It is interesting to see that in a time when a lot of people accept the theory of materialism for the human brain (i.e the view that everything is physical and the mind is a product of brain), the same people tend to have a "hidden" dualist view on LLMs.
Suddenly, they claim that what happens in the brain cannot be replicated anywhere else because "something" is lacking, but either they don't say what it is, or it is stated without any strong scientific basis.
I think that the simplest explanation is that it is hard for those people to imagine consciousness outside of biological systems and they try to rationalize it.
If a LLM says "I am in pain", is it just stringing together words or is it feeling pain? Does pain exist for a being that never felt any kind of physical pain, never had any pain receptors?
There are humans who don't have any pain receptors because of genetic mutations. They cut themselves all the time, they bleed, they break bones and they don't seem distressed by it even on a purely mental, intellectual level.
I am not saying that everything that a LLM say is true (the human without pain receptors can also say "I have pain" without feeling any pain).
Just that we cannot exclude that LLMs can have phenomenological consciousness by a simple argument of substrate. But similarly we cannot say for sure that they are conscious.
addag · · focus · HN ↗
I think that the simplest explanation is that it is hard for those people to imagine consciousness outside of biological systems and they try to rationalize it.
Arodex · · focus · HN ↗
There are humans who don't have any pain receptors because of genetic mutations. They cut themselves all the time, they bleed, they break bones and they don't seem distressed by it even on a purely mental, intellectual level.
addag · · focus · HN ↗
Just that we cannot exclude that LLMs can have phenomenological consciousness by a simple argument of substrate. But similarly we cannot say for sure that they are conscious.