The LLM <> Human Brain argument is so frequently used but makes no sense.
You can disagree, but legally speaking it will be interesting to see the legal strategy OpenAI takes with the NYT. I'm almost certain that OpenAI won't be using the human brain argument in their defense. Legally, claiming your machine should be treated the same as a human is a losing argument.
LLM can work like human brain, but it doesn’t mean it is like a human person.
First, we know that personhood cannot be reduced to the brain (cf. the gut flora studies and all that).
Second, more generally that claim would require solving what’s known in philosophy as the hard problem. The arguments that consciousness arises from a certain arrangement of entities we perceive in reality (or that it doesn’t exist at all) is specious: it implies that those other things exist in absolute sense, i.e. are the underlying territory, even though the only evidence for their existence is coming via consciousness. That’s a lot of entities to grant magical existence to out of nothing. Once you assume that those things are more likely to be a map, the question turns into what is the territory then, and the spotlights shift to consciousness (a.k.a. the only thing we can be absolutely sure to exist, as it is required for the “we” part to exist in the first place).
And yes, of course, if OpenAI uses the “sentient LLM” defense, all the power to them, but the next logical step would be to consider that industry based on forced labour.
You can disagree, but legally speaking it will be interesting to see the legal strategy OpenAI takes with the NYT. I'm almost certain that OpenAI won't be using the human brain argument in their defense. Legally, claiming your machine should be treated the same as a human is a losing argument.