Comment by amanaplanacanal

1 day ago

There is a difference between saying software can never be conscious and saying the software we have today isn't conscious.

Yes. There are really three separate questions:

  - Are current LLMs conscious?
  - Is it possible that future versions of LLMs with similar architectures could be conscious?
  - Can any AI be conscious?

I'd assign probabilities of around 0.1, 0.2, and 0.9. My completely ignorant take is that we probably need something more "dynamic" than a bunch of transformer layers in order to produce consciousness, but I wouldn't be shocked to be mistaken.

  • I assign probabilities of zero to all 3. Computer program being conscious leads to ridiculous and obviously false conclusions (think about a person running a program using pen and paper for memory).

  • I think 10-20% chance is wildly generous. What specific mechanism makes you think there's a 10% chance that current LLMs are conscious?