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Comment by catigula

14 days ago

Unfortunately you've undermined your point by making sweeping claims about something that is the literal hardest known problem in philosophy (consciousness).

I'm not actually comfortable saying that LLMs aren't conscious. I think there's a decent chance they could be in a very alien way.

I realize that this is a very weird and potentially scary claim for people to parse but you must understand how weird and scary consciousness is.

Note that I didn't say they aren't conscious, I said they aren't conscious "in the same way as a human being". I left open the possibility they could be conscious "in a very alien way".

If they are, knowing what they potentially know about humans by now, they would probably do their best to hide it.

  • I don't think their experience of consciousness would be very analogous to what you and I understand.

    • I agree, but having spent 40 years interacting with computers I feel like I have a pretty good idea what they're up to/capable of.

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