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An Alarming Number of Gen Z Ai Users Think It's Conscious
(www.pcmag.com)
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this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
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The LLM peddlers seem to be going for that exact result. That's why they're calling it "AI". Why is this surprising that non-technical people are falling for it?
That's not why. They're calling it AI because it is AI. AI doesn't mean sapient or conscious.
Edit: look at this diagram if you're still unsure:
In the general population it does. Most people are not using an academic definition of AI, they are using a definition formed from popular science fiction.
You have that backwards. People are using the colloquial definition of AI.
"Intelligence" is defined by a group of things like pattern recognition, ability to use tools, problem solving, etc. If one of those definitions are met then the thing in question can be said to have intelligence.
A flat worm has intelligence, just very little of it. An object detection model has intelligence (pattern recognition) just not a lot of it. An LLM has more intelligence than a basic object detection model, but still far less than a human.
Yes, that's the point. You'd think they could have, at least, looked into a dictionary at some point in the last 2 years. But nope, everyone else is wrong. A round of applause for the paragons of human intelligence.
The I implies intelligence; of which there is none because it's not sentient. It's intentionally deceptive because it's used as a marketing buzzword.
You might want to look up the definition of intelligence then.
By literal definition, a flat worm has intelligence. It just didn't have much of it. You're using the colloquial definition of intelligence, which uses human intelligence as a baseline.
I'll leave this graphic here to help you visualize what I mean:
Please do post this graphic again, I don't think I've quite grasped it yet
Ok. I won't.
Oh, yes. I forgot that LLM have creativity, abstract thinking and understanding. Thanks for the reminder. /s
It's not a requirement to have all those things. Having just one is enough to meet the definition. Such as problem solving, which LLMs are capable of doing.
What is this nonsense Euler diagram? Emotion can intersect with consciousness, but emotion is also a subset of consciousness but emotion also never contains emotion? Intelligence does overlap at all with sentience, sapience, or emotion? Intelligence isn’t related at all to thought, knowledge, or judgement?
Did AI generate this?
https://www.mdpi.com/2079-8954/10/6/254
Science.
Scientists did.
Not everything you see in a paper is automatically science, and not every person involved is a scientist.
That picture is a diagram, not science. It was made by a writer, specifically a columnist for Medium.com, not a scientist. It was cited by a professor who, by looking at his bio, was probably not a scientist. You would know this if you followed the citation trail of the article you posted.
You’re citing an image from a pop culture blog and are calling it science, which suggests you don’t actually know what you’re posting, you just found some diagram that you thought looked good despite some pretty glaring flaws and are repeatedly posting it as if it’s gospel.
I was being deliberately facetious. You can find similar diagrams from various studies. Granted that many of them are looking at modern AI models to ask the question about intelligence, reasoning, etc. but it highlights that it's still an open question. There's no definitive ground truth about what exactly is "intelligence", but most experts on the subject would largely agree with the gist of the diagram with maybe a few notes and adjustments of their own.
To be clear, I've worked in the field of AI for almost a decade and have a fairly in-depth perspective on the subject. Ultimately the word "intelligence" is completely accurate.
I'm not gonna lie, most people like you are afraid to entertain the idea of AI being conscious because it makes you look at your own consciousness as not being all that special or unique.
Do you believe in spirits, souls, or god genes?
No, it's because it isn't conscious. An LLM is a static model (all our AI models are in fact). For something to be conscious or sapient it would require a neural net that can morph and adapt in real-time. Nothing currently can do that. Training and inference are completely separate modes. A real AGI would have to have the training and inference steps occurring at once and continuously.
That's fine, but I was referring to AI as a concept and not just its current iteration or implementation.
I agree that it's not conscious now, but someday it could be.
That's the same as arguing "life" is conscious, even though most life isn't conscious or sapient.
Some day there could be AI that's conscious, and when it happens we will call that AI conscious. That still doesn't make all other AI conscious.
It's such a weirdly binary viewpoint.
It's not the same thing, but I'm tired of arguing with people like you so I'm gonna duck out.
Good luck.
You mean arguing with people who show you're wrong? Good move.
wisdom would be nice.
Lol.
Average people these days are just so... average. Glad I'm not like you people anymore.
shine on you special snowflake troll
Stay in school.
You don't have to be tech person to see through bullshit. Any person with mid level expertise can test the limits of the current LLM capabilities. It can't provide consistently objectively correct outputs. It is still a useful tool though.
Mid level expertise in basically anything may be out of reach for younger gen z given the state of the education systems they lived through and the business practices that no longer prioritize training or continuing education. Assuming they can get hired at all when everyone is only hiring senior staff
Education was always garbage though. It is designed to generate obidient wage slaves. Any person who wanted to get good always knew that self study is the only way to get leveled up.
Your coworkers have no incentive to train you. This has also started since at least 1990s. Just how corpos operate.
Point I am making, none of this is new or specific to gen z
I guess covid is unique to them tho but covid didn't make education shite, it just exposed it imho
in the US
Fixed that for you
Naive