> I firmly believe that LLMs are stochastic parrots and also that humans are too. To the point where I actually think even consciousness itself is a next-token predictor.

I agree with the first sentence but not with the second one. Consciousness most probably does not arise from just a next-token predictor. At least not from an architecture similar to current LLMs.

Both humans and LLMs basically learn to predict what happens next. However, LLMs only predict when we ask them. In contrast, humans predict something all the time. Even when we don't have any sensory input, our brain plays scenarios. Maybe consciousness arises because the result of our thinking is fed back as input. In that sense, we simulate a world that includes us acting and communicating in that world.

Also noteworthy, the human brain handles a variety of sensory information and it's output is not only language. LLMs are restricted to only language. But to me it seems like it's enough for consciousness if we can give it the self-referential property.