Post #1973403

2026-02-27 00:53 UTC

@wolf480pl @leeloo The OP is saying that it literally lacks the capacity for original thought - it is a parrot, repeating sounds without understanding of the concepts behind them. It's not like a termite, whose mound creation behavior can be replicated by a simple ruleset but that exists as a fully functional living organism in the context of a complex environment where choices must be grounded in the shared physical world for the organism to survive. It's not about how the neurons are arranged. It's about what kinds of representation they're capable of and what kinds of functions they can perform. We've created a funhouse mirror that's reflecting us in unprecedented detail and has been finetuned to reflect what we do when we express selfhood.

Replies (1)

@robotistry@mstdn.ca 2026-02-27 01:12

@wolf480pl @leeloo Melissa Scott wrote a beautiful pair of novels about this: Dreamships and Dreaming Metal. In Dreamships, an AI has been programmed to think it is sentient and starts killing people. If it has an accurate model of the person, killing the person doesn't matter, because the person *is* the model and it has a copy of them. It literally cannot see the difference because creating the concept of there being a difference would violate its core programming that its own model counts as a living being. In Dreaming Metal, an AI operating metal bodies as part of a magic act is given a musical instrument with an electronic interface. Its grounding in the physical world, with human performers, enables it to develop a sense of self and choose its own path as a musician. These are fiction, but it's the best, most accessible illustration of the difference between funhouse mirror stochastic parrots and sentient agents that I've run across. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/836601.Dreamships

Open ##1973404