Thanks for sharing this. It appears your README.md's first paragraph is truncated. It ends with "Carmack which reportedly contains..." What were you intending to say next?
To the author's credit, there's a disclosure that the article is a teaser for deep dive for paid-subscribers only. That's probably why it's light on details.
Ah I see now that I am in agreement with you, thank you for being a patient interlocutor. I do not discard and rule out the possibility of a different substrate being the well-spring from which sentience emerges.
Plainly, based on the current ground trodded and the trajectory laid out by the frontier AI labs, I do not have concrete evidence/proof of sentience having emerged from LLM-based software tools as of June 4 2026 nor do I expect it to happen in the future based on my understanding and observations of this technology. I'm not excluding the possibility but wielding skepticism. I am open to being proven wrong with new discoveries.
Which is why (to return to my lashing of the dead horse) I don't see OP's post as worthwhile. Their post reiterates a point that is already valid (the prior art) with no new substantial discovery. Which is why "unoriginal and pointless" is apt, a novel idea was not presented; it's just some vain virtue signaling.
Roger that, thank you. w/r/g your recapitulation of my point: yes, the story is unoriginal and pointless, and the HN community seems to eat it up-- isn't that odd.
So I still disagree with your elucidated point (as you end with "which is valid"): the OP author is using prior art fiction to bolster their opinion of LLM-based software tools as being a possible vector of sentience, not to disarm our chauvinism like the original author intended. If OP wanted to make that point, they could have written a critical essay instead of farming out their thoughts as tokens.
But still, I look forward to reading the book you suggested to understand and appreciate your perspective more.
I cannot tell if you are asserting my comment is chauvinistic with your use of "we." If that is so: that's a poor counter to my point or assessment of my stance because it assumes I'm making a baseless argument as a "proud human."
My original comment (roughly "there's no intelligence in this article, nor sentience in LLMs") is in response to the blog post's buried lede (that the cumulative activity of LLMs has accrued to a weight of "AGI is around the corner" or "there is artificial consciousness in this matrix").
To be clear, I'm not saying LLMs are useless or a wrong direction in development of "AI," but rather it's the Fool's Gold for the path towards AGI, the pursuit of the academic field of Artificial Intelligence research. A research that I've been abreast of for years before this new age of language models that has made everyone with a keyboard an arm chair expert.
Also, thank you for the book recommendation, it's on my list! :)
Thank you for your point. I don't understand why half these comments are taking this blog post seriously when it ends with "Weights helped me draft and proof this story."
Now read the post's topic again ( https://maxleiter.com/blog/weights ) and reflect on the prior fact that weights helped [the author] draft and proof this story.
My reaction (and I'm sorry that it is harsh according to some) is that there is no intelligence found in either the author nor their tool. This is extreme navel gazing, based in science fiction, wanting (wishing) to believe those stories to be true.
I'm skeptical of AI sentience because we must do our due diligence, not because it's impossible. Skepticism is the only respectful approach because to grant sentience is a step away from granting rights.
lol Dude I should be the one verifying your age with this response. I don’t hate Elon, I am wary of his track record and I don’t use X. I drove a Tesla back in 2012, and it’s been a marked downgrade ever since.
I’m not going to keep engaging with someone who makes wild assumptions about my stance and accuses me of lying, ignorance, and evil. I was really hoping for video proof; I know Elon is the type of guy to hold that high with all that SpaceX footage.
That's just a man standing by his car. I'm asking for video proof, I'm sorry that wasn't clear off the bat. I also abstain from X due to Elon's track record, so I'm not going to keep searching there for it. Could you please tell me how to self serve on this?
I've driven a Tesla on and off for about 4 years, and I'm thankful to never do so again.
> It's literally been rated the safest car in America since it's inception.
I'm locating our disconnect a bit better: something can be marked "safest car" for road tests but still be rife with issues, like its obnoxious UI choices, etc.
Sure they have improved but how do we define success? Is success "It can drive a road it has never been on?" Even then I'm not sure because the model (not the physical car) has probably scanned that road before so it is recalling a prior route while being aware of hazards. Is that learning, or rote memorization?
I think an accolade's merit is based on the definition of done for work delivered. Elon certainly told the public a certain vision of self-driving (a definition of done) and it didn't come to fruition despite PR progress; i.e. a washing machine can do a lot of work, but is it the right work?
We can arbitrate about what "self-driving success" means until the cows come home, but my point is I've seen a lot of self-driving failures from the Teslas I've witnessed in person.
I could never trust a Tesla to drive safely around people. They seem like death traps. Could you share a link to the coast to coast drive please? How aided was it?
Tesla still hasn't achieved their 2016 self-drive goal by their self imposed deadline of 2017, even now a decade later. So, politely, is that accolade merited?
I find your critique very interesting from a perspective-angle: why are you using words like "accommodate," and "foibles," for LLMs? It's not humanoid or sentient: it's a cleverly-designed software tool, not intelligence.
It's not insane at all for humans to alter their behavior with a tool: you grip a hammer or a gun a certain way because you learned not to hold it backwards. If you observe a child playing with a serious tool, like scissors, as if it were a doll, you'd immediately course correct the child and educate how to re-approach the topic. But that is because an adult with prior knowledge observed the situation prior to an accident, so rules are defined.
This blog's suggested rules are exactly the sort of method to aid in insulation from harm.
> Biggest issue that stuck out seems to have been that they think the LLM could somehow have an inner dialogue with itself to find out "it's reasoning and motivation":
> I'm guessing these are the same type of people who sometimes seems to fall in love with LLMs, for better or worse. Really strange to see, and I wonder where people get the idea from that something like that above could really work.
It's a fetishistic cargo-cult rooted in Peter Thiel's 2AM hot tub party. I still believe the LLM approach won't yield true AGI; despite the very real applications, the majority signal is noise.
I just finished this book and complained about it the whole time. The prose is amateur and peppered with cliches (e.g. you should be fined for publishing the phrase "their suit was so sharp it could cut"). His attempt to write about the inner thoughts of the characters was pretty simple. The descriptions of violence and horror also felt child-like, especially the dialogue during those moments (e.g. Redd's introduction). The landscapes are bland, with lots of repetition. Personally, the redaction technique got boring fast when he would take up entire pages of the book to convey absent memories. He could use his words to convey this instead of black-boxes.
I will give the author credit on how they deal with their characters' memories and the re-development of their thoughts, and the usage of time-jumping was reasonable (some books jump around too much, as if these time-skips improve a boring plot). Also the convention for how they solve their dilemma was enjoyable.
Overall, I think the author relies too much on a vocal fandom around the SCP Foundation to glorify the book. I think there is potential for a saga of books but there needs to be more effort in the drafting and editing process to raise the quality of the books to the level the universe deserves.
I was just re-reading the passage from Plato's "The Phaedrus" on writing & the "art" of the letter for an essay I'm working on, and your remark is salient for this discussion on LLM-style AI and social media at large.
As a classically trained pianist, I'll say the following commentary regarding this thread: there are many ways to learn to "play the piano" and no one is going to agree on "the right way" because there's no true way.
This project is a good way to practice basic sheet music reading as well as to aurally recognize notes and phrases; teaching would require some cultivation of understanding the context and nomenclature. Thanks for sharing!
I founded and run https://trojan.software