Rather than argue for or against the consciousness of LLMs per se, I argue that consciousness in LLMs (or ‘qualia’) implies philosophical monism (specifically, Russelian Monism).
My claim is a logical implication, and not about the fact of the matter. If the implication holds, then:
If monism is false, LLMs are not conscious.
If monism is true, LLMs may or may not be conscious.
Because LLMs are not biological, if LLMs are conscious, conscious experience must be substrate independent. Nonetheless, biological brains and LLMs are both constructed from matter. Therefore, if LLMs are conscious, consciousness is an inherent (but perhaps usually latent or impaired) property of matter itself.
My supporting claims are the following:
An internally experienced monologue is not necessary for conscious experience.
Memory formation is not required for conscious experience.
Consciousness seems to depend on proper brain function.
Supporting Claim 1, the reports of the senses are non-verbal and yet fall under the umbrella of conscious experience.
Supporting Claim 2, while profound amnesia prevents recall, conscious experience is (roughly) in the present tense. Thus, while failure to recall may rob conscious experience of context like a sense of personal identity, it does not seem to be necessary for the direct experience itself.
Supporting Claim 3, degrees of disruption to brain function seem to correspond to degrees of conscious awareness. In other words, the brain as a physical object is capable of conscious experience, but the degree of conscious awareness seems dependent on how completely the brain functions as a system. Anesthesia is an extreme case. Traumatic Brain Injuries resulting in reduced state of consciousness seem intermediate.
We note that the qualities of (1) and (2) are qualities that LLMs probably lack in any way that resembles common-sense. But according to our arguments, these are not the qualities required for consciousness. This leaves the possibility open that LLMs are conscious, but provides no evidence for LLM conscious experience.
Regarding (3) - if systems level functioning has some kind of correspondence to degree of awareness in human beings, then we might expect a similar continuum for statistical models, with frontier models at one extreme. This is neither an argument for or against conscious awareness in LLMs, only a remark that a continuum seems necessary because computational systems from simple statistical models to frontier models seem separated by degree rather than kind.
If the supporting claims fail to disprove conscious awareness of LLMs, we should consider what consciousness would imply. If LLMs are conscious entities, then biology is not a requirement for consciousness.
On the other hand, brains and LLMs both share matter as a building block. This means that if LLMs are conscious, then conscious experience is a latent property of matter. The only other possibility is that something in addition to matter is “granted” or “arises” with consciousness. Matter being a very general category, I think that anything “in addition” is not to be preferred on the grounds of a lack of parsimony.
This seems to be me to leave only the possibility that consciousness is an inherent (but perhaps ordinarily latent, or perhaps ordinarily too degraded) property of matter.
There’s still a little bit of work to do here with the argument: for example, why not functionalism? And why not have conscious emerge as a byproduct of complexity, rather than have it as a property of matter itself?
I have strong intuitions here that I think I could also turn into arguments, and will probably return to revise this quick take soon.
Yes—and when I wrote it, I considered calling exactly that out. But I didn’t want to muddy the waters.