Ask Lemmy

I mean yeah, and if I were trained on more articles and papers saying the earth was flat then I might say the same.

I'm not disputing what you've written because it's empirically true. But really, I don't think brains are all that more complex when it comes down to decision making and output. We receive input, evaluate our knowledge and spit out a probable response. Our tokens aren't words, of course, but more abstract concepts which could translate into words. (This has advantages in that we can output in various ways, some non-verbal - movement, music - or combine movement and speech, e.g. writing).

Our two major advantages: 1) we're essentially ongoing and evolving models, retrained constantly on new input and evaluation of that input. LLMs can't learn past a single conversation, and that conversational knowledge isn't integrated into the base model. And 2) ongoing sensory input means we are constantly taking in information and able to think and respond and reevaluate constantly.

If we get an LLM (or whatever successor tech) to that same point and address those two points, I do think we could see some semblance of consciousness emerge. And people will constantly say "but it's just metal and electricity", and yeah, it is. We're just meat and electricity and somehow it works for us. We'll never be able to prove any AI is conscious because we can't actually prove we're conscious, or even know what that really means.

This isn't to disparage any of your excellent points by the way. I just think we overestimate our own brains a bit, and that it may be possible to simulate consciousness in a much simpler and more refined way than our own organically evolved brains, and that we may be closer than we realize.