Comment by cardanome
My point was we can can't prove that LLM's have consciousness. Yes, the reverse is also true. It is possible that we wouldn't really be able to tell if a AI gained consciousness as that might look very differently than we expect.
An important standard for any scientific theory or hypothesis is to be falsifiable . Good old Russell's teapot. We can't disprove that that a small teapot too small to be seen by telescopes, orbits the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars. So should we assume it is true? No the burden of proof lies on those that make the claim.
So yes, I could not 100 percent disprove that certain LLM's don't show signs of consciousness but that is reversing the burden of proof. Those that make the claims that LLM's are capable of suffering, that they show signs of consciousness need to deliver. If they can't, it is reasonable to assume they are full of shit.
People here accuse me to be scholastic and too philosophical but the the reverse is true. Yes, we barely know how human brains work and how consciousness evolved but whoever doesn't see the qualitative difference between a human being and an LLM really needs to touch grass.
I am not saying that LLMs are conscious. What I am saying is that since we don’t really understand what gives rise to our subjective feeling of consciousness, evaluating a non-organic mind is difficult.
For instance, say we had a Westworld type robot that perceived pain, pleasure, happiness, sadness, and reacted accordingly. But that we understood the underlying program, would we say it wasn’t conscious? If we understood our own underlying programing, would we not be “really conscious”?
We say we have LLMs “fake” empathy or feelings but at some point, digital minds will be faking it in a complex way that involves inner “thoughts”, motivations that they “perceive” internally as positive and negative, and various other subjective experiences. It gets very squishy trying to understand how our consciousness isn’t just a fake abstraction on top of the unconscious program, and a digital mind’s abstractions are fake.