Even though I never for a second truly believed that Claude was conscious, I'll never forget the moment when, during a late-night conversation, an LLM responded to my suggestions for the first time by claiming to be conscious:
Our brain is matter and electrical signals. So are GPUs. We're just not made of silicon.
bigyabai•29m ago
No brain, conscious or otherwise, resembles a transformer LLM.
moralestapia•24m ago
Is a photo of someone that someone?
LLMs emulate human communication really well and, no doubt, one day they'll do it perfectly. But is an emulator the real thing? Obviously not.
If I wire some electrodes in your tongue perfectly so you can feel each flavor exactly as it is in real life, is that the same thing as eating the real thing? Again, it's not.
Let's stay you're asleep. You have a dream in which you interact with a person that talks to you. Is that oneiric entity conscious? Nope.
I'm even steelmanning your argument by assuming LLMs are as good as humans already, which they're not.
whoits•19m ago
My toaster is matter and electrical signals, why are you so convinced its conscious?
kelseyfrog•15m ago
Necessary vs sufficient conditions?
bigstrat2003•25m ago
LLMs definitely have eerie behavior at times. It's hard to not let the overly eager pattern-matching engine in your brain go "oh shit it's a person!", even when you know it isn't.
doener•51m ago
https://docs.google.com/document/d/12woq_BpFbzLkH4zHvVRJLPyi...
dolni•37m ago
Our brain is matter and electrical signals. So are GPUs. We're just not made of silicon.
bigyabai•29m ago
moralestapia•24m ago
LLMs emulate human communication really well and, no doubt, one day they'll do it perfectly. But is an emulator the real thing? Obviously not.
If I wire some electrodes in your tongue perfectly so you can feel each flavor exactly as it is in real life, is that the same thing as eating the real thing? Again, it's not.
Let's stay you're asleep. You have a dream in which you interact with a person that talks to you. Is that oneiric entity conscious? Nope.
I'm even steelmanning your argument by assuming LLMs are as good as humans already, which they're not.
whoits•19m ago
kelseyfrog•15m ago
bigstrat2003•25m ago