@mattsheffield@mastodon.social
2026-10-21 22:37 UTC
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?
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@mattsheffield@mastodon.social 2026-10-21 22:38
Beyond that, IIT itself is often invoked by advocates of chatbot consciousness like David Chalmers, in support of panpsychist combination and also in support of his computational functionalist views. Unfortunately, the article does not engage with these other, very popular interpretations of IIT.