Comment by Lerc
15 hours ago
if you look at https://github.com/dbreunig/nesformer
It's obvious a LLM can do anything a computer can do.
As an answer to "Why would LLMs exhibit sentience?"
It is because that would mean that no algorithm could exhibit sentience, claiming that would require some causal action that cannot be performed by an algorithm to create sentience. Some people like to point to quantum effects, but that would require the cause of sentience to be pure randomness. That seems even less plausible. Absent of any evidence that human brains are doing something that no algorithm could do, it would be reasonable to assume that sentience could be algorithmically obtained.
Quantum physics is also Turing computable and therefore an algorithm.
To argue this you have to prove the opposite: that consciousness is an algorithm. Not that an algorithm can simulate consciousness, that's a far easier task.
All of known physics is a Turing computer, so yes. Its already proven as far as we know. Its on you to prove algorithms cannot be conscious, since human brains already are.
This isn't an argument to say that algorithms must be capable of consciousness, or that all Consciousness must be algorithms. It is an argument to show the consequence of declaring that LLMs are not capable of consciousness is to claim no computer is.
"Sentience could be algorithmically obtained" is a much weaker claim than "LLMs are almost sentient."
We've had computers that can do anything computers can do for as long as we've had computers.
The claim has never been LLMs are almost sentient. The claim has always been LLMs might be capable of sentience. You can make a trivial tiny LLM that is clearly not sentient.
I was addressing the argument that something is not sentient because it is a LLM. That requires all LLMs to be non-sentient, and by extension, since LLMs can do all algorithims, all algorithms must not be sentient.
> We are very close though.
Seems like the claim is that they're almost there. Anyways, have a nice day, and Happy Halloween if you celebrate.
And Turing computability covers all of known physics.