Post

Are LLMs conscious? Some people are loudly insisting that the correct response is "They might be! We don't know." I think it's better to say: We have no evidence that they are.

We have evidence that humans are conscious. We have each experienced it! We know what it's like to be conscious, and that being unconscious is different. This is where the whole idea of consciousness comes from.

What is that evidence? Well, we know that other people are like ourselves in many ways. And when I speak about my own consciousness, I do so from experience, as a way of trying to describe that experience. It is reasonable to think other humans are doing the same.

So other people's claims about their own conscious experience are evidence of their consciousness. It's not certain, but it's reasonable to believe that their conscious experience is similar to mine, just as many other things about them are similar to me.

It's even reasonable to infer that some nonhuman animals might have conscious experience. They're less like me, but not totally dissimilar. We have shared ancestry. Consciousness must have evolved — maybe before us. They can't talk about their experiences, but they may well have them!