I don’t know, a stab carries lots of bias in interpretation. We might be reflecting our conscious experience markers on a different conscious experience. And selectively so, e.g. lobsters welfare. From my perspective, this is the hypocrisy of these welfare statements. We are already happy to kill beings we consider conscious to feed ourselves but suddenly sensitive with a consciousness we don’t know if it’s there. I would wager this is more out of fear of the idea of this consciousness rather than out of welfare.

I like it, and it points in the right direction, but is not directly true: The markers are about interactions, how biological organisms behave in certain test situations.

But it speaks to the central question: Are the tests adequate? Or are they measuring some proxy of what we really care about, and LLMs are merely imitating consciousness.

"> Keep in mind that animals were also not necessarily considered conscious.

and even conscious animals are killed in factories by millions so why should anyone care about a llm?"

Well, I would care, if they soon would possess the capability to hack into the nuclear arsenal and kill humanity. Or make all autonomous cars crash. Or do any other thing, that involves technology and is hooked up to the net in one way or the other (I hope all the nukes are not).

But I also care about the animals, I am sure that they have feelings. But they cannot kill us. AI that might or might not have feelings potentially can. I just know it feels wrong, that computers can have feelings. But they surely are potentially dangerous.

Well if that's all that's required then yes. It's merely the substrate. But we know that's unlikely.

It's the emergent properties that matter. In abstract. Separate the physical and abstract of what is going on here

An alien gas cloud may be out there and sentient/conscious for all we know.