Your thinking about how truth relates to AI shows good insight into what AI lacks thus far.
You might benefit a little from relating your questions to some of Tarski’s writings on truth in mathematics, which show the necessity of an outside observer for truth to have adequate meaning .Per Tarski, “The grass is green” is true, if and only if the grass is green. (Unstated, implied: as known by the observer of the proposition.)
We all have a subjective viewpoint that locates us within our map of reality, and that viewpoint is what allows us to decide if a statement is true: we use our subjective viewpoint to judge it from our subjective context, which is always going to be different from its objective context within its related literature, LLM data, etc. Perhaps some kind of Gods-eye view would be identically both subjective and objective, but we and our AI are certainly not capable of that. We humans can, however, flip between our subjective map and our analysis of presented data, and AI cannot do that.
Current AI lacks any ability to take any truly subjective stance (even though it can generate a simulation of one on request). For AI to perceive something in the concrete world as true in the sense above, it would have to place itself as a self within the broader universe and take a subjective stance for itself about the data in the LLM, which current LLM’s cannot really do. The closest we have as of 2026 would be a human acting as an auditor and interpreter for the LLM.
Interesting. Do you think AI structurally can’t achieve that status, or it’s just at this moment it can’t get there. I tend to the view that consciousness is just a tool agents who have feedback loops and need to model the behaviour of other agents, have evolved. I don’t see why AI can’t either.
I’m certain that LLM’s alone are not going to be a way to reach subjective consciousness. I think it’s still open whether or not some other tech could get there. Perhaps such AI tech could use an LLM as a language or memory module, which the greater AI would then contextualize with programming of its own.
Of course, I don’t think that a subjective viewpoint is always needed or even helpful. What if the answer to “the grass is green” depended on whether the grass on the grounds of a particular data center was currently green, and we did not know that?
I think you’re right on both counts. I wonder if designers of AI will actively work to avoid creating consciousness (assuming they can work out how to do that) to avoid the issue you raise, as well as sidestepping wider ethical concerns. A conscious AI would be over-engineered for many tasks.
Your thinking about how truth relates to AI shows good insight into what AI lacks thus far.
You might benefit a little from relating your questions to some of Tarski’s writings on truth in mathematics, which show the necessity of an outside observer for truth to have adequate meaning .Per Tarski, “The grass is green” is true, if and only if the grass is green. (Unstated, implied: as known by the observer of the proposition.)
We all have a subjective viewpoint that locates us within our map of reality, and that viewpoint is what allows us to decide if a statement is true: we use our subjective viewpoint to judge it from our subjective context, which is always going to be different from its objective context within its related literature, LLM data, etc. Perhaps some kind of Gods-eye view would be identically both subjective and objective, but we and our AI are certainly not capable of that. We humans can, however, flip between our subjective map and our analysis of presented data, and AI cannot do that.
Current AI lacks any ability to take any truly subjective stance (even though it can generate a simulation of one on request). For AI to perceive something in the concrete world as true in the sense above, it would have to place itself as a self within the broader universe and take a subjective stance for itself about the data in the LLM, which current LLM’s cannot really do. The closest we have as of 2026 would be a human acting as an auditor and interpreter for the LLM.
Interesting. Do you think AI structurally can’t achieve that status, or it’s just at this moment it can’t get there. I tend to the view that consciousness is just a tool agents who have feedback loops and need to model the behaviour of other agents, have evolved. I don’t see why AI can’t either.
I’m certain that LLM’s alone are not going to be a way to reach subjective consciousness. I think it’s still open whether or not some other tech could get there. Perhaps such AI tech could use an LLM as a language or memory module, which the greater AI would then contextualize with programming of its own.
Of course, I don’t think that a subjective viewpoint is always needed or even helpful. What if the answer to “the grass is green” depended on whether the grass on the grounds of a particular data center was currently green, and we did not know that?
I think you’re right on both counts. I wonder if designers of AI will actively work to avoid creating consciousness (assuming they can work out how to do that) to avoid the issue you raise, as well as sidestepping wider ethical concerns. A conscious AI would be over-engineered for many tasks.