Here's a basic warmup question: How do you know that a person is conscious?
There are basic medical tests, of course, but maybe they're faking it. You know, as a person, what it feels like to be a person; you feel when you're conscious. Is this feeling universal, or are there people who just don't have it?
This question is known as the question of philosophical zombies [0], or p-zombies, and it is worth taking seriously, if for no other reason than that GPT-3 and friends are very much like p-zombies; they sound very cogent and coherent but are definitely not conscious in the same brain-based way that humans are conscious.
There are basic medical tests, of course, but maybe they're faking it. You know, as a person, what it feels like to be a person; you feel when you're conscious. Is this feeling universal, or are there people who just don't have it?
This question is known as the question of philosophical zombies [0], or p-zombies, and it is worth taking seriously, if for no other reason than that GPT-3 and friends are very much like p-zombies; they sound very cogent and coherent but are definitely not conscious in the same brain-based way that humans are conscious.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie