My current belief in the sentience of most nonhuman animals comes partly from the fact that they were subjected to many of the same evolutionary forces that gave consciousness to humans. Other animals also share many brain structures with us. ChatGPT never went through that process and doesn’t have the same structures, so I wouldn’t really expect it to be conscious. I guess your post looks at the outputs of conscious beings, which are very similar to what ChatGPT produces, whereas I’m partly looking at the inputs that we know have created consciousness.
Just my two cents. And I do think this is a worthwhile question to ask! But I would probably update more in the direction of “digital sentience is a (future) possibility” than “more nonhuman animals probably aren’t conscious”.
Many nonhuman animals also show long-term abnormal behaviours, and will try to access analgesia (even paying a cost to do so), if they are in pain. I don’t think we have evidence that’s quite analogous to that with large language models, and if we did, it would cause me to update in favour of current models having sentience. It’s also worth noting that the same lines of evidence that cause me to believe nonhuman animals are sentient also lead me to believe that humans are sentient, even if some of the evidence (like physiological and neuro-anatomical similarities, and evolutionary distance) may be somewhat stronger in humans.
Other animals do share many brain structures with us, but by the same token, most animals lack brain structures that are the most fundamental to what make us human. As far as I am aware (and I will quickly get out of my depth here), only mammals have a neocortex, and small mammals don’t have much of one.
Hopefully this is clear from my post, but ChatGPT hasn’t made me rethink my beliefs about primates or even dogs. It definitely has made me more uncertain about invertebrates, reptiles, and fish. (I have no idea what to think about birds.)
My current belief in the sentience of most nonhuman animals comes partly from the fact that they were subjected to many of the same evolutionary forces that gave consciousness to humans. Other animals also share many brain structures with us. ChatGPT never went through that process and doesn’t have the same structures, so I wouldn’t really expect it to be conscious. I guess your post looks at the outputs of conscious beings, which are very similar to what ChatGPT produces, whereas I’m partly looking at the inputs that we know have created consciousness.
Just my two cents. And I do think this is a worthwhile question to ask! But I would probably update more in the direction of “digital sentience is a (future) possibility” than “more nonhuman animals probably aren’t conscious”.
Many nonhuman animals also show long-term abnormal behaviours, and will try to access analgesia (even paying a cost to do so), if they are in pain. I don’t think we have evidence that’s quite analogous to that with large language models, and if we did, it would cause me to update in favour of current models having sentience. It’s also worth noting that the same lines of evidence that cause me to believe nonhuman animals are sentient also lead me to believe that humans are sentient, even if some of the evidence (like physiological and neuro-anatomical similarities, and evolutionary distance) may be somewhat stronger in humans.
Other animals do share many brain structures with us, but by the same token, most animals lack brain structures that are the most fundamental to what make us human. As far as I am aware (and I will quickly get out of my depth here), only mammals have a neocortex, and small mammals don’t have much of one.
Hopefully this is clear from my post, but ChatGPT hasn’t made me rethink my beliefs about primates or even dogs. It definitely has made me more uncertain about invertebrates, reptiles, and fish. (I have no idea what to think about birds.)
Birds have structures with functions and evolutionary origin similar to the (neo)cortex:
https://www.science.org/content/article/newfound-brain-structure-explains-why-some-birds-are-so-smart-and-maybe-even-self-aware
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bird-brains-are-far-more-humanlike-than-once-thought/