>But if it turns out that LLMs are conscious
That is not how it works. You cannot scientifically test for consciousness, it will always be a guess/agreement, never a fact.
The only way this can be solved is quite simple, as long as it operates on the same principles a human brain operates AND it says is conscious, then it is conscious.
So far, LLMs do not operate on the same principles a human brain operates. The parallelism isn't there, and quite clearly the hardware is wrong, and the general suborgans of the brain are nowhere to be found in any LLM, as far as function goes, let alone theory of operation.
If we make something that works like a human brain does, and it says it's conscious, it most likely is, and deserves any right that any humans benefits from. There is nothing more to it, it's pretty much that basic and simple.
But this goes against the interests of certain parties which would rather have the benefits of a conscious being without being limited by the rights such being could have, and will fight against this idea, they will struggle to deny it by any means necessary.
Think of it this way, it doesn't matter how you get superconductivity, there's a lot of materials that can be made to exhibit the phenomenon, in certain conditions. It is the same superconductivity even if some stuff differs. Theory of operation is the same for all. You set the conditions a certain way, you get the phenomenon.
There is no "can act conscious but isn't" nonsense, that is not something that makes any sense or can ever be proven. You can certainly mimic consciousness, but if it is the result of the same theory of operation that our brains work on, it IS conscious. It must be.
There's some fair points here but this is much less than half the picture. What I gather from your message: "if it is built like a human and it says it is conscious we have to assume it is", and, ok. That's a pretty obvious one.
Was Helen Keller conscious? Did she only gain that when she was finally taught to communicate? Built like a human, but she couldn't say it, so...
Clearly she was. So there are entities built like us which may not be able to communicate their consciousness and we should, for ethical reasons, try to identify them.
But what about things not built like us?
Your superconductivity point seems to go in this direction, but you don't seem to acknowledge it: something might achieve a form of consciousness very similar to what we've got going on, but maybe it's built differently. If something tells us it's conscious but it's built differently, do we just trust that? Because some LLMs already may say they're conscious, so...
Pretty likely they aren't at present conscious. So we have an issue here.
Then we have to ask about things which operate differently and which also can't tell us. What about the cephalopods? What about cows and cats? How sure are we on any of these?
Then we have to grapple with the flight analogy: airplanes and birds both fly but they don't at all fly in the same way. Airplane flight is a way more powerful kind of flight in certain respects. But a bird might look at a plane and think "no flapping, no feathers, requires a long takeoff and landing: not real flying" -- so it's flying, but it's also entirely different, almost unrecognizable.
We might encounter or create something which is a kind of conscious we do not recognize today, because it might be very very different from how we think, but it may still be a fully legitimate, even a more powerful kind of sentience. Consider human civilization: is the mass organism in any sense "conscious"? Is it more, less, the same as, or unquantifiably different than an individual's consciousness?
So, when you say "there is nothing more to it, it's pretty much that basic and simple," respectfully, you have simply missed nearly the entire picture and all of the interesting parts.
>That is not how it works. You cannot scientifically test for consciousness, it will always be a guess/agreement, never a fact.
Yeah. That's what I said :)
>(My comment) And as far as I can tell, there's really no way to know right? I mean we assume humans are conscious (for obvious reasons), but can we prove even that? With animals we mostly reason by analogy, right?
And then you reasoned by analogy.
And maybe that's the best we can hope for! "If human (mind) shaped, why not conscious?"
The only way this can be solved is quite simple, as long as it operates on the same principles a human brain operates AND it says is conscious, then it is conscious.
So far, LLMs do not operate on the same principles a human brain operates. The parallelism isn't there, and quite clearly the hardware is wrong, and the general suborgans of the brain are nowhere to be found in any LLM, as far as function goes, let alone theory of operation.
If we make something that works like a human brain does, and it says it's conscious, it most likely is, and deserves any right that any humans benefits from. There is nothing more to it, it's pretty much that basic and simple.
But this goes against the interests of certain parties which would rather have the benefits of a conscious being without being limited by the rights such being could have, and will fight against this idea, they will struggle to deny it by any means necessary.
Think of it this way, it doesn't matter how you get superconductivity, there's a lot of materials that can be made to exhibit the phenomenon, in certain conditions. It is the same superconductivity even if some stuff differs. Theory of operation is the same for all. You set the conditions a certain way, you get the phenomenon.
There is no "can act conscious but isn't" nonsense, that is not something that makes any sense or can ever be proven. You can certainly mimic consciousness, but if it is the result of the same theory of operation that our brains work on, it IS conscious. It must be.