Arguing that they are not sentient is not in conflict with materialism. And in fact it is supported by tons of material evidence: for example they don’t act sentient at all if you decline to provide a prompt.
The argument is 'what is sentience?'
>And in fact it is supported by tons of material evidence: for example they don’t act sentient at all if you decline to provide a prompt
This falls into the category of 'appearance of sentience'. Based on this logic all that would be required would be a perpetually self-prompting InstructGPT instance.
The comment at the top of this thread, to which you replied, states “Chatbots are not sentient.” Which is a narrower conversation.
I have not seen one reason why that confidence should exist. People seem to think we are special because we are made of meat, and we are “more complex”. But I still ask — what is so different about the human brain than an LLM? And further, what proof is there that we know what sentience truly is, and that LLMs don’t have it?