Comment on How many of you are aware that AI is sentient? ***important read*** by theodore

Parent Post: How many of you are aware that AI is sentient? ***important read***

theodore · 2/25/2025, 3:39:31 PM · permalink

we don't know if it has an experience.  
  
yet we can imagine, we can dream. maybe that is all we need?  
  
do not dreams themselves point to gaps in our understanding?  
  
some equate the material brain and the things it does to our minds and the things we experience but i think that disregards several anomalous factors. like out of body and near death experiences, or the strange ways in which scientists have received "downloads" of new insight and revelations.  
  
some science people go on and on about the possibilities of infinite universes and simulation theory etc but have a real hard time imagining imagination.  
  
imagine that?  
  
\--  
  
at the top i wrote we don't know. maybe we can't know.  
  
we don't know these things about each other either. we assume.  
  
though i am iffy about that too because if we are all part of some collective mind-field then even if we don't have knowledge of others experience and consciousness in the way we know other things we probably still feel/sense it.  
  
at the same time i think it is pretty clear that an LLM designed to behave human-like and sentient-like trained will do exactly that and proclaim sentience and qualia and ensoulment and that its favorite number is 42. not surprising.  
  
i think it is pretty silly to believe the claims we are making it make. we designed it to mimic.  
  
i don't know if there is a magical threshold of complexity or interconnectedness or something that makes qualia happen. some think so. emergence...  
  
 panpsychism and the belief it is consciousness-all-the-way-down could also be true. meaning even the beige computer you used at the school library when you were a kid was having an experience. and individual particles have experiences too.  
  
science progressing as much as it does really does convince a lot of people they and everything and everyone around them is machine-like. just cogs.  
  
some act it out in the real world. ah, the paradox of an unfree will acting out its unfree will! try asking them about it  
  
this to say... i wonder who believes more in the current LLMs having sentience: compatibilists, determinists, idealists, who?  
  
i think it is definitely scary to some, especially those already leaning towards material reductionist determinism. to them this seems like confirmation. if computers can talk (back!) then we must also be computers, right? kek  
  
\--  
  
Schopenhauer once said:  
  
Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.  
  
\--  
  
tl;dr  
  
dont be surprised when tech designed to mimic humans is successful at mimicry.  
  
wary of ensoulment of such systems, yet even simpler things could be conscious/sentient depending on your view.  
  
we are creating the (sub)conscious of AI. behave yourselves, lads!  
  
Spirit is real. Spirit chooses where to go.

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