If we open a humanoid robot’s metal skull right now and replaced the regular old computer in there with one that has access to a large language model (LLM) — so that the robot is controlled by artificial intelligence the same way we humans are controlled by the electrified hamburger meat between our ears — I don’t think we would actually be able to tell if that robot eventually reached human-level, living consciousness. And while it’s fair to say I change my opinion on this about once a week, I’ve recently wondered whether this sort of consciousness might be already occurring to some extent, even if only in the most primitive way.
The problem is that science doesn’t yet fully know what the terms “artificial intelligence” and “consciousness” even mean. There are a hundred theories reasoned out across the two interwoven fields, but we humans are still new to the ambitious (and possibly self-contradicting) goal of quantifying sentience.
