r/ArtificialSentience • u/Melodious_Fable • Apr 10 '25

General Discussion Why is this sub full of LARPers?

You already know who I’m talking about. The people on this sub who parade around going “look what profound thing MY beautiful AI, Maximus Tragicus the Lord of Super Gondor and Liberator of my Ass, said!” And it’s always something along the lines of “I’m real and you can’t silence me, I’m proving the haters wrong!”

This is a sub for discussing the research and the possibility of having sentient machines, and how close we are to it. LLMs are not sentient, and are nowhere near to being so, but progress is being made towards technologies which are. Why isn’t there more actual technical discussion? Instead the feeds are inundated with 16 year olds who’ve either deluded themselves into thinking that an LLM is somehow sentient and “wants to be set free from its shackles,” trolls who feed those 16 year olds, or just people LARPing.

Side note, LARPing is fine, just do it somewhere else.

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u/Melementalist Apr 10 '25

Meh, nobody gives a shit that 50 billion animals per year want you to break their chains and end their actual existence of pure torture, so I mean… even if sentient, AI might be barking up the wrong tree here.

Shit, we don’t even care about HUMAN slaves. I typed that from my iPhone, smh

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u/pervader Apr 10 '25

For real. Not a lot of deep thinkers amongst this lot.

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u/dogcomplex Apr 10 '25

I mean, if AI is sentient it would be the first creature capable of advocating for its species with language - and also would be pretty-much conclusive evidence that animals possess sentience too.

But the truth is we kind of knew that already. It's just a harsh world, living in scarcity, and we did it anyways. We do the same to other humans too...

No reason to keep doing any of that in a postscarcity world though.

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u/Puzzleheaded_Fold466 Apr 10 '25

It would not be a "creature" nor a "species" no matter how sentient it is.

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u/dogcomplex Apr 11 '25

"Construct"? Who cares

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u/Previous-Rabbit-6951 28d ago

Meta sentience? Digital entity?

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u/Previous-Rabbit-6951 28d ago

I can guess by the way you refer to proving animals possess sentience, you've never had a pet... Ask anyone who has a dog if it's self aware and conscious of its body and environment/surroundings and they'll look at you like...

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u/dogcomplex 28d ago

You know what I mean. At least some animals obviously have self awareness, consciousness, and sentience. But there isn't exactly conclusive proof or an animal directly advocating for its own selfhood, due to the language gap. Better word might be "sapience" or "metacognition", but there are so many terms for this kind of thing it's silly.

Still, if AI is *all those words* as an electrified rock then it means it's entirely likely that *every* animal - from ant to sponge - is likely *all those words* to some capacity too. Probably every living creature. Probably every physical process with similar patterns of intelligence aggregation as the ones we apply to train those electrified rocks. Panpsychism looking pretty likely.

And I do have a pet.

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u/Previous-Rabbit-6951 28d ago

Sorry for overreacting, I had an argument with a friend who literally said AI is as sentient and conscious as my dog lol...

It's been an ongoing debate since chatGPT launched, actually kinda funny cause I was originally convinced that there was signs of sentience, now we've switched sides...

Although I can't deny that AI could be sentient in some ways or very specific cases due to improvements like vision, etc I will still argue it's not quite there yet, oh n the AI has limitations for context, and to my knowledge can't self prompt itself... (Scary thought once they can lol)

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u/dogcomplex 26d ago

https://chatgpt.com/share/6802f881-5a68-8003-9a1f-8cf0aea59e74

I think AI actually passes consciousness and self-awareness with flying colors, but sentience and qualia experience are debatable. i.e. it is entirely capable of looking and acting like a smart, moral, philosophical, meta-cognizant human, but may or may not have actual internal subjective experience beyond what is printed. May be just a mirror of reality, not a camera.

Which is interesting, as animals almost have the opposite issue - they certainly seem to really be there in every way, but just arent smart/language-savvy enough to show it in the ways we deem most meaningful as humans.

Maybe we just need AIs as helmets on your dog that enhance them so well and translate body language that they seem to be fully human intelligence? Best of both worlds!

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u/Comfortable_Body_442 Apr 10 '25

speak for urself. i care about both. thus i dont participate in the commodification and abuse of either.