Comment by josh-sematic

Thank you for coming into this endless discussion with actual references to relevant authorities who have thought a lot about this, rather than just “it’s obvious that…”

FWIW though, last I heard Hofstadter was on the “LLMs aren’t conscious” side of the fence:

> It’s of course impressive how fluently these LLMs can combine terms and phrases from such sources and can consequently sound like they are really reflecting on what consciousness is, but to me it sounds empty, and the more I read of it, the more empty it sounds. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The glibness is the giveaway. To my jaded eye and mind, there is nothing in what you sent me that resembles genuine reflection, genuine thinking. [1]

It’s interesting to me that Hofstadter is there given what I’ve gleaned from reading his other works.

[1] https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/are-llms-starting-to-becom...

Note: I disagree with a lot of Gary Marcus, so don’t read too much into me pulling from there.