Sep 21, 2026, 1:50 PMBelieving that an AI is conscious or sentient requires you to believe that perfectly comprehensible and replicable mathematics, performed sufficiently quickly, can somehow summon consciousness.
The *impression* of consciousness emerges from the input data: the entire web, all obtainable human literature to this point, etc. It's an echo of that vast corpus – nothing more.
@tomw
If it stands a thorough Turing test, it's conscious. For someone of flesh and blood it's no different.
Sep 21, 2026, 2:38 PM@GoSeiGer The Turing test is whether a computer can fool a human into believing that it is intelligent. It is not a test of actually *being* intelligent.
@tomw
If I can fool you for being intelligent and an AI does the same thing, then we are equivalent. This is not about fooling someone, it is about being something.
Sep 22, 2026, 6:51 PM@GoSeiGer If I can make dog noises through a wall and make you believe there is a dog there, it does not follow that I am a dog
@tomw
If you start using silly comparisons, this discussion is fruitless. I am not saying that AI can be human, I am saying that AI can be called intelligent, when passing a thourough Turing test. Even though it is not made of flesh and blood.
How else are you now finding out whether I am not just another AI?
Sep 23, 2026, 4:46 PM@GoSeiGer I just don't accept that the 'illusion of intelligence' is the same as intelligence.
Yes, it is getting harder to tell. But it is still fakery, in the same way that (for example) a generated photo is not a real photo.
Sep 21, 2026, 2:39 PM@tomw Any discussion of whether or not a given thing has consciousness is hampered much-earlier than that, though, because we can't yet agree on what consciousness IS.
Consciousness is a Russell's Teapot.