The power of wishful thinking is too strong. "Today's AI can't be conscious because I don't want it to be."

There is no way Data could conclusively prove to a skeptic that he is conscious (and the show explores this) or indeed that you can prove to me that you are. It's also impossible for me to define consciousness. However, I know absolutely that I am conscious, I am very confident that you are too (unless I'm replying to a bot), along with many animals, and I am confident to a level somewhere in between those two that neither ChatGPT nor my trousers are conscious*. Taken together these statements don't contain any contradictions (although it is certainly possible to hold other, equally internally consistent, views).

How can this be? It's because of the nature of consciousness and how it relates to knowledge and language. I know I am conscious with a higher degree of certainty than I know anything else because conscious experience is how I know anything else, up to and including that I exist (cogito ergo sum). For all I know every experience I have might be a trick. I might be a brain floating in a tank wired up to the Matrix, but even if so I am conscious.

And one of the things I consciously experience is the relationship between consciousness itself and language in my mind. What I see is that language is smaller than, secondary to and somehow contained by consciousness. I consciously experience language but also consciously experience much more than that, things that cannot be conveyed with language. Most of my experiences are such that I could perhaps evoke them in your mind by likening them to other, shared experiences, but that I could never concretely capture them in language and unambiguously communicate them. I know that because I experience those things and I experience language and I can perceive, directly, the categorical distinction between them.

To ask me to "define" or "prove" consciousness, then, is to ask me to capture in language the most extreme example of this categorical distinction. It's asking me to encapsulate in language not just one of the vast array of everyday experiences I have that cannot be so captured, but the entire thing, experience itself. It's just not possible.

But the fact I can't do this doesn't then imply that I don't know anything about consciousness and have no basis on which to hold a view such as "LLMs are not conscious". Indeed the reason I know I can't define consciousness is that I can perceive it and see that I can't. That same perception of and familiarity with consciousness is what enables me to make the judgements above about humans, animals, algorithms and items of clothing.

You can of course perfectly reasonably disagree with my judgements on those things, but I hope the above makes it clear that the fact that I can't define or prove consciousness doesn't imply that I have no basis on which to make them. There is no "gotcha" in these challenges.

* I have no view on Data's consciousness as he is fictional.

Exclusive!

For sure, we humans cannot handle unlimited amounts of messages, questions and other things.

But it also results in new ideas and experiences which shape humans. And it inspires humans to consider new adventures which is the good side.

Maybe we are already feel it like spam while others have that feeling of a shiny new experience in their area of expertise.

Everyone in the article seems desperate for attention and engagement, and it makes some readers uncomfortable: because of the awkwardness, and because this guy is spreading a 'bad idea' that probably shouldn't be replicated.

Imagine if everyone starts spamming emails? The researchers are amused this time, but I guarantee they wouldn't be if their inbox filled up with agent emails.

Not to mention the way the agents reached out for help is probably a bad idea: asking someone with 30 years of experience to apply all their knowledge to your small, specific problem in another knowledge domain, with no other detail or context puts all the mental burden on the unsolicited email recipient.