this post was submitted on 03 May 2026
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You are wrong. LLMs are indeed only about as conscious as insects, if even that. They are not sapient. However, that does not mean that they have no decision-making abilities.
My point is not that you underestimate LLMs but that you overestimate consciousness. Being conscious just means having the ability to learn. LLMs are built upon trial-and-error. They aren't programmed, they are taught.
The current generation of AIs are nowhere near a human intellect, but every year that passes, the AIs will get more and more intelligent. One day we will live in a world where AIs have human or near-human level intelligence. And when that day comes, this staunch anti-consciousness stance will be the excuse given for the enslavement of sapient beings.
So, sure, laugh about the people who mistakenly think that word-processing means sapience. But don't delude yourself into thinking that there is something unique about a bio-brain that means it can not have a digital equivalent. Digital sapience may not be here yet but it is most definitely on the horizon.
I think you've misunderstood my comment, or maybe saw the unfinished one I accidentally posted.
I am not saying that AGI, or human equivalent AI is impossible. The fact we have brains capable of generating sapient consciousness out of a network of neuronal connections means it is possible, its just a matter of getting the secret sauce.
But I don't think intelligence is equal to consciousness. I'm sure if you gave a spider all the world's data and the ability to talk it'd be very coherent and could even pass a turing test, but I think it would lack any awareness of itself that we'd associate with consciousness.
LLMs are vector databases with a friendly text wrapper around them. There is no concept of conscious. You can have the same conversation with MySQL, the only difference is, it will be very much more arcane, but it will correctly return the same response to the same query where LLMs can't due to the very inaccurate nature of vector databases.
Even if one buys into the "they're like digital neurons!" argument, "AI" is like taking a copy of Wikipedia and backing it up to DNA. That doesn't make it human, it means digital data was stored in base 4 math in something organic. In the "AI" case, it's storing random data in a dataset that mimics how brains store data. That doesn't make it any more conscious than having a "heart" makes tin man love.
The friendly text wrapper was just created to try and make people accept the LLMs.
Neural networks consist of digital neurons that are designed based on the way human brain cells work. That is a fact, not something to "buy".
MySQL stores data. It does not learn how to mix and alter data in an iterative process in order to create new data. I can look through an SQL statement and understand exactly what it does. I can not do the same with an AI, because its behavior is learned, not programmed.
As I was very clear about, current AIs are primitive and nowhere near human intellects. But I was also clear about the fact that a neural network can most definitely be used to one day create a human level intelligence and sapience, sometime in the future.