[ben_w]

> Humans have inner subjective experience, self-awareness, and the ability to reflect on our own existence. LLMs don't.

We have no test capable of determining whether or not they have those things, not even if we disregarded the limitations of our current technology capabilities and are only asking hypothetically how to differentiate.

We also don't have that for animals, or even other humans — I know I have an experience of being, but no way of telling if someone else who says they do actually does. I have to assume at least some of y'all do or humanity wouldn't have written about it since at least Descartes.

People with aphantasia report being surprised when they realise that other people do have mental images, and that they previously thought such things were invented by the film industry as a metaphor. By analogy, there may well be humans out there without qualia, who just learned to mimic the language of those of us who do, which is after all exactly what LLMs must have done if they don't have inner subjective experience. Philosophers call them P-Zombies.