Geoffrey Hinton

It's actually straight in front of you.

but I put a prism in front of your lens.

And the chatbot says, oh, I see.

The prism bent the light rays.

So the object is actually straight in front of me.

But I had the subjective experience that it was off to one side.

And if the chatbot said that, it would be using words subjective experience exactly the way we use them.

And so that chatbot would have just had a subjective experience.

That's extremely improbable.

I would have LeFranc.

Okay, so notice that the chatbot doesn't have any mysterious essence or fluid called consciousness, but it has a subjective experience just like we do.

So I think this whole idea of consciousness is some magic essence that you suddenly get endowed with if you're complicated enough.

It's just nonsense.

But I think there is awareness, and if you look at what scientists say when they're not thinking philosophically,

There's a lovely paper where the chatbot says, now let's be honest with each other, are you actually testing me?

And the scientists say the chatbot was aware it was being tested.

So they're attributing awareness to a chatbot.

And in everyday conversation, you call that consciousness.

It's only when you start thinking philosophically and thinking that it's some funny, mysterious essence that you get all confused.

So, we still have time to figure out if there's a way we can coexist happily with AI.