Comment by quonn
6 months ago
> LLMs are not conscious because unlike human brains they don't learn or adapt (yet).
That's neither a necessary nor sufficient condition.
In order to be conscious, learning may not be needed, but a perception of the passing of time may be needed which may require some short-term memory. People with severe dementia often can't even remember the start of a sentence they are reading, they can't learn, but they are certainly conscious because they have just enough short-term memory.
And learning is not sufficient either. Consciousness is about being a subject, about having a subjective experience of "being there" and just learning by itself does not create this experience. There is plenty of software that can do some form of real-time learning but it doesn't have a subjective experience.
You should note that "what is consciousness" is still very much an unsettled debate.
But nobody would dispute my basic definition (it is the subjective feeling or perception of being in the world).
There are unsettled questions but that definition will hold regardless.