@mattsheffield@mastodon.social
2026-10-21 22:34 UTC
🧵 It's really absurd to debate supposed chatbot consciousness, but the sad thing is that millions of people think they are alive, so their arguments need to be engaged.
I'm glad that there are some people in cognitive science and philosophy of mind who are doing this, but unfortunately, much of the content they make does not adequately engage with the technologies themselves or the (bad) evidence proffered by proponents.
This piece is an example: https://rdcu.be/n8By815T88Ra
#ai #philosophy
Replies (1)
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@mattsheffield@mastodon.social 2026-10-21 22:37
I agree with the conclusion of this essay that chatbots are not conscious. I'm glad it's out there, but unfortunately, it has some fundamental flaws. The core problem is that it invokes co-author Giulio Tononi's Integrated Information Theory, a consciousness framework which is enormously controversial and regarded by many scholars as "pseudoscience." Why bring in a widely disputed theory of mind into a smackdown of chatbot mindedness?