I mean… No? Absolutely not.

I dont even know where to begin. Maybe with their state being fixed in time; LLMs do not change. An sci fi analogy might be the “no timers” in orion’s arm, who are but a single thought frozen in an infinite loop in time:

www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/47f4311eaef31

Except they arent even that, because its just a next word completion model, not something that thinks. It is not self aware.

arxiv.org/pdf/2503.09211

openreview.net/forum?id=klU4737opt

arxiv.org/abs/2504.09762

This becomes (to me) very obvious if you ever use an LLM in raw completion mode. It very smart, but at the end of the day its no different than a weather prediction model spitting out probabilities for a storm system.

Chat finetuning is meant to get humans to anthropomorphize them by training on human preferences, and the interface further reinforces this. Its all a trick, albeit a very elaborote one.

Will future architectures be closer to “thinking?”

Maybe.

But we are a long way away.

Are we not just prediction systems with more neurons?

Now im not saying LLMs are human at all because to be human is to have gone through our exact evolutionary path, but we really are in a lot of ways much more similar than you think. At least the speaking part of our brain is.

The argument that LLMs are fixed in time does not contradict consciousness. Say a human was stuck in a time loop and the human is asked the same question every single loop, at the exact same time, in the exact same way, with every single atom being in the exact place. Would their answer change? I would argue no, the same exact neurons would be stimulated every time that would cause the same exact answer every time.

We don’t even have a solid definition of what is concious. Are insects conscious? Like the fruit fly, we have modeled all of its neural paths and it simplifies down to essentially being a robot that responds to stimuli.

What does make humans special is our ability to learn. But what when an LLM trains its self? Is that not learning? I think the question of consciousness is too complex to simply say one way or the other and it is foolish to simply it this way.

But what when an LLM trains its self?

Thats what I’m saying. They cannot do this, not even close. Even a fruit fly is somewhat adaptive and can respond to novel stimuli, but an LLM effectively cant.

There are tiny experimental models closer to a fruit fly than large LLMs now.

…What about future world models with some adaptive learning loop, sampling stripped out, and so on?

Yeah! That would be fascinating. Then sentience starts to become more of a question.

But thats not what LLMs are.

People like Altman and Modi have grossly overexaggerated what current LLM architectures are capable of, they trained the LLMs to reinforce the illusion as much as they can, and they arent to inclined to change it. Hence all the good researchers have fled to research world models, and are saying transformers LLMs are not a viable path forward.

Even in your highly optimistic scenario, the AI wouldn’t even come close to being comparable to actual sentience.

Well, theres a lot of experimentation with actual neural nets mimicing biology (or literally using biological neurons), and I think that could start to raise the spectre.

World model research could be a significant component of that.

In principle, OP is right; humans are just machines. All I constest is that transformers LLMs are even in the same ballpark, or possibly a path there… they are not.

Well it sounds like we agree then.

I would think you would need actual biological structures to achieve sentience. That’s a lot different than what these people are calling AI tho.

Edit: Also, if it is built out of natural biological pieces, at what point does it cease to be “artificial”?

Well biological structures can be replicated mechanically. So at risk of being pedantic, that’s not strictly true.

I view “artificial” as just a term for conscious, purpose construction, whereas “natural” does not involve any conscious intelligence, as in “naturally occurring in nature.” But even that is a spectrum, I guess, with genetic manipulation, BCIs, all sorts of intermediate possibilities.

I’d call a constructed, purely biological brain “artificial” because, even if it was grown naturally, it was built with conscious intent.

Correct, nothing is special about biological consciousness. If these exact functions are replicated mechanically/artificially, the outcomes would be the same.

I can’t believe how many pro-AI arguments essentially boil down to “I do not understand words”.

We have a very solid and explicit definition of what conscious means:

www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conscious#medi…

The best neuroscientists in the world do not even fully understand the complicated intricacies of the workings of the human mind. We do understand 100% exactly how computers work. There is no comparison.

I haven’t even argued that AI is concious, I have said that we do not understand consciousness enough to define it. You have completely missed the point. This is Dunning-Kruger at its peak. You are vastly oversimplifying things, at what size of brain is an animal considered conscious or capable of thought? Define thought. We don’t even have a solid understanding of life, much less thoughts. Yes we have a word definition, no we do not know where the line begins and ends. It is a philosophical question that remains unanswered.

This definition is already making so many assumptions and over simplifications. www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/thought

We understand that the brain is what gives us our cognition, we understand that the brain is made up of chemical and electrical signals. We are not special.

This dude is a Dunning-Kruger case study. Simply by the shear overconfidence

I’m sorry that you have trouble grasping so many basic concepts.

Ironic of you to reference Dunning-Kruger.

All animals are conscious as far as I’m aware, though the complexity of their thoughts may vary. They all act of their own volition, computers do not and cannot act of their own volition.

You do not have to fully understand every aspect of consciousness in order to recognize that inanimate objects do not have it. “Will” is a component of consciousness, this is commonly understood. Computers are tools, they have no will. Computers calculate, they do not think, these are different operations.

I am not oversimplifying things, you are under-thinking things that are already simple (likely due to cognitive offloading).

So your response boils down to “no u,” and insulting. I believe we are done here.

If all you got from that explanation was “no u” then you need to work on your reading comprehension.

I agree that this conversation doesn’t seem to be bearing any fruit tho

For what it’s worth, I thought it was an interesting read until the other person went full ad hominem.

The argument basically: “'computers are not sentient, because I say that they are not sentient”

Don’t forget the dictionary quotes and the personal attacks.

No, my argument is that your conceptualization of sentience is incomplete.

As if your comprehension, yet your arrogance is stunning because it is massive and is only dwarfed by your propensity for being wrong.

Discussing the consciousness of neural networks is NOT being pro-AI. I’d say it’s even the opposite, as it displays the danger of such a technology.

Most of the words in the definition have multiple interpretations, it is not as easy as you wish it would be.

Finally, we do NOT at all know how trained neural networks work. We know how training and inference work. We can read the neurons, but the shear size of weights make it a rather impenetrable black box we have to study, partially, to understand the goals of the emergent sub networks.

Fearmongering about the idea of a neural network gaining consciousness is basically like doing free advertising for AI companies lmao

You are ascribing a power to them that they do not possess

For the record, I think neural networks have a lot of useful applications; for example, radiological image recognition. The term “AI” basically has no meaning though, and is most commonly used to describe LLMs, a technology that has very few (if any) good real world applications.

I am not fearmongering the fact it helps or not AI companies is not relevant here.

You are getting off topic.

The fact they are trained to complete sentences and are thus word predicting models only tells us vaguely how they work. It does not tell us anything about their sentience.

The sentience, if there is, comes from the emergent reasoning that develops in the massive neural network to offer actual good predictions: the more you think, the better the predictions.

For example, models trained to produce textual board games predictions can be sounded to show they developed subnetworks corresponding to an inner representation of the states of the game. Models trained to produce images have emergent subnetworks on depth-maps, contours and lighting.

Are cells sentient? Bacteria, fungi, etc. Do you think they have any degree of interiority, like how simple animals do?

Exactly. It’s not so cut and dry. Are they? You can never know until you experience their existence.

Lol no. Actually cells are demonstrably NOT sentient. They have no capacity for choice. No capacity for emotion or experience. They are literally molecular machinery. And we(scientists) understand that machinery to a shocking degree.

If you think cells have any degree of sentience, then you must make a similar argument for advanced clockwork machines. Not robots, pure wind-up clockwork automata.

Ah, so you’ve experienced each of their existences? Fascinating.

Please explain to me how a wristwatch is sentient or conscious.

I can’t, since I’ve never been a wristwatch. Maybe they’re not, or maybe they are through a mechanism for which science has no current explanation. We can’t know, only surmise.

Okay, then you’re not actually engaging in any degree of coherence. Your ignorance is not wisdom, despite what you seem to have convinced yourself.

That’s some impressive hubris you’ve got.

So tell me, in your infinite wisdom, from where does sentience arise and what is the smallest organism that is sentient?

No, I don’t think I will. Because I don’t believe there is any answer I can give you that won’t be merry with more insults and arrogance. I made the claim that sentience cannot exist in a purely mechanistic system, like a wrist watch. Because there is nothing there unexplained, unknown, or more nuanced than gears and springs.

The burden of proof lies on you to explain how a wristwatch could have any degree of sentience. And insulting me does nothing but show the emptiness of your claim, and the fragility of your pseudo-wisdom.

Denying ALL knowledge by taking a bong rip and saying “But how can we ever really know?” It’s not wisdom or humility. It’s pretending ignorance is wisdom.

You seem to have this backwards. YOU’RE the one making a claim, so the burden of proof is on you. I’m saying it’s impossible to know, you are saying you know without a doubt. Prove it.

Maybe with their state being fixed in time; LLMs do not change

Not with agents and chain of thought. Agents can run for hours continuously. So sure, an AI agent is not the same as a sentient human on the time scale of a year, but on the time scale of a few hours, perhaps the AI is “sentient”.

The first paper you linked is focused on the mechanism and not the output. It creates a definition of “thought” and then talks about how the AI doesn’t “think in the feature space”. It only addresses chain of thought at the end, and says that the issue is that it constrains AI to think in natural language only (instead of, say, pictures).

But again, why would thinking in pictures define sentience? The paper gives a rock-paper-scissors example and says that the AI thinks about it in a different way than a human. So what? If a human plays rock paper scissors against the AI and the AI’s output is indistinguishable from a human’s, 99.9% of the time, why is that not sentient?

This is like saying python programmers are not real programmers. If a python programmer can implement the same program in python, who cares what language they use.

I’d love for a better definition of sentience than “it works differently than humans”.

Them

LLMs do not change

You

Not with agents and chain of thought. Agents can run for hours continuously

Those are not the same concepts. The model of LLM remain unchanged. Agents running for hours just modify the prompt they input into an LLM model.

I do not care about the rest of discussion, just swoop in to clarify that distinction.

Fair enough. When I say that AI might be sentient, I include systems like “LLM + agent harness”, treating the whole system as AI.

That’s too much for their tiny brains to handle.

Do you not interact with any other actual humans?

I do, and I can say that the conversations with AI (especially using tools like character.ai) are 99% the same

Well, that may very well be the most depressing comment I’ve ever read.

You either need to work on your listening skills or find some new less-vacant people to interact with, because what you’re saying is insane

Sounds like you haven’t tried modern AI yet. I could train an AI on your comment history and copy you, and nobody would be able to tell the difference

I’ve tried. They’re adamant against AI here. It’s not even worth the discussion. There’s an army of belligerent people here who have made up their minds that LLM are “stochastic parrots” and they’re convinced they understand exactly how they work. No one can tell them otherwise. Doesn’t even matter your credentials. They’re the experts here. If you argue, they’ll only belittle you.

Save yourself the frustration and heartache; just silently pity them.

I work in tech

Uh huh… That makes you specifically qualified on the topic? Far more than myself, certainly, with my MSc in Machine Learning.

As far as understanding the technology goes? It makes me more qualified than 99% of the AI glazers I encounter, but you may be an exception.

To say that an LLM is “less dumb” is a misnomer tho, because it implies that the LLM is “thinking” rather than “calculating”.

My issue here is the anthropomorphic language being used to intentionally mislead people who don’t have even a tertiary understanding of the underlying mechanics.

Surely you know that under the hood it’s all just algorithms. 1s and 0s run through a fluctuating probability equation.

Surely you know that under the hood we’re all just algorithms? Electrical impulses determining what we’re going to do before our own consciousness are aware of the impending decision.

You make the mistake of ascribing more importance to the “1s and 0s” of neuron activity we ourselves encompass, and imagining that a different arrangement of that exact same activity could not possibly yield a similar outcome. It’s like saying plants can’t be alive because they don’t have brains.

It’s nothing like saying “plants can’t be alive”, that’s preposterous.

You make the mistake of thinking that brains and computers are exactly the same when we only really understand the workings of one of those things (computers).

All of the world’s top neuroscientists would tell you that we don’t really actually know how the human brain works.

People who are far more qualified than you to make such a comparison would not do so.

Your argument is built upon a logical fallacy known as “false equivalence”. If you’re not familiar, it means that you are presenting two things as equivalent based on flawed logic.

You’ve probably heard someone use an idiom about comparing apples and oranges right? Doing so would be a false equivalence, that’s where the idiom comes from.

Another example of false equivalence would be your comparison of my logically sound argument to a completely unrelated and nonsensical assertion about plants.

Sorry, ‘h0tbeef’, I forgot that only you understand consciousness and only you know how it is defined. So only you know what qualifies, because of your superior understanding that no one else can possibly hope to have.

Of course, only humans are capable of being conscious, you’re absolutely right as always. You’re so clever, you should go reward yourself with a cookie.

Oh, have we reached the stage of the debate where you project your insecurities onto me in a desperate bid to avoid conceding your palpably untenable position? How dignified.

If you wish to gain more knowledge and understanding, I would suggest you stop outsourcing your cognition to a chatbot.

You’re underestimating most people

You overestimate most people. Here’s a study from 2025

arxiv.org/html/2211.13087

Among AI models, Blenderbot stood out: in AI-AI conversations, it was judged human 67% of the times - more often than actual human-human conversations. In human-AI conversations, human participants were labeled as humans 68% of the time, and AIs were classified as AI 56% of the time.

This is an interesting study. I wonder why there’s such a disparity between the number of AI ‘participants’ (10) and human participants (1,916). I wonder how adding additional AI models would impact the data.

Anyway, this is just benchmarking the AI on 6 language specific tasks. They were programmed and set up specifically to perform whatever specific one task they had to do at the time, that is what computers do. The fact that computers are 1% better at recognizing other computers than humans are is irrelevant.

AI cannot pass the Turing Test, this article is about “6 Turing like tasks” and it can’t even pass those yet, lmao. You know they’re already seeing diminishing returns in further training right?

Even in this article is says that even if AI could pass a real Turing Test it wouldn’t be a sign of intelligence or cognition.

Something I should point out just in case is that 50% success rate is the same as random chance. So when the study says:

AIs were classified as AI 56% of the time.

That really means that humans could not tell the difference between AI and human, since their success rate was almost the same as random chance.

6 language specific tasks. They were programmed and set up specifically to perform whatever specific one task they had to do at the time, that is what computers do.

Sure, and that task was “imitate humans”, and these computers seem remarkably good at it. That’s what I’m saying. I don’t care that these AI work differently than humans. They can imitate humans so well that humans can’t tell the difference.

I come back to Lemmy after 6 months and immediately read this.

So that was a mistake.

Some humans think humans are so special. “Sentient” and “conscious”.

Now I don’t claim that computers are special, I think they are just as non-special as humans.

if a machine looks and acts like a duck it is still not a duck.