The folks leading the AI industry, at least in the US, continue to embarrass themselves and all of us with this nonsense.
There may come a time, but it's silly to mistake the LLMs automaton behavior for consciousness.
There may come a time, but it's silly to mistake the LLMs automaton behavior for consciousness.
There have obviously been smart people involved in making this stuff happen, but more and more I'm convinced most of these new AI billionaires were just in the right place at the right time. They raised money better and faster than anyone else, played faster and looser with copyright violations, and that's pretty much how we got here.
The computers are doing math. It's not even complicated math, there's just a lot of it. It's amazing that the math results in what it does, but you would think the guys running the machines that turn electricity into software would understand it enough to not think there's a real live boy in there.
Because we as people don't have a strong definition or understanding of what consciousness even is many people seem to take the position that it may be, and it's impossible to disprove. It feels similar philosophically to debating the existence of God.
I think it's possible this rift between people continues to grow just like it does between theists and atheists.
I would be very curious to see the stats on how many people think llms are conscious and/or may be conscious today vs. in 5, 10, or 15 years.