Comment by tim333
6 hours ago
Why do you assume other humans or cats and dogs are conscious? I'd suggest it's because they behave as if they are. LLMs show some signs of human like awareness, at least of text contents, whereas spreadsheets don't.
When doctors are testing if humans are conscious they'll do things like hold out their hand and say how many fingers am I holding up. Some LLMs can pass that.
I’d stay that my belief about other humans or cats or dogs wasn’t really an assumption based on some kind of proof that had to be constructed from a ground of doubting. I’d say it was the type of hinge certainty upon which my world depends and my doubting it would only ever arise for a few minutes in special circumstances. Same as I could ponder gravity turning off and bouncing around the room but this has never happened and seems like it never will, so isn’t really much of a doubt worthy activity, same as questioning my dog’s consciousness.