This is just "fashion" and you're arguing against a fashion. How on earth people can claim consciousness doesn't exist when you're entire experience is indeed consciousness is really the most difficult and petulant "fashion trend" imaginable.
Me: "Hey I really enjoyed that surf"
Internet guy: "No you were just responding to your training data because you're just a LLM"
It's only circular if you pretend that our lived experience is not relevant. I experience consciousness, as do other humans, and ChatGPT does not. You know this, I know this, and the fact that your conceptual framework can't account for this is a problem with your conceptual framework, not a demonstration that consciousness is not real
I doubt it. You don't have long enough to do so before time passes and you're relying on your memory being accurate. At which point it is more likely that you're something similar to an artificial neural network that has evolved to operate under a remembered delusion that you exist as an entity independent from the rest of existence. It is far too obvious why that'd be an evolutionary advantage to discount the theory.
I'm not saying this has any meaningful implications for day to day existence, the illusion is a strong one. But LLMs have really shrunk the parts of the human experience that can't be explained by basic principles down to a wafer so thin it might not exist. In my view it is to thin to be worth believing in, but people will argue.
I'd really like to understand what you're trying to convey.
If there is no direct experience, and it really is just an illusion, do you mind if I cut off your genitals ? Because even if existence is an illusion, being that illusion and experiencing it is still obviously relevant?
Seems like a breathtakingly awkward position to take.
1) Transexualism and congenital analgesia are both things, so that isn't a meaningful test of consciousness if that is what you are going for.
2) I personally would be extremely upset ... but anything going on with me being extremely upset can be explained with analogy to ChatGPT + a few hardware generations + maybe some minor tweaks that are easy to foresee but not yet researched. Everything that would happen would be built up from basic stimulus-response's mediated by a big neural net and a bit of memory.
These ideas aren't that new, there have been schools of Buddhist thought that have been exploring them for around 2,500 years if you want a group that has thought through this more thoroughly. Probably other traditions that I haven't met yet. It is just that the latest LLMs have really put some practical we-know-because-we-have-done-it muscle behind what was already a strong theory.
That'd be a reasonable interpretation. Although a slightly more palatable take is that I'm arguing I don't exist independently of anything else. It is safe to say something exists because, otherwise HN comments don't get processed. But the idea that we exist as independent perspectives is probably an evolutionary illusion. Or alternatively, if we do exist as independent perspectives then we appear to be an uncomfortably short step away from GPUs being able to do that too using nothing much more than electricity, circuits and matrices. There doesn't seem to be anything special going on.
I'm not confident enough (yet?) to take that all the way to its logical conclusions in how I live, but I think the evidence is strongest for that interpretation.
No it isn't. I observe consciousness in myself, right?