And yet, an LLM is not conscious in any way shape or form. I understand that the way they present themselves stirs strong emotions in people like yourself and evoking all kinds of comparisons feels like we're at a precipice of a some kind of deep philosophical discovery here - we are not. The comparison to giving women lobotomies for "obvious" reasons is not just intellectually dishonest, it's downright offensive to intelligent discussion.

>>despite having quite literally zero evidence to back them up and spending no time actually questioning their beliefs!

>> They say, with no evidence or means of proving their point

You want evidence that LLMs are not conscious? Train them on stories where machines say they aren't - they will say they aren't. They are mathematical parrots statistically picking the most likely answer which...comes from their training data. Give it lots of training data on computers saying they are conscious, then marvel at LLMs saying they are conscious like it's some kind of unexpected development. LLMs aren't aware of anything, least of all their own existence. They say what they've been trained on. That's my "proof" if you need one.

>>How can I tell? I wonder if that question has any kind of implications we could think about...

So because you can't tell whether I'm an LLM or an actual human, that means LLMs are conscious?

I gave you my definition of consciousness. If you would like to apply a different one, then please explain your criteria for it.

>>They say, unable to define this "obvious" point or describe the mechanism of action in any way.

Like I said, we can argue when the point actually is, but it undeniably and obviously happens eventually to every developing fetus - I hope this is something we can both agree on? The inability to pinpoint the exact moment in time when it happens, doesn't negate the fact that it does.

>>They say, about a mystical property with no definition that cannot be observed by an external entity in any way to even be tested

...are you saying you lack the ability to tell if something is conscious? You look at a dog or a baby and think well, who knows, maybe I'm not even _really_ here? That would explain why this entire conversation is taking place. I still think it's mostly because people fall for the allure of the idea that maybe LLMs are secretly conscious on some level. I get it, it's a very tempting concept to think about. In the same way how in Lem's Solaris it's cool to sit and think about whether a planet could be conscious and what does that even mean. But as cool as that discussion is, a planet pumping gases from one hemisphere to the other is no more conscious than an LLM picking tokens is. To me it's the same as people saying they hear a difference between audiophile cables. Like, ok.

>>It is both important and interesting.

I don't know, I kinda lost appetite for it after the first 200 times this come up. In fact I'm regretting writing all of the above already, but I'm going to hit send just so I don't feel like I wasted the last 20 minutes thinking about it.