Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang • Hacker News Board

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#871

Post by andrewflnr » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:29 PM UTC

wint3rmute wrote: post #845

andrewflnr wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually don't think neuroscience can solve it either. Science could decide whether, e.g. equivalent physical processes are occurring in dogs and humans, and you could argue that solves the question for things with physical brains, but even then it can't measure whether another brain has the same subjective experience as you do. It can't really do that for other humans. It certainly can't answer that question for h…

I've heard an interesting argument about this while going down the rabbit hole of the hard problem of conciousness. Unfortunately can't rember the source - if you can recognize it, do let me know! Back in the XVII/XIX century, a similar problem existed regarding life - the problem of "what makes living things tick" . The assumption at that time was that while we can understand the biological processes around life, we…

Worth keeping in mind, yes, but biological processes are readily observable whereas subjective mental phenomena are... not. Everything about them is inaccessible and frankly unfalsifiable except for the fact that they're the bedrock of all the rest of our observations. Not directly comparable.

Anyway, further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism I was in fact looking this up recently for fiction-writing purposes.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

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Post by gizajob » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:30 PM UTC

Borealid wrote: post #624

gizajob wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you have no inkling that your spreadsheet or terminal emulator is conscious, yet when that same machine is running an LLM all of a sudden we’re debating its consciousness? Anthropic seems to have chosen their in-house philosopher well - one who’ll be amenable to getting confused in their favour.

Most spreadsheet engines are turing complete, so you could use them to run an LLM. I don't think many people would say an LLM written in Python is conscious BUT an LLM written in Excel is not. People just don't ascribe consciousness to things that can't converse (or at least emote or give the appearance of emoting), and spreadsheets don't do that. The reason people are debating the consciousness of LLMs is - obviousl…

Ok then, when my GPU runs No Man’s Sky, I don’t get confused and think it’s running a universe and that universe is real, nor that anything about that system is conscious. When I close the game and load the LLM, I still don’t think the same machine has a case for consciousness even though I think it’s super smart and helpful.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

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Post by loudmax » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:30 PM UTC

indoordin0saur wrote: post #793

I often hear the assumption that LLMs can or will become conscious because consciousness is likely substrate independent . The idea being that our brain is just a computer made out of meat and it doesn't do anything that can't be precisely simulated by a silicon computer. But I wonder if some of the magic in the human brain is its analog nature. Chemical signaling and impulses of neurons interact with each other with…

I'm very open to the idea that consciousness is substrate independent. I have a hard time seeing why molecules could produce consciousness from an electro-chemical path, but not from a purely electrical path. Having said that, it should be very clear that LLMs are not conscious.

LLMs process language. I'd even go so far as to say that LLMs "think" and "understand", or at least, they produce a facsimile of thinking and understanding such that it's useful for us to reason about LLMs as if they think and understand. We're not used to interacting with a non-human entity with the capability to process language, so it's easy to ascribe human traits to these things. But their "minds" (insofar as they have anything like a mind) are completely different from ours. These things have language without consciousness.

Chimpanzees are conscious. Dogs are conscious. Maybe ravens and cephalopods? Who knows. These animals do have minds much like ours. Higher order animals are conscious even if they don't have language.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

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Post by haswell » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:31 PM UTC

Lerc wrote: post #815

haswell wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's any reason to take seriously the idea that AI is conscious, we must then take seriously the idea that many other non-living things are conscious. Unless the argument is that consciousness is an emergent property of complexity or information density, why would AI be any more or less conscious than my toaster? It seems to me that it's far more likely that everything is conscious than it is that AI is somehow…

> If there's any reason to take seriously the idea that AI is conscious, we must then take seriously the idea that many other non-living things are conscious. That, I believe is why the objection to AI exists, that conclusion is unacceptable. It seems like we are experiencing "Vindication of the Rights of Brutes" all over again.

I understand what you're getting at, but I think you may be misinterpreting me slightly.

I'm not outright dismissing the possibility that AI could be conscious; I'm saying that if we take the possibility that it is seriously, the conversation has to expand beyond AI. I'm not using this argument to conclude that it must therefore be absurd that AI could be conscious, just pointing out that the implications of AI being conscious would reach far beyond just AI. I'm mostly curious if people who find themselves comfortable with the idea that AI might be conscious also find themselves comfortable with the idea that other sufficiently complex systems might be.

Taylor's work was based on the premise that he found it absurd that women deserve the same rights as men. If my conclusion was: "I find it absurd that other things might be conscious, so it is also absurd that AI might be conscious", I think the comparison would be fair. But that's not what I'm getting at.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#875

Post by aqfamnzc » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:31 PM UTC

ooloncoloophid wrote: post #737

My background is in cognitive science and psycholinguistics. I spent more than ten years talking to first year psychology undergraduates about whether AIs could be conscious; also did some research on (extremely tiny) AIs in modelling language behaviours. There is a great deal of good thinking on Chiang's topic by professional philosophers, and there's much to be said for reading them. I won't rehearse their ideas he…

> I won't rehearse their ideas here

Is there an accessible way for a layman such as myself to read about some of these ideas (Really I mean philosophical discussion in general) without having to read entire books? Is there an active HN-equivalent or wiki or something?

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

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Post by km144 » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:32 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #853

cwmma wrote: post #806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not, we're nowhere near the complexity of the human brain yet, there are also quantization limits to the human brain (i.e. molecules, quantum physics, etc) so to characterize them as having infinite detail is probably a bad modal. If I'm going to be honest most of the people who advocate this type of thing tend to be, shall we say, crypto-duelists who really believe in a soul but not like intellectually but…

You nailed it which is that almost everyone I’ve met seems to believe in some version of dualism If that’s even subtly your position then there’s no way to have a productive conversation about perception, reality/truth, epistemology and especially consciousness It’s honestly maddening cause I’ve had great conversations about this with educated people, and all but only a handful, collapse into the other person relying…

I'm basically restating what you said, but it's amazing to me that the vast majority of people you will meet, even educated people, are casual dualists and free-will libertarians. If they happen to acknowledge materialism in some way (i.e. the acceptance of the idea that the brain's processes are just the interaction of physical matter), there is still zero chance they draw determinist conclusions from that acknowledgement. But I guess that tracks, given that most professional philosophers are apparently compatibilists for some reason I have never understood (the arguments get really confusing).

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

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Post by gambiting » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:34 PM UTC

rickydroll wrote: post #505

dpweb wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The danger of anthropomorphism is not we elevate the machines, it's that we debase humanity. I also think different ideas get conflated. It may be possible to build a machine that is super-human in the sense it can outperform the human brain in all kinds of measurable ways. Does not imply it possesses all the same qualities of the brain. I respect a number of things Anthropic has published about the ethical issues at…

I think humanity deserves to be debased in part because it's awfully egocentric and insist on being special in the universe. There are numerous times when humanity's been debased. Copernicus, Kepler, Darwin, and the infinite number of animal behaviorists who have defined and documented consciousness And how it manifests in primates, parrots, dogs, cetaceans, and insects. (I just love the bumble bees taking time off f…

>>So, if we had an AI demonstrating symptoms of consciousness and suffering, how long would it take for you to accept that it is?

Never. To quote Greg Egan's Permutation City:

“Opponents replied that when you modeled a hurricane, nobody got wet. When you modeled a fusion power plant, no energy was produced. When you modeled digestion and metabolism, no nutrients were consumed – no real digestion took place. So, when you modeled the human brain, why should you expect real thought to occur?”

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

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Post by gizajob » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:35 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #834

gizajob wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you have no inkling that your spreadsheet or terminal emulator is conscious, yet when that same machine is running an LLM all of a sudden we’re debating its consciousness? Anthropic seems to have chosen their in-house philosopher well - one who’ll be amenable to getting confused in their favour.

Why do you assume other humans or cats and dogs are conscious? I'd suggest it's because they behave as if they are. LLMs show some signs of human like awareness, at least of text contents, whereas spreadsheets don't. When doctors are testing if humans are conscious they'll do things like hold out their hand and say how many fingers am I holding up. Some LLMs can pass that.

I’d stay that my belief about other humans or cats or dogs wasn’t really an assumption based on some kind of proof that had to be constructed from a ground of doubting. I’d say it was the type of hinge certainty upon which my world depends and my doubting it would only ever arise for a few minutes in special circumstances. Same as I could ponder gravity turning off and bouncing around the room but this has never happened and seems like it never will, so isn’t really much of a doubt worthy activity, same as questioning my dog’s consciousness.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#879

Post by Izkata » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:36 PM UTC

soraki_soladead wrote: post #284

why_at wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a big fan of Star Trek but I recently rewatched this one in the context of recent AI developments and it's not as good as I remember it. They barely touch on the issues of consciousness, Picard basically says "What if Data is conscious?" and then goes off on a tangent. The judge eventually rules in Data's favor but doesn't give much of a justification IMO. It's still a good episode, but it doesn't add much to the…

I think you're misremembering or misunderstanding Picard's argument. It isn't a tangent. Here's the transcript[0]. TL;DR Picard's initial arguments are pretty weak, even admitting that Riker as opposing counsel almost had him convinced. During a recess Picard talks to Guinan where she alludes to the future subjugation of many Datas which Picard connects to slavery. Back in the courtroom Picard calls Maddox as a hosti…

> Picard's closing boils down to, "we don't know if he meets the third

A little piece of in-universe lore for anyone unaware or who had forgotten: At this point in the series, Data's positronic brain is new technology no one understands. His creator is missing/presumed dead, the "positronic" basis isn't how Federation technology works, and apparently so far they hadn't done a whole lot of direct experimentation (hence why the trial is happening). So not knowing if he's conscious is a lot more reasonable a stance than with real-life LLMs where we do know roughly how they work.

Also later in the series we meet a character whose brain was copied into a positronic brain, and does imply that technology is at least capable of consciousness, whether or not it applies in Data's case.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#880

Post by gazebo2 » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:37 PM UTC

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #587

haktan wrote: post #586

I don't understand the most of the responses here. What does computers getting more intelligent has to do with it getting conscious? Even if AI with current computer architecture gets much more intelligent than humans, it will still have the same amount of consciousness. Its still bunch of instructions. If we got a lot of people together and did all the instructions by hand to get an LLM result would we also create t…

> Its still bunch of instructions. So is your brain. That's the problem with this argument.

This sort of tech-centric distillation of visceral human experience into simple analogies is so grating. We can simultaneously acknowledge that consciousness is not well defined and not "testable" with certainty while also acknowledging that there is something different between the conscious experience we are all aware of as humans, and instructions executing on a chip. The only thing that has changed in the discourse about AI and consciousness vs. "is my home desktop conscious in 2004" is the quality of the simulacrum that LLMs produce vs. pre-ML chatbots.