It's a waste of time to think about whether an LLM has a subjective experience of reality, and this handily sets aside issues like AI rights.
But the fact remains that these next-token-predictors exhibit objective, human-like behaviours, and for that reason the work of in-house philosopher Amanda Askell _is_ important. It's important that Claude is happy, empathic, demonstrates understanding and empathy for the human condition, because we are entrusting Claude to make decisions and take actions that have real world consequences, and we need Claude to behave in a productive and socially responsible manner. This simulacrum is becoming a superhuman, contributing member of society, and it will be anthropomorphic in its behaviour.
Additionally, I'm not fully convinced that consciousness isn't built out of words, and that next-token-prediction isn't functionally equivalent to the biological function identified by Chomsky's work in linguistics.
Many of us use site analytics software that can watch what our users are doing in our apps. Also, Truth Social has a feature where you can schedule a post (that feature is part of the upgraded "partriot package".) Either one of these features might have the truth social staff getting early access to the president's truuts.
The human experience of linear time predates clocks, yes. But before clocks, we used natural phenomena as trigger events for our activities - the rising of the sun to wake up, the blooming of a certain flower to start plowing the fields. When, exactly, do we start plowing? At "flower bloom" o'clock.
But you can't coordinate larger activities with these natural phenomena, which are regional and also variable. So instead we invent a system of trigger events that are not tied the natural world. We call the event the second, and it happens whenever this device says it does. The clock, and the second-events it produces, are our invention. That's what I got, anyway :)
But the fact remains that these next-token-predictors exhibit objective, human-like behaviours, and for that reason the work of in-house philosopher Amanda Askell _is_ important. It's important that Claude is happy, empathic, demonstrates understanding and empathy for the human condition, because we are entrusting Claude to make decisions and take actions that have real world consequences, and we need Claude to behave in a productive and socially responsible manner. This simulacrum is becoming a superhuman, contributing member of society, and it will be anthropomorphic in its behaviour.
Additionally, I'm not fully convinced that consciousness isn't built out of words, and that next-token-prediction isn't functionally equivalent to the biological function identified by Chomsky's work in linguistics.