Comment by ForceBru

> ...no stable identity to it ... what's doing the thinking?

The model (its parameters, its architecture and the inference algorithm) is doing the thinking. That's what we call "ChatGPT" or "Claude": it's the same model residing God knows where, somewhere in "the cloud" on some random GPUs. But when you're talking to a model, you can feel that you're talking to the same entity — the same model.

It's a bit like the SciFi notion of "uploading your consciousness". Normally, consciousness is tied to hardware: "consciousness is confined to the body" indeed. Hypothetically, clone the consciousness into a computer algorithm and run it on any machine. Now consciousness is detached from its original body, like the LLMs and MMAcevedo (https://qntm.org/mmacevedo).

So the difference between meat and "weights" is that we can easily clone and run "weights" (LLMs), but we can't clone (copy exactly, bit-by-bit) and execute "meat".