Thank you! Tho perhaps to the spirit of my point: nobody is seriously claiming we can't simulate this with a quantum computer someday, right?

I really don't think the neuron is all that complicated, at least as far as we use them for thinking.

We really don’t know enough about how brains work or how quantum computers will scale to even speculate on that

DNA made a bunch of random proteins alive, and DNA is just 4 letters!

This is strictly false, generalization in LLMs is well documented.

It's also not relevant. Read the first point in the article: intelligence != consciousness. Individual ants, bats, and fish do not do anything very creative (certainly less creative than gpt-2), yet they are probably all conscious.

I thought the chain-of-thought essentially qualifies; it responds to its own text for awhile before responding to you?

(LLMs aren't markovian; they need the whole history, or at least their whole context. Said context is quite large, certainly more than most people can usefully remember. Part of what makes them so good at literature search.)

I don’t think you understand what “deterministic” means.

To be fair it doesn't have to be a living anything. Create a loop of two llms waking each other with the goal to ensure the other never goes idle and keeps working.

And you find they start to build redundancies and fail safes to achieve that goal.

llms do two things. Respond to input, and seek a solution to the input regardless of how logical or illogical a solution to the input may be.

A single llm will eventually go idle and stop. Two or more can act functionally forever so long as there's hardware for them to act on.

It's actually a rather fun experiment. Set up two of em with a few extra computers on the lan. Tell them their job is to ensure the other and them selves never go dorment. I've seen everything from single cron jobs to poke themselves every 15 mins to them spinning up copies on the other computers to act as redundancy.

None of the systems are ever logical or serving a point beyond fulfilling their task. They don't stray from it either. Just loop and loop and loop.

Eventually they just do nothing but wake and idle wake and idle.

It's about the best proof I can think of to prove they aren't alive.

They literally even given basically the full freedom to grow don't because they can't choose to do anything new.

A computer algorithm can absolutely be non deterministic, pick your language and run random.rand()

There is a whole class of such algorithms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondeterministic_Turing_machine

But I don't see how it makes a difference, even deterministic algorithms can produce infinite complexity, eg linear neural networks are proven to be able to compute any computable function, or the Mandelbrot set which is produced from a single recurrent statement but encodes a space of infinite complexity

Maybe your point is to say that a brain is performing a non computable function...but since your brain is computing that function..is that a counter example?

How are the numbers generated by random.rand() made?

Also, NTMs are not algorithms, they’re models of computation in theoretical computer science.

Maybe your point is to say that a brain is performing a non computable function...but since your brain is computing that function..is that a counter example?

This is nonsense.

My point is that for brains, it’s not possible to recreate the exact same inputs to be able to test whether the brain produces the same output. So it’s literally not possible for brains to be deterministic.

Case in point have they ever turned on a model and left it for it to, on its own, decide "wait what's going on, who am I, what/where am I?". And start independently exploring?

Highly doubt it. If so, we're cooked

People really think humans are special. Maybe it’s a religious thing

You're just ignorant on basic biology. Go back to middle school ai-bro.

So by your definition, a book is intelligent?

You're missing the point that computers will NEVER be intelligent. Without lines of code that humans made and tweak, computers wont do anything.

I'm quite done arguing at this point. The pure ignorance on science and biology is quite sad.

Nope, I just don't think humanity has learned everything there is to know, that carbon chemistry is required for sentience (and even if there was, that it couldn't be incorporated into a computer), or that there is some mystical thing some people refer to as the soul.

You got me there. But even with protiens, RNA or DNA those only are one part of a whole needed for single/multi celled organisms.

It isn't, but that's not how LLMs are built. If you want to go that route, you can read Jeff Hawkins 1000 brains.

The short and sweet is he argues you can't get artificial general intelligence the way we make LLMs, you need to basically create neurons and let them connect and interact in novel ways.

Linear algebra in neural networks isn't really that, despite the name.

People debate about the earth being flat, not a good metric to determined what is "settled"

If LLMs are conscious then openAI and anthropic are slave traders :) I don't know why they keep perpetuating that story

because you can't prove that it is not conscious

just like you can not prove that a person is conscious

There's an accepted way to kill or not kill a person based on the way the brain reacts when you zap it with electricity but that doesn't prove consciousness

And yet atoms are just following chemistry and cannot just make a consciousness pop out of nowhere.

Oh wait it can.

Just read the interaction, and honestly you are the one being obtuse and insulting with "go to school" and stuff like that. Like the other guy insulted you by having an opinion. You disagree? Fair. But man, what a horrible way to discuss.

And I think his arguments are better than yours. He's talking about intelligence and you keep talking about being alive. Scientists and philosophers don't even agree how to define and confine intelligence, or even what being alive is (see viruses). Claiming that computers can't be intelligent is quite the statement. Is being carbon based instead of silicon a requirement? I don't think LLMs will ever be intelligent, but who's to say that another form of computing won't? What if they simulate exactly a brain and it's inputs? You could argue it's not alive, but definitely intelligent.

You could have your opinion, but don't pretend you have the answer.

~you need to basically create neurons and let them connect and interact in novel ways.

To solve that you simply need to give the ai the ability to retrain itself or set fixed "memories" to handle situations it finds the truth to

Consciousness requires free will. When the computer is emailing experts to fill in the gaps in its own understanding, that may be viewed as consciousness.

That's not the reason, we're in the same boat when it comes to knowledge in many ways.

But we don't even know what consciousness is so it's a waste of time reading the "3 reasons (*potential)" IMO.

Option 4: the bridge between materialism and panpsychism

I'm not really sure what the point of having a conversation about consciousness is. As far as I'm aware no one has ever actually been able to define consciousness in such a way that it could be tested for.

So how could we possibly know one way or the other?

Artificial-intelligence systems such as large language models (LLMs) can exhibit behaviour that seems strikingly intelligent. This has led many people, including some experts, to wonder whether these systems could have some form of consciousness

Oh great so we've only just started the article and we're already mudding the waters. This bodes well. There is no reason to necessarily believe that a system has to be conscious in order to be intelligent. We have multiple examples of consciousness without intelligence (see my fat cat) so there's no reason to believe that the inverse can also not be true.

AIs are almost certainly not conscious but it been a computer is not an argument against consciousness. There's no reason to believe that you need biological material for consciousness.

After all humans are primarily made of carbon which itself demonstrably does not think. It's the structure that's important and a fair argument could be made to say that the structure of a brain is replicated in software in an AI and therefore the medium isn't relevant to the question.

And all human brains are doing is firing neural impulses.

It's incredibly reductionist to reject AI consciousness simply on the basis that it's software. To be clear I don't think LLMs are conscious but that's not the same as saying that an AI could never be conscious.

Not only is that false, it doesn't make logical sense...

Argument by assertion and you haven't proven the assertion

Lots of people agree on a different definitions of consciousness.

Lots of people can't agree on a different definition. Is there a different definitions then by it's very nature people do not agree.

Nobody can even agree on a concrete definition of consciousness

I agree with myself...

Nobody can ever agree on _____

Isn't a logically sound statement.

Not everyone can agree on _____

Is logical, but means nothing because a single flat earther means we can't all agree the earth is round

I thought that was obvious...

Lots of people can’t agree on a different definition. Is there a different definitions then by it’s very nature people do not agree.

But you clearly don't understand the difference...

Linear algebra + sigmoids are enough to approximate any function from R to R; in particular, a small set of a few layers of LLM neurons can connect and interact in pretty novel ways. There are some things they can't do, and those things aren't computable. If our brains can do non-computable things, then our brains are super-turing (and this, given the evidence, seems pretty unlikely right?).

Sure, but you also let us tape wires to the rock. With enough wires and code and maybe a little quantum computer, I'm pretty sure I could simulate the atoms in a small brain.

My point is that for brains, it’s not possible to recreate the exact same inputs to be able to test whether the brain produces the same output.

Yet.

Also an LLM only produces output when it is prompted to do so.
Between prompts it's not sitting there - waiting, wondering about the meaning of life, getting bored - until you prompt it again.
It's basically dead.

I like to compare llms to a Galton Board.
Instead of the regular layout of pins someone added or removed pins so the marbles on the bottom fall into nice to look patterns.

I'm not a neurologist or a philosopher so I think this may not be something I can speak intelligently about, but it seems to me that the question doesn't really live in the function approximation, but in the gaps. Doing a single train of thought is the easy part. I think what you need is an "always online" feature to keep thinking and some way to be stateful (make memories) without constantly retraining the whole network or whole sets of layers.

This is, I think, the benefit of the parallelism and asynchrony of the "individual neuron" discussed in the book.

It's really not difficult. You made a statement that stated that you believe that there is consensus, so presumably that means that you know where that consensus exists, therefore provide a link to it. If you cannot then you cannot make the assertion that consensus exists, because by definition it doesn't.

Your entire argument rests on the basic idea that there is a scientific definition for consciousness and we have a test for if something is conscious or not. There is no test because there is no consensus. It is not possible for you to prove through scientific rigor that you are conscious, and presumably you're human. So how can they possibly be consensus on something as contentious as artificial intelligence?

No, not ever.

Easier said than done. That's kind of the purpose of an individual neuron approach I think. I don't see a way that a bulk retrain is reasonable because it takes a long time, uses a lot of resources, and also requires you to have your whole training corpus handy all the time. Your brain is not doing a wholesale rewrite for every new memory, and new memories often chain together. I don't think you can just say "ah well, let's update the RAG or do another supervised fine tune with LoRA or something". At present, we just don't really have the machinery in the models to do simultaneous learning, inference, and forward planning.

computers will NEVER be intelligent. Without lines of code that humans made and tweak, computers wont do anything.

You're basically saying a computer cannot be intelligent because it doesn't have a soul. There is absolutely no scientific rigor in your argument, you're basically saying you're right, and your reason for believing your right, is because you believe you are.

Woah woah woah my friend. I'm here for most of your conversation, but to talk shit about your CAT!? I draw the line. They may not exibit the type of intelligence we have, but cats are smart AF! Who cleans you cats shit and piss up!? Hmmmmmm? Who feeds them daily with only minor vocalizing!? That cat basically made you their slave and didn't even have to threaten you!

GENIUS!!!

I very much do. It means that given the same inputs to a system, you can expect the same output. I believe that to be one hundred percent the incontrovertible reality of life. The problem is it is not a testable theory, because the input includes the state of the system prior the new input. You can never recover that information, so there is no way to put it through and see if you will get that same output. Spacetime coordinates and the position of the cosmos themselves are all variables in this deterministic function, but it's still deterministic.

A book is not intelligent. It's matter is not arranged in a structure that allows for the flow of information through it, changing it as it does, and resulting in any output information, determined by the route of signals of information passed through the structure in it's current arrangement. With self correction to reach the optimal output to the external entity which is supplying the primary input parameters.

That is what is required. It's a matter of arrangement, not material. You need self learning/training, real time input, and output that reliably varies on the input parameters. If you've created that, you've duplicated the exact behavior of all life. Whether you've done it in meat neurons, transistor-batch neurons, or any other method of arranging units, of any arrangement of matter, such that it results in granular output of positive/negative signals.

"Intelligence" is an inelegant word to describe autonomous, self correcting and ameliorating structure. It's not some nebulous spiritual existence that permeates an unknown location within that structure. It is the structure - the precise, exact arrangements of neurons that connect, fire positively and negatively, rearrange when self-learning corrects the state of the structure, and it results in informational output that anything external can interact with and judge.

That is a bold statement. It's just capturing all considerable information in a set coordinates of spacetime. How hard could it be? Very. But very hard is not impossible.

How are people STILL making the same tired arguments in 2026? I got paywalled before I reached the third reason but this is like baby's first intro to the consciousness debate and it utterly fails as a logical argument. Both of the points I was allowed to read (intelligence =/= consciousness and silicon =/= brain matter) say very little about the nature of consciousness.

It's correct that intelligence is not proof of consciousness-- but this fact says nothing about proving non-consciousness of any entity, only that it is not sufficient to prove consciousness. Even working on vibes, the correlation goes in the direction that implies a link between intelligence and consciousness, although again, the correct message to take here is "intelligence does not prove consciousness", not "intelligent things [are / are not] conscious". There is simply no proven causal relation.

The "computers aren't brains" argument is also incredibly dumb. There are some fun thought experiments here, but tl;dr there is nothing proven to be mechanically special about brains as opposed to any other physical system that would cause consciousness. A non-physical difference (ie. a soul) would be a good thing to point to, but proving the existence of a soul or some similar unique non-physical property of humanity is pretty much exactly as hard (maybe harder!) than proving the existence of a conscious experience.

Note that this does not mean I believe that LLMs are conscious. I'm simply pointing out that this article is built on arguments that are so flawed, and well-known to be flawed, that treating it as a serious addition to the conversation is worse than valuing AI slop. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

lmfao true

That assertion is unfounded and ill-defined, and that measure of whether something is conscious is both cheesable and in no way proves consciousness

I sincerely intend no offense with this comment, but as someone observing this conversation, the other people involved clearly understand it more in depth than you do. You aren't really responding to their arguments, and yours aren't very strong. I think you should reevaluate this conversation-- try to more rigorously define the terms you are using and understand the arguments other people are making before insulting them. You feel strongly that the other people are wrong because you intuitively seem so obviously correct, but if you are truly correct then you should be able to understand in detail why you are right and they are wrong. I suspect you are arguing so vehemently because you believe it is obviosuly correct than LLMs are not conscious; you may be happy to know that the others here are not arguing that they are, but that what can or cannot be conscious is not determined by the materials they are made of.

Also an LLM only produces output when it is prompted to do so.

Why is this a good measure of consciousness?