consciousness-5
Original: consciousness-5 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Robot: You robots aren't conscious. Like, consider adversarial attacks. I can show you a dog photo, change some carefully-selected pixels that barely change the image, and you'll perceive it as an ostrich.
Panel 2:
Man (with orange hair): Oh yeah? Well, suppose I take Michelangelo's "The Last Judgment," change nothing on the canvas except that I add a tiny elf with a penis-nose inside Jesus's open hand.
Man: This painting is 13.7 meters long and yet now, for you, for all humans forever, it's "the one with the penis nose."
Panel 3 (the man and the robot walk together):
Man: Oh my god my god. I would look at nothing else. It's as if the painting had disappeared.
Robot: See! None of us is conscious!
Votey:
Man (now alone, looking distressed/teary, speech bubble): So... liberating...
Robot: You robots aren't conscious. Like, consider adversarial attacks. I can show you a dog photo, change some carefully-selected pixels that barely change the image, and you'll perceive it as an ostrich.
Panel 2:
Man (with orange hair): Oh yeah? Well, suppose I take Michelangelo's "The Last Judgment," change nothing on the canvas except that I add a tiny elf with a penis-nose inside Jesus's open hand.
Man: This painting is 13.7 meters long and yet now, for you, for all humans forever, it's "the one with the penis nose."
Panel 3 (the man and the robot walk together):
Man: Oh my god my god. I would look at nothing else. It's as if the painting had disappeared.
Robot: See! None of us is conscious!
Votey:
Man (now alone, looking distressed/teary, speech bubble): So... liberating...
Alt text
A three-panel SMBC comic. Panel 1: A boxy robot stands outdoors and tells a man, "You robots aren't conscious. Like, consider adversarial attacks. I can show you a dog photo, change some carefully-selected pixels that barely change the image, and you'll perceive it as an ostrich." (The robot has confused who is the robot.) Panel 2: A man with orange hair replies, "Oh yeah? Well, suppose I take Michelangelo's 'The Last Judgment,' change nothing on the canvas except that I add a tiny elf with a penis-nose inside Jesus's open hand. This painting is 13.7 meters long and yet now, for you, for all humans forever, it's 'the one with the penis nose.'" Panel 3: The man and robot walk together; the man says, "Oh my god my god. I would look at nothing else. It's as if the painting had disappeared," and the robot exclaims, "See! None of us is conscious!" The joke: humans have their own "adversarial" perceptual exploits, so neither side proves consciousness. Votey (aftercomic): A close-up of the orange-haired man's face, looking pained and tearful, saying weakly, "So... liberating..." — unsettled by the implication that he, too, isn't conscious.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.