The average human is so easily convinced that humans "know", "think", "lie", "want", "understand", etc.
But really it's all just a probabilistic chain reaction of electrochemical and thermal interactions. There is literally nowhere in the brain's internals for anything like "knowing" or "thinking" or "lying" to happen!
Strange that we have to pretend otherwise
There you go again, auto-morphizing the meat-bags. Vroom vroom.
This is a fundamentally interesting point. Taking your comment as HN would advise, I totally agree.
I think genAI freaks a lot of people out because it makes them doubt what they thought made them special.
And to your comment, humans have always used words they reserve for humanity that indicates we're special: that we think, feel, etc... That we're human. Maybe we're not so special. Maybe that's scary to a lot of people.
(And I was about to react with
"In 2025 , ironically, a lot of anti-anthropomorphization is actually anthropocentrism with a moustache."
I'll have to save it for the next debate)
That was their point. Or rather, that the analogous argument about the underpinnings of LLMs is similarly unconvincing regarding the issue of thought or understanding.
Consciousness is not computation. You need something else.
On the flip side: If you do that, YOU are conscious and intelligent.
Would it mean that the machine that did the computation became conscious when it did it?
What is consciousness?
Consciousness is what it "feels like" when a part of the universe is engaged in local entropy reduction. You heard it here first, folks!