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Comment by Analemma_ | Hacker News Reader

It's totally possible: Daniel Dennett's theory of sentient consciousness-- specifically, what we have that animals do not-- is that it is "ignited" by language acquisition. It's within the realm of possibility that LLMs provide empirical proof or disproof of this hypothesis.

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I always find it outrageously pious to say we have "sentient consciousness" whereas animals don't. Animals have emotions; memories; wants; needs; the ability to use tools; personalities; an understanding of grief; an understanding of cause and effect; and much more. Just because they lack a formal language (that we can understand) doesn't mean they're any less "sentient" or "conscious."

Sentient consciousness, you mean that weird meatbag thinking style? AI consciousness will be so, so much more.

LLM's don't have any sensory modalities. All of our conscious experiences are built up on either perceptual, proprioceptual or emotional sensations. An LLM generating text of a sunset isn't seeing the colors.

Dennett thinks consciousness, in the sense of the hard problem/subjectivity, is some kind of trick of the brain. So he proposes a linguistic trick. Language fools us into thinking there is something more than a functional stream of information.

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