The actual counterpoint is demonstrated in _Blindsight_ Peter Watts. He makes a strong (and rather terrifyingly strong) point that intelligence is not consciousness.
My original comment (roughly "there's no intelligence in this article, nor sentience in LLMs") is in response to the blog post's buried lede (that the cumulative activity of LLMs has accrued to a weight of "AGI is around the corner" or "there is artificial consciousness in this matrix").
To be clear, I'm not saying LLMs are useless or a wrong direction in development of "AI," but rather it's the Fool's Gold for the path towards AGI, the pursuit of the academic field of Artificial Intelligence research. A research that I've been abreast of for years before this new age of language models that has made everyone with a keyboard an arm chair expert.
Also, thank you for the book recommendation, it's on my list! :)
So I still disagree with your elucidated point (as you end with "which is valid"): the OP author is using prior art fiction to bolster their opinion of LLM-based software tools as being a possible vector of sentience, not to disarm our chauvinism like the original author intended. If OP wanted to make that point, they could have written a critical essay instead of farming out their thoughts as tokens.
But still, I look forward to reading the book you suggested to understand and appreciate your perspective more.
Blindsight is a remarkable book - I hope you enjoy it!
Plainly, based on the current ground trodded and the trajectory laid out by the frontier AI labs, I do not have concrete evidence/proof of sentience having emerged from LLM-based software tools as of June 4 2026 nor do I expect it to happen in the future based on my understanding and observations of this technology. I'm not excluding the possibility but wielding skepticism. I am open to being proven wrong with new discoveries.
Which is why (to return to my lashing of the dead horse) I don't see OP's post as worthwhile. Their post reiterates a point that is already valid (the prior art) with no new substantial discovery. Which is why "unoriginal and pointless" is apt, a novel idea was not presented; it's just some vain virtue signaling.
Also I don't see why intelligence not being consciousness is scary? My cats are very conscious as far as I can tell, but not particularly intelligent. I think LLM's exhibit some contextual intelligence without there being any particular reason to believe they're conscious other than woo psuedoscience.
That said, I don’t think it is useful for philosophy nor science to consider intelligence to be the same thing as consciousness. In fact I would go even further and claim that intelligence is not a useful construct, neither for philosophy nor for science. Consciousness, on the other hand, I think is useful for philosophy, but not (as of now) for science.
Thanks for saying this! It amazes me to witness so much pushback (in HN of all places!) for the call for skepticism and scientific rigor on claims made by business which have vested interests in hyping things up.
My personal theory is a fuzzy thought about how people want to reject the concept of a higher being and want to embrace the fact that we are now able to create our own consciousness and religion is dead.
I don't understand why, but it is the undertone of every argument I've seen that is pro-AI-is-sentient, like some big unspoken elephant-in-the-room.
I would rather just judge this tech on its own merits.
edit: this comment got 1 upvote literally as I submitted it. I know @ doesn't work, but @dang, something seems very strange about that.
There are many people who will categorically rule out the posibility of AI consciousness due to near-unshakable belief in a higher being. This argument resembles "Christians should not be worried about our climate since God is ultimately in control." Such views make it harder to collectively prevent dangers from a sentient AI, or harm to a sentient AI.
I do not claim that everyone who believes in a higher power believes concious AI to be impossible, or vice versa; just that it would be very hard to change the minds of those who adhere to this reasoning.
It's funny, because I find myself constantly stating the inverse of this. Every argument I've seen against AI being sentient plainly comes from, as you so eloquently put it, exactly "a place of emotion couched in logic". People desperately want it to not be true and will not take the logical step back of examining its actual similarities to human intelligence. Every argument comes down to "but it's not actually a human", or some variation of it -- which, if you pay attention, is not actually a logical counterargument. (Or, ironically, "but it doesn't have a soul", which is why the Pope is the perfect figurehead for these people).
If you already know any logical argument against it can be countered with "well doesn't a human brain work like that?", why are you so confident that your position is actually the logical one?
...And could it simply be that, alternatively, the concept is not actually a logical distinction, but rather an emotional one, made by emotional beings to put a word to what they claim makes them special?