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Comment by zurfer | Hacker News Reader

Wild hypotheses: while GPT-4 is probably not self-aware, you could build a "thin-wrapper" around it that you tell what GPT-4 is, and how it behaves, making it self-aware.

self-aware and conscious are strictly speaking not the same, but it is at least a stepping stone in this direction

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I don't think GPT-4 is more conscious than a book. For consciousness, I think it is necessary for it to continuously process and alter its own knowledge.

> For consciousness, I think it is necessary for it to continuously process and alter its own knowledge.

Not really. Especially if you consider time as a fourth dimension instead of what we perceive and define as time.

You are probably right. But just as with humans it is not the brain (or the body) that is aware; or in this case of GPT-4, GPT-4 iteself (or the machine that is running it) that is aware. It is a model beeing executed in the brain/GPT-4 that is or could be self aware.

except there is no observer to be aware of itself - all you're achieving with your wrapper is increasing the likelihood of producing text that says what a self-aware thing would say.

maybe I just won't ever get past my hangup of "it's clockwork that only works when you crank the driveshaft"

until it has some autonomy that it is programmed to protect (a mortality, a survival instinct), there's no self to consider

*IANACR [consciousness researcher]

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