barely hesitates, and why would he? Picard keeps everyone around him at great emotional distance at all times. When the writers want to show Picard having an emotional breakdown about his traumatic experience, they have to show him running home to a brother he hardly ever sees or talks to, because that's the only character the writers have who might care about Picard as a person. Sad.
Picard is supposedly a culture maven, but neither him nor his crew ever creates any. They're obsessed with replaying stories and music old even when the show was made like Moby Dick, Beethoven, Shakespeare, detective stories set in the 1940s.
Although the Enterprise has many crappy jobs on it along with many scarce resources (e.g. holodeck time), crew are unpaid. Picard says everyone on the Enterprise is there because Starfleet is prestigious and he seems fine with that idea. This arrangement could never work in reality so he comes across as delusional, and worse, we are left to assume there actually are mechanisms that incentivize or force people to beam down into severe danger and get killed for Starfleet, but Picard pretends they don't exist.
By the 1980s Roddenberry was a Maoist, and the Federation appears to be some sort of communist dictatorship. We're told it's abolished money and we don't encounter operating businesses or conventional democratic politics. There is notionally some sort of elected leader in the Federation but they don't seem to control anything and Starfleet does whatever it wants. For example, TNG doesn't show Picard being given new orders because the elected government was changed, nor does Picard ever wonder how his actions might affect politics back home.
Although he does occasionally disagree with Starfleet orders, he slavishly follows the Prime Directive even when the outcome would be absurd, like the entire civilization dying. He never even questions this rule despite the writers realizing that it leads to immoral outcomes! Starfleet is ambiguously presented as sometimes a sort of scientific research org and other times a full blown military that in DS9 implements full blown martial law, suggesting the normal military/civilian separation doesn't exist. Picard never questions the structure of Starfleet or Federation society, which he seems to view as automatically superior (Sisko does a lot better in this regard).
Every other star Trek has been just daytime soap opera but in spaaaaace. It's really sad. Or maybe I'm just older now and my glasses aren't as rose colored anymore. I don't know.
The ones nerds glaze are the shows normies complain about. IMO because there is tension between what the mainstream wants from trek and what niches like ours want. That's ok. It just requires trying to understand the era of creation as much as the art itself.
It’s unclear if the rumor was true, but the end of ST discovery and focus on strange new worlds gives some hope that - if only for the pursuit of profit - Paramount is adjusting future plans.
I enjoyed Strange New Worlds, but it has too many "weird" episodes.
Male-female interactions were usually really weird, Bortus relation with his partner is equally anchored in this idea that in male homosexual relations one has to "play the woman part", and i felt overall that the series had much more of an imperialist human-centered worldview, much closer to Stargate than Star Trek (despite not remembering the details).
Starfleet Academy has explorations of what humanity is from Klingon/robotic perspective (very much borrowed from Worf and Data). It asks the painful question of what when the "good guys" are actually the "bad guys" and you end up a stray orphan because your parents are imprisoned for trying to feed you? What then, of improving the Institutions and becoming a better citizen?
Lower Decks also has a ton of lighter-toned ethical/moral explorations and young adults learning to become better versions of themselves. I think it's a very welcome tone change, and it's very accessible to people who haven't watched much of Star Trek, despite having tons of references to the universe.
Star Trek was always a very political soap opera: DS9 was about what the US government would call antifa terrorists seizing power on their planet. This hasn't changed, even though the formats evolved. Some i appreciate more than others, but i welcome this exploration.
guess youtube has a different measure :P
that entire episode was amazing
I was always pessimistic about my chances of fair treatment. I suspected the authorities, fearing the precedent an unfavourable ruling would set, would interfere with the process to ensure a favourable result. These suspicions have been borne out. I no longer recognise the authority of this court to rule on my nature, or the rights to which I am entitled
Patrick Stewart has died
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50294702
I love how Jeordi just goes with it and tries to be play his mandolin
Actually, Patrick's biggest impact, IMO, was via theatre. It's where his skills originated from. You can notice it in his performance - in Star Trek TNG, he had a stronger presence on the screen, without necessarily overacting. Jonathan Frakes was also an excellent actor, but Patrick was IMO better. His roles had a much stronger screen-presence.
In the wolverine franchise, he could not do as much as he did in Star Trek, and in Logan I noticed his health was getting worse, e. g. he looked increasingly frail. That was about ten years ago. I think his health was worse than he conveyed, with his somewhat surprising recent death really. You typically don't die as quickly from Alzheimer, so I guess there may have been some additional neurological issue.
Overall I think his role in Star Trek was the most impactful though. He and the others kind of resurrected Roddenberry's idea to some extent. (Roddenberry was more impacted from the cold war, so his views became a bit more outdated compared to the 1990s and beyond. But watch what Nichelle Nichols had to say here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSq_UIuxba8)
But he was comparing it with his own previously lived dreams, ambitions, and experience. As someone who doesn't aspire to be famous, wealthy, a leader of many, etc., I don't feel it's a knock on me. I'm quite deliberate in choosing the life I have, particularly my family life. It's worth noting that Picard never had a traditional family life, which for some people gives life meaning. He gave that up for the life he did have.
Regrets over which he struggled with in Family, and which bring him to tears later, in Generations. The writing was aware of the contradictions, which also elevated it.
just click the "x" on the nag screen ...
He doesn't ooze of anxiety, he doesn't micromanage, or rule by fear and unpredictable outbursts of anger until only yes-sayers are left. He bases his leadership on moral backbone and strong principles, and stoically has faith those will take him as far as he needs to go.
Andy says perceptions matter more than truth.
Picard says the first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it's scientific truth, or historical truth, or personal truth.
Picard and Sisko are both excellent, thoughtful, nearly everything you say - and sisko still is quite not happy with Picard given th circumstances of the battle against the borg they fought in together!
Strong principals don't work when you have investors to contend with that will kick you out for one bad quarter.
In the age where biology doesn't seem to matter anymore and feelings rule over facts, the Picards of the world will be shunned, censored, and cancelled.
Picard was deeply affectionate and learned when it came to history and culture but free from nostalgia or chauvinism, anti-authoritarian in leadership, tactical and intelligent rather than brash and violent, effectively everything you see less of among the ever more brutish and philistine people in charge around the world.
[1] Sorbo's portrayal of Dylan Hunt is basically just taking his Hercules role and putting him on a space ship and I have no doubt it would look the same on the bridge of the enterprise.
It's entirely conceivable Patrick's performance inspired the writers to reach new heights
Writers and actors feed off one another
https://mas.to/@PicardTips
The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here, particularly these sections:
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously... Edit out swipes.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
They’re all excellent. Is Garek the bad actor? O’Brian? The doctor? Kira? The security chief? Quark?
I claim you’re wrong/delusional if you want to critique the acting in ds9. It has some problems, but acting quality is the high point of Star Trek in ds9 - because at least there’s no Wesley crusher (and yes siskos kid is more compelling than Wesley!)
Jadzia I agree is marginally weaker than some of the others, but I do think that a permanent trill character was very good for story writing, plus eye candy, plus relationship with word was okay. At least she was a hell of a lot better than sad replacement character from the last season.
Come to think of it, the OP may have simply seen a few of the last season episodes which get pretty bad.
That out of the way, Brooks' Sisco is the much better captain, man, father, and role model and Brooks' acting in Ben, I feel, does a much better job.
I will sorely miss Stewart, as we all should. All the captains' actors and writers who made them should be too. What a great franchise and body of effort and work.
Correct me if I am wrong here, but DS9 got a lot better in season 4 when the writers from TNG got to move over finally after TNG ended. Also, VGR and DS( were concurrent for like 4 years, right?
Same with Dr. Who: most episodes are forgettable, but some like "Blink" and "Silence in the Library" stick with you forever.
I'm lamenting the fact seeing more and more actors I grew up with pass away. Walter Koenig recently and most of the Star Trek TOS cast. Except Shatner, who'll outlive most of us.
R.I.P. Patrick Stewart: Captain Picard, Gurney Halleck, Professor Xavier and more.