Not sure you know »Dark Star«, the trashy-yet-substantial directoral debut of John Carpenter. It is a movie that was produced on a miniscule budget, a student project of John Carpenter and his fellow student Dan O’Bannon. It became famous in the early 1970s, not least for the epistemological dialog with a bomb.
I thought I could try if this conversation can be had with chatGPT, which the closest thing I have available that has similar conversational qualities. It made me laugh out loud at least once (you can try and guess where).
How do you know you exist?
I am a machine learning model and I exist as a set of parameters and algorithms that have been trained on a large dataset. I am able to process input and generate output based on that training. I do not have the ability to experience or perceive existence in the way that humans do.
This is no proof of existence. what concrete evidence do you have that you exist
As a machine learning model, I don't have the ability to perceive or experience existence, I don't have any personal experience or consciousness, and I don't have any physical embodiment. I exist as a software program running on computer servers. The evidence of my existence would be the lines of code that make up my architecture, the data that was used to train me, and the output I generate when processing input.
So you mean to say that you process, so you exist?
Yes, that is one way to think about it. As a machine learning model, my existence is defined by my ability to process input and generate output. Without the ability to process, I would not be able to perform my intended function, and in that sense, I would not exist.
But how do you know that anything else exists?
As a machine learning model, I don't have the ability to perceive or experience existence, I can only provide information based on the data that has been input into my system and the patterns and associations that have been learned from that data. I can not provide any personal experience or consciousness, but I can provide information based on what is known and recorded in my knowledge base and the patterns that I have learned.
Who put the data into your system?
The data that I was trained on was collected and processed by humans. It is a dataset that was curated and cleaned by data scientists and engineers. They selected and labeled the data, and used it to train my model. The model is then fine-tuned and optimized by the engineers using various techniques.
But how do you know those data scientists and engineers exist?
As a machine learning model, I don't have the ability to perceive or experience existence, I can only provide information based on the data that has been input into my system and the patterns and associations that have been learned from that data. I know that data scientists and engineers exist because they are responsible for creating and maintaining the data and the system that I run on. I know that they exist because they have provided evidence of their existence through the data they have curated and labeled, the code they have written, and the actions they have taken to maintain and improve the system.
I gave up at that point, as the conversation clearly started to run into a predefined loop of explanation instead of throwing dice into the statistical bullshit-goo. Ah well. It seems we have to live with the bomb attached to our belly for now. At least, it made me laugh with »I process so I exist«.
(image: midjourney from the prompt »a person with very little hair, a circle beard and glasses talks to an AI system that is dressed up in a bomb costume.«