Comment by andrewmcwatters

Can we not downvote this, please? It's a good question.

There's prior art for formal logic and knowledge representation systems dating back several decades, but transformers don't use those designs. A transformer is more like a search algorithm by comparison, not a logic one.

That's one issue, but the other is that reasoning comes from logic, and the act of reasoning is considered a qualifier of consciousness. But various definitions of consciousness require awareness, which large language models are not capable of.

Their window of awareness, if you can call it that, begins and ends during processing tokens, and outputting them. As if a conscious thing could be conscious for moments, then dormant again.

That is to say, conscious reasoning comes from awareness. But in tech, severing the humanities here would allow one to suggest that one, or a thing, can reason without consciousness.