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Comment by joshheitzman | Hacker News Reader

The problem with this line of thinking is that modern computers are nothing like the brain. LLMs don't stand on their own, they have to be run on these modern computers, but doing so does not change the physical properties of the computer.

The simulation you propose of the brain is likely impossible due to quantum mechanics making it impossible to fully simulate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind

Perhaps we'll be able to build an artificial brain that includes the same quantum properties as biological brains, but this won't be a simulation of a brain it will be a synthetic brain.

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At first I was inclined to agree with you, but then I realized that the brain requires this whole complicated contraption (the body) to run and, really, do anything at all. And while I'm not familiar with the notion of 'quantum mind' I do think that biological processes aren't deterministic (at a cellular level).

And I think this does mirror the situation with LLMs -- you need this whole computer contraption and GPU, also running on electricity, to support the LLM's "thought" processes. And that if we model the brain's neurology sufficiently (which it seems we've done) we can achieve results that appear to be like thinking, even if it is an emergent behavior from "relatively" simple math.

Which actually makes me wonder the opposite -- are we, as humans, not much better than these LLMs? Suppose the body is just that super complicated computer contraption, honed by thousands/millions of years of evolution to achieve some semblance of homeostasis? If you reject the idea that we have a soul, we start to look very similar to the machines we build. "You are a brain inside a skull cockpit, piloting a bone mech covered in meat armor and skin" feels more and more relevant. That I'm just a meat circuit running brain chips and once you pull the plug on the source of electricity it all just... stops

Take a computer that can run the biggest LLM available today. It can also run any smaller LLM as well. It can also run software that isn't an LLM at all. Brains and LLMs are not at all equivalent as LLMs lack a stateful physical form while brains are very stateful. As you said once the brain is no longer maintained properly by the body it stops and transitions to a non-functional state that can be reversed. That isn't true for LLMs at all. You can copy them and run the same one on many computer, run different ones on the same computer, you turn that computer offs for long periods of time and then turn them back on keep on running the same LLMs as before on them.

Consciousness may be defined by computational irreducibility in the universe that we may never be able to directly observe with instruments: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/03/what-is-consciou...

If computers degraded the way flesh does once you stop fueling it I feel like that would defeat a lot of your argument. And yes the brain has inherent statefulness (you're referring to memories, I'm guessing?), we have also jerry-rigged some degree of statefulness into LLMs. Mechanically it is very different and inferior, and there is a notion of separation that probably doesn't map to brains, but I would argue that LLMs, when you look at how inference is used in situ, are not necessarily stateless.

One thing to keep in mind is that your brain's hardware heavily influences your experience and thus your brain's development.

Eg. whether you are male or female, tall or short, your limbs can make you run fast or not, your eyes can see well or not... all of these influence your experiences, your brain development, and who do you feel "you are". Try really removing all of your sensory inputs from your past, your body ability and disability, and do you think you end up the same person?

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