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Comment by seethishat | Hacker News Reader

Because it is common sense.

This is software trained to produce outputs. It doesn't feel anything.

How is this "common sense"? The question of what consciousness is, what it emerges from, etc. literally have no proved answer at the moment.

Take this statement: "consciousness emerges from sufficient complexity in any system". Neither you or I can prove it right or wrong, but we can both make an assumption that if it was right, then there would be a way for an LLM to be conscious.

I'm not arguing that they are, I'm saying being this confident that they are not is the exact same as being confident that they are.

Yes, I see your point. You could argue that humans, too, are trained to produce expected outputs (family, societal and peer pressure, etc.).

By social norms, not running matrix multiplication in their head ad nauseam

I don't think that argument holds water, because the scope of what can be reasonably approximated by matrix multiplication is extremely broad (especially when the matrix multiplication is also paired with a source of randomness).

Dude we aren't performing some nonsensical calculation in our brains.

Mathematics is an invention of humans.

Not sure about "nonsensical calculation", but our brains perform computation (read: they transform information). In fact, that is what the brains are for (see: biology 101). As for mathematics, I am with Galileo: it is the language of the universe. Of course, we "invented" its silly glyphs and the like, but those are secondary. My 2 cents.

for the same reason I don't think a pinball machine or ATM is conscious

I genuinely think there's a lot of deluded people on here.

Which shouldnt be a surprise - most CS folks are disconnected ironically from reality.

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