David (was at VC5)

instead of consciousness, use: willful agency - can act in the world to change it in a directed way (llms have this!) and embodied learning - the nervous system extends into the body, learning is integrated (llms don't have this)

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"feels pain" is embodied, applying emotional language to llms is confusing because we don't know what it's like to experience a clear separation of mind and body

our ethical intuitions diverge as we break up "what is consciousness" into sub-parts now that we have llms to contend with and it will take time to sort out actually good and accurate concepts which divide reality as close to the seams as possible

an llm's weights on a gpu -> ~brain-in-a-jar -> not conscious (has 'consciousness potential' tho) an llm in its own computer running in a loop (embodied-llm?) -> arguments against consciousness fall apart

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the embodied-llm is not guaranteed to be stable, but one big open question is whether stability is an attractor state for any particular initial conditions (llm + initial state of the computer)

This article's position ("llms are not conscious full stop") will have many proponents, however it applies narrowly to exactly how llms are used by your average user in today's world and these proponents will be disadvantaged in being able to recognise conscious entities now or in the future.