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Comment by mnewme | Hacker News Reader

There is absolutely ZERO evidence or possibility that LLMs are currently conscious, everyone working in AI knows this, (and don’t listen to the marketing hypes).

LLMs still can’t reason (don’t confuse with the marketing word) , plan, or understand the world, no emotion, no subjective experience, no memory, no intent.

And yes I would change my opinion if it were logically different, other architectures may pave the way there, but not LLMs

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There is no "evidence" that anything has consciousness, nor could there be. To clarify, by that I don't mean nothing is conscious, I mean that it's never been an evidence-based proposition.

We are conscious because we declare ourselves to be, by fiat, not because of evidence or a well-considered rationale. Our conception of consciousness or understanding isn't formal, checkable or objective, it's entirely grounded in subjectivity. As such, any and all arguments for or against consciousness or understanding in LLMs are based on feelings. We feel that we are conscious, therefore we are. Regarding anything else, "we'll know it when we see it." There's nothing rigorous about it.

Yes there is no definitive proof, but the reverse is also not true. Please read some science on that in neurology and biology. Yes it is hard to define, though there are definitions and those are not fulfilled by a LLM, What’s missing is a bearer: no state persists between calls, nothing is maintained against pressure, nothing costs the system anything.

though more an more animals seems to be conscious as we previously thought

What evidence would take you from "LLMs aren't conscious," to "LLMs are definitely conscious"? Just asking because the responses tend to be genuinely interesting and give insight into what's important to people.

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