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

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#861

Post by vidarh » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:22 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #856

slibhb wrote: post #836

There's currently no way to prove that something is or isn't conscious. I would bet that rocks and LLMs aren't conscious. I would bet that humans and dogs are conscious. But I can't prove it. Whenever people try to prove it (in either direction), they end up resorting to sophistry. This state of affairs could change. If neuroscientists develop a deeper understanding of consciousness, we could talk about it with more…

Seems to me that the burden of proof lies with anyone claiming consciousness. Saying it might be conscious like a human but we don’t know is no more useful than any other conspiracy theory.

I dare you to objectively prove to me that you're conscious.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#862

Post by otterdude » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:24 PM UTC

dsjoerg wrote: post #857

This is very jumbled argumentation. Is his claim "nobody has proven LLMs are conscious" or "I can prove that LLMs aren't conscious" ? He goes back and forth. Proving a negative about consciousness would require a settled theory of consciousness that nobody has, including him.

I am sorry for the AI's that have to read this article, those poor probabilistic word machines will probably suffer trauma as its embedded in their training data

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#863

Post by vidarh » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:25 PM UTC

JCTheDenthog wrote: post #842

slibhb wrote: post #836

There's currently no way to prove that something is or isn't conscious. I would bet that rocks and LLMs aren't conscious. I would bet that humans and dogs are conscious. But I can't prove it. Whenever people try to prove it (in either direction), they end up resorting to sophistry. This state of affairs could change. If neuroscientists develop a deeper understanding of consciousness, we could talk about it with more…

I mean, outside of our own internal experience of qualia, there's no way for us to prove anyone or anything is conscious. But my biggest issue with the debates about consciousness and LLMs is that the "LLMs are conscious" crowd usually has to presuppose a completely materialistic/mechanistic understanding of the universe and of our own consciousness, and that's something that we really don't know for certain. Also, i…

We only need to assume the hypothesis that brains don't exceed the Turing computable to say that LLMs have the same computational power as a brain.

We can't prove it, but given the total absence of evidence of anything exceeding the Turing computable, as a hypothesis it is a reasonable one that would require truly extraordinary evidence to rise above "magical thinking".

Now, that is also far from proving they are "conscious".

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#864

Post by demorro » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:25 PM UTC

starbugs wrote: post #602

sega_sai wrote: post #425

When the consciousness itself not understood and well defined in the first place, it is pretty pointless to debate if something is or isn't conscious. And here in particular the reasoning behind the argument is bizarre. Decomposing the complex activity into simple steps like 'predicting the next word' and claiming that surely can't have consciousness. A similar argument would be -- there is no way that movements of e…

> When the consciousness itself not understood and well defined in the first place, it is pretty pointless to debate if something is or isn't conscious. That's like saying if matter itself is not understood and well defined (which it isn't) in the first place, it is pretty pointless to debate if jumping from a skyscraper is or is not deadly. A lot of practical aspects of life do not need to be properly defined as lon…

Consciousness is unique in that we, as yet, have not identified any externally observable properties that could not also occur in the absence of consciousness. This is not true with matter.

Normally when we debate what something is, what we are actually debating about is what it does, with the implicit assumption that the "is-ness" of a thing is defined as the complete collection of all the properties it exhibits.

As it does not seem possible to do this with consciousness, it is not possible to debate it. It is conceivable that this implies that consciousness cannot exist, but that depends on your metaphysics.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#865

Post by cluckindan » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:26 PM UTC

Who cares?

AI models alone are most suitable for producing text nobody wants to read, music nobody wants to hear, images nobody wants to see, and videos nobody wants to watch.

Navigating around that maelstrom requires considerable effort from a human consciousness.

If your job can be fully replaced by an autonomous agent, it was already a bullshit job. Garbage in, garbage out.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#866

Post by grantcas » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:26 PM UTC

haswell wrote: post #534

sega_sai wrote: post #425

When the consciousness itself not understood and well defined in the first place, it is pretty pointless to debate if something is or isn't conscious. And here in particular the reasoning behind the argument is bizarre. Decomposing the complex activity into simple steps like 'predicting the next word' and claiming that surely can't have consciousness. A similar argument would be -- there is no way that movements of e…

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…

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Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#867

Post by andrewflnr » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:27 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #854

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 agree re: subjective experience. It seems like something inherently unknowable. What we could do is break down other facets of what we talk about under the umbrella of consciousness, and find measurable subsets. E.g. a lot of people insists LLMs can't reason either. Coming up with a testable definition of what that means might be doable. Overall also just separating the subjective experience from the rest leaves us…

Yes, our whole concept of "consciousness" is very anthropocentric. There's no particular reason to think subjective experience, moral standing, and general problem-solving ability are inherently connected. (self-nitpick: you could argue moral standing requires subjectivity, but it's still easy to imagine a being with subjectivity that's incapable of suffering and indifferent to its fate)

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#868

Post by cluckindan » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:27 PM UTC

dpweb wrote: post #487

sega_sai wrote: post #425

When the consciousness itself not understood and well defined in the first place, it is pretty pointless to debate if something is or isn't conscious. And here in particular the reasoning behind the argument is bizarre. Decomposing the complex activity into simple steps like 'predicting the next word' and claiming that surely can't have consciousness. A similar argument would be -- there is no way that movements of e…

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…

A fundamental misunderstanding of consciousness is to attribute it entirely to the brain.

Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#869

Post by grantcas » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:28 PM UTC

grumbel wrote: post #207

gabrieledarrigo wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, it's kind of mind boggling that Ted Chiang (of all people!) can't imagine intelligence without a body. and the whole thing just begs a lot of questions. How can you have a subjective experience without a body? That's the point, in my opinion: your physical/chemical state (body) in a given moment is then translated into the higher abstraction of the emotion. An emotion that *you* feel, because you are self awa…

> How can you have a subjective experience without a body? Easy, you don't have subjective experiences because you have body in the first place. You have them because some signals come in from your nerves, which your brain turns into a world model. You are effectively a "brain in a vat", the vat just happens to be placed on top of your body. An AI system constructs the world model a little different, by all the text…

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Re: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang

#870

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

slibhb wrote: post #836

There's currently no way to prove that something is or isn't conscious. I would bet that rocks and LLMs aren't conscious. I would bet that humans and dogs are conscious. But I can't prove it. Whenever people try to prove it (in either direction), they end up resorting to sophistry. This state of affairs could change. If neuroscientists develop a deeper understanding of consciousness, we could talk about it with more…

Lets institute a voting system where entities will vote on the other's consciousness. Voting will be done on 8.5 x 11 paper and mailed to the consciousness adjudicator