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by MichaelZuo 205 days ago
What’s stopping people from also describing LLM systems with “qualia”?
1 comments

Empirical evidence, for one. And the existence of fine-tuning, which allows you to artificially influence how a model responds to questions. This means we can't just ask an LLM, "do you see red?" I can't really even ask you that. I just know that I see red, and that many other philosophers and scientists in the past seem to agree with my experience, and that it's a deep, deep discussion which only shallow spectators are currently drawing hard conclusions from.
And what if someone comes along and just calls it “qualia” anyways?
I can't really help it if people run around calling things other things. Language evolves!
So then your opinion is about as meaningful as theirs.

I don’t see a way for any passing reader to decide conclusively.

Language isn't meaningless just because it evolves. I literally cannot help it if people ignore history and start using words in new ways. Those who take precision seriously will adapt and adopt new words if needed.
This doesn’t make sense, how did you get “meaningless” out of someone else disagreeing with you?