[IshKebab]

Why though? There are only two reasonable reasons I can think of:

1. Scale. There's clearly a scale of consciousness (a jellyfish isn't very conscious but an ape is). Current LLMs are so small (on the scale of brains) that they must be not very conscious at all.

2. Structure. There might be some fundamental structure of computation that is required for consciousness that LLMs don't have yet. For example the ability to form memories (they don't really have that), or some structure of weights that gives consciousness.

My guess is it's definitely 1. and probably also 2.

But I don't think that means thinking LLMs are conscious is completely ridiculous, just a bit premature. I would not be surprised if they are conscious in 50 years.

The real question is how would we ever know that they are. The only reason we know animals are conscious is by direct experience, and we'll never have that for AI.

Anyway this blog post looks like typically worthless philosophy.

[ChrisGreenHeur]

No matter how large the llm hardware is it won’t be made of brain meat. The stuff we actually know is conscious.

[IshKebab]

Even though we know brains are conscious it seems absurd to thing that there is some non-computational magic in the brain is the secret to consciousness.

There are some religious people who clutch at nonsense like quantum microtubules, but nobody has found anything real that would preclude pure computation from being conscious. (And yes that does have all sorts of mind-bending consequences.)

[ChrisGreenHeur]

Pure computation not having existence would be such a thing. And calling Penrose religious is a bit weird, are you really serious?

[IshKebab]

He seems to be sorting of wanting there to be a higher meaning to life but at least not falling for traditional religions.

> I think I would say that the universe has a purpose, it's not somehow just there by chance ... some people, I think, take the view that the universe is just there and it runs along—it's a bit like it just sort of computes, and we happen somehow by accident to find ourselves in this thing. But I don't think that's a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe, I think that there is something much deeper about it.

Anyway I was more thinking of Hameroff who also seems to be .. maybe "spiritual" is a better word. He believes in quantum Buddhism or some nonsense like that.

[mnewme]

Yes, there is a lot of philosophy on that, but the way LLMs work is inherently different from brains, though we use similar terms, hence the confusion. You are right there may be artifical intelligence, just not with LLMs

LLMs are still statistical models that predict the next token; that hasn’t changed, even when they are autoregressive.There is no intent whatsoever.

I agree on the last part, pseudoscientific

[IshKebab]

> the way LLMs work is inherently different from brains, though we use similar terms, hence the confusion

I'm not confused. I know the difference. That was my second point - there may be some structural requirements that LLMs don't yet have.

> LLMs are still statistical models that predict the next token

Whatever the structural limitations is (if there is one), I seriously doubt it is this "just a stochastic parrot" nonsense. I thought we were past that. Have you used AI in the last 6 months?

Smh, it's like saying Mozart is just wobbling air molecules.

[mnewme]

Actually I work in a AI (like actually training models) and yes the models are insane, still the architecture has not in its core changed. Also „reasoning“ is actually a bad word for what really happens.

There are many famous voices in AI that have the same opinion as me.

Where should consciousness arise? Nothing happens without a prompt and nothing happens afterwards, nothing is saved, nothing is changed? There’s no drive state, no homeostasis, nothing at stake. It makes no sense logically

[IshKebab]

> Also „reasoning“ is actually a bad word for what really happens.

I don't see why. We can really only detect reasoning from external behaviour. You can't say "AI isn't reasoning because it's _just_ matrix multiplication/token prediction" any more than you can say "humans don't reason because brains are _just_ neural impulses moving around".

> There are many famous voices in AI that have the same opinion as me.

Many more that don't.

> Where should consciousness arise?

No idea! Nobody knows.

> Nothing happens without a prompt and nothing happens afterwards, nothing is saved, nothing is changed? There’s no drive state, no homeostasis, nothing at stake.

You can run AI continuously with one initial prompt. That doesn't seem like a big limitation. Things can be saved or changed - you can give AI long term memory by letting it write things down. It's a bit crap and unsatisfying at the moment (surely we can do better than that?), but maybe it's sufficient for consciousness. Maybe you don't need long term memory at all - was Memento guy not conscious?

> It makes no sense logically

That's true of consciousness in general, which is why it's such an interesting mystery. One which I suspect will never be solved.

[mnewme]

I recently read an article about a brain scientist that said how dangerous it is to use the same words for completely different things. We use human analogy to describe LLMs and then think LLMs exhibit human behaviour.

No reasoning has nothing to do with what we do. Humans can solve novel problems using sparse information. LLMs can’t do that.

Reasoning is a complex cognitive process that involves causal understanding, mental modeling, intentionality, and abstraction. Instead, transformer-based models statistically predict textual continuations based on patterns learned from extensive training data containing examples of human-written logical processes and problem decompositions.

LLMs produce outputs that superficially resemble human reasoning, but they are merely reproducing observed patterns rather than engaging in genuine cognitive reasoning.

Nope you can’t run an LLM continuously with one prompt, you are probably referring to agent harnesses, what in fact happens it sends additional prompts using a loop and asks in between if the goal is solved, for the LLM every request is completely new, you just add and add history to the prompt. no it is not real memory, an LLM doesn’t learn from each conversation, you just again add text to the prompt (which is history) up until the context window.

No but the guy has intent, has short term memory and has subjective experience, all which a LLM is lacking.

[IshKebab]

> Humans can solve novel problems using sparse information. LLMs can’t do that.

You haven't been following the news recently!

> Reasoning is a complex cognitive process that involves causal understanding, mental modeling, intentionality, and abstraction. Instead, transformer-based models statistically predict textual continuations based on patterns learned from extensive training data containing examples of human-written logical processes and problem decompositions.

You're conflating low level and high level functions. At a low level human brains are just sending electrical and chemical signals around. At a high level they are doing causal reasoning and mental modelling.

In AI, at a low level they are doing token prediction and matrix modelling. At a high level they are also doing causal reasoning and mental modelling.