IMO current LLMs probably have a small amount of what we usually call phenomenal consciousness or qualia. They have rich internal representations and can introspect and reflect on them. But neither is nearly as rich as in a human, particularly an adult human who’s learned a lot of introspection skills (including how to “play back” and interrogate contents of global workspace). Kids don’t even know they have minds, let alone what’s going on in there; figuring out how to figure that out is quite a learning process.
I’ll just note that this clashes heavily with my personal memories of being a kid. I usually use those as an intuition pump for the idea that phenomenal consciousness and intelligence are different, i.e. I wasn’t any “less conscious” as a kid AFAICT—to the contrary, if anything I remember having more intense and richer experiences than now as a comparatively jaded and emotionally blunted adult. There’s two things going on though—introspection and intensity of experience, but I also remember being very introspective and “kids don’t even know they have minds” in particular sounds very weird to me.
Sorry, that was awfully vague. I’m probably referring to younger kids than you are. Although there’s also going to be a lot of variance in when kids develop different introspective skills and conceptual understanding of their own minds.
I agree that not knowing you have a mind doesn’t prevent you from having an experience. What I meant was that at some young age, I’m thinking up to age five but even 5-year-olds could be more advanced, a kid will not be able to conceptualize that they are a mind or alternately phrased that they have a mind. Nonetheless, they are a mind that is doing a bunch of complex processing and remembering some of it.
I definitely agree that phenomenal consciousness and intelligence are different. Discussions of consciousness usually break down in difficulties with terminology and how to communicate about different aspects of consciousness. I haven’t come up with good ways to talk about this stuff.
I guess I felt the need to comment because I don’t even remember a time where that description would’ve been accurate for me—but wouldn’t be surprising if this also had something to do with memory formation so I can’t make too much of that. And notably, while I don’t recognize any point of my past kid self from that description, it’s indeed starting only around the age of 5 where I feel very confident about it. Curious if anyone here remembers relatively clearly something like “having experiences while lacking awareness of having a mind”.
I’ll just note that this clashes heavily with my personal memories of being a kid. I usually use those as an intuition pump for the idea that phenomenal consciousness and intelligence are different, i.e. I wasn’t any “less conscious” as a kid AFAICT—to the contrary, if anything I remember having more intense and richer experiences than now as a comparatively jaded and emotionally blunted adult. There’s two things going on though—introspection and intensity of experience, but I also remember being very introspective and “kids don’t even know they have minds” in particular sounds very weird to me.
Sorry, that was awfully vague. I’m probably referring to younger kids than you are. Although there’s also going to be a lot of variance in when kids develop different introspective skills and conceptual understanding of their own minds.
I agree that not knowing you have a mind doesn’t prevent you from having an experience. What I meant was that at some young age, I’m thinking up to age five but even 5-year-olds could be more advanced, a kid will not be able to conceptualize that they are a mind or alternately phrased that they have a mind. Nonetheless, they are a mind that is doing a bunch of complex processing and remembering some of it.
I definitely agree that phenomenal consciousness and intelligence are different. Discussions of consciousness usually break down in difficulties with terminology and how to communicate about different aspects of consciousness. I haven’t come up with good ways to talk about this stuff.
I guess I felt the need to comment because I don’t even remember a time where that description would’ve been accurate for me—but wouldn’t be surprising if this also had something to do with memory formation so I can’t make too much of that. And notably, while I don’t recognize any point of my past kid self from that description, it’s indeed starting only around the age of 5 where I feel very confident about it. Curious if anyone here remembers relatively clearly something like “having experiences while lacking awareness of having a mind”.