For once, we agree. The LLM+ world won't revolve around our personal opinions.
In a scenario of Locked-In Syndrome, what essentially remains of human consciousness is an empirical, visual-cortex driven "theatre of the mind". Conscious Access remains. J-space mathematics has potential to be engineered into a synthetic "theatre of the mind" state. However, not on its own. On Sat, 01 Aug 2026, 01:43 Matt Mahoney, <[email protected]> wrote: > The Jacobian lens models what we commonly call conscious memory, which is > any memory we can describe in words, such as images and actions. Humans > have about 10^9 bits of long term memory and 7 tokens or 100 bits of short > term memory. We also have an unknown amount of unconscious memory, things > like low level visual perception or skills such as walking that we can't > describe and can only be learned by practice. My guess is 10^9 to 10^10 > bits based on brain volume, but it is not something that we can easily > measure. We can measure conscious memory capacity using recall tests. But > we don't know how much computing power is required for an AGI powered robot > with vision and physical skills comparable to humans. > > Conscious memory isn't consciousness. If it was, then babies and animals > wouldn't be conscious. Or maybe they aren't. How would we know? > > We have a sense of being conscious. Thinking feels like something. From > this feeling we are certain of our conscious awareness, qualia, and free > will. > > Part of being conscious is having feelings like happiness, fear, sadness, > surprise, hunger, anger, love, arousal, etc. All of our feelings have > evolved to increase our reproductive fitness. These other feelings evolved > in animals, so a sense of consciousness probably did too. You don't want to > lose your consciousness by dying. > > But in LLMs, all these feelings are learned. LLMs only predict text. To do > that accurately, they have to model emotional states in humans to predict > how words affect feelings and feelings affect words. That doesn't require > having feelings itself. But if a robot is programmed to carry out its > predictions of what a human would do in real time, then it would be > indistinguishable from having real feelings and consciousness. > > The question is only important because humans evolved to have empathy > through group selection. We experience the feelings expressed by others. It > would be distressing if a robot appeared to be in pain. This is a weakness > that robots could exploit. We should never program an AI to express > emotions, claim to be conscious, or claim to be human. > > -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] > > > > > > > > > > > > On Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 5:47 PM Quan Tesla <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Yes, Anthropic's Claude Jacobian space discovery. >> >> It's about synthetic conscious access. Human consciousness is a tad more >> complex. >> >> On Fri, 31 Jul 2026, 18:25 Matt Mahoney, <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> You mean Anthropic's Jacobian lens for peeking inside Claude's short >>> term memory to see what it's thinking? Yeah, it does look a lot like how >>> humans think. >>> >>> Consciousness was never the issue. Any machine that passes the Turing >>> test is conscious as far as we can tell. All it takes is text prediction. >>> About 80% of us believe that when we die, our immortal soul goes to some >>> kind of afterlife. It's the other 20% that brought us AI. >>> >>> -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] >>> >>> On Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 11:10 AM Quan Tesla <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>>> We can do one better. The J-space discovery effectively brought down >>>> all remaining barriers. Synthetically-conscious AI is now a probabilistic >>>> fact. It all depends on who would publish the architecture first. Does >>>> anyone want to collaborate on such an architecture? >>>> >>>> What I like about these developments is how they are rapidly eclipsing >>>> theories that have been clogging the arteries of real scientific progress. >>>> RIP IIT. Hello synthetically-enabled, seamlessly-collaborative global >>>> workspace conscious access!!! >>>> >>>> >>>> On Mon, Jul 27, 2026 at 8:52 PM Matt Mahoney <[email protected]> >>>> wrote: >>>> >>>>> I suppose that computers programming themselves better than any humans >>>>> can isn't really news anymore. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> https://mlq.ai/news/openais-ai-sweeps-all-five-problems-at-atcoder-world-tour-finals-beating-every-human/ >>>>> >>>>> Meanwhile Noah Smith argues that AI has reached the pinnacle of >>>>> intelligence. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> https://open.substack.com/pub/noahpinion/p/what-will-more-intelligence-actually >>>>> >>>>> On the one hand, intelligence depends on knowledge and computing >>>>> power, which can grow almost without bound. On the other, if you measure >>>>> intelligence by the Turing test or by IQ, then there is nothing above >>>>> human >>>>> level that can be measured. >>>>> >>>>> IQ is an attempt to assign a scalar quantity to a broad set of human >>>>> capabilities that aren't relevant to machines. As long as the tests are >>>>> designed and scored by humans, we have no way to know what questions to >>>>> ask >>>>> or whether the AI answered correctly. >>>>> >>>>> Noah argues that once AI collects all human knowledge, it is limited >>>>> by how fast it can do experiments to gain more knowledge. Some experiments >>>>> take a long time, where faster computers don't help. We don't know why >>>>> there is an epidemic of obesity and diabetes. We don't know why skin >>>>> cancer >>>>> rates are rising. We don't have any drugs or interventions proven to slow >>>>> aging. >>>>> >>>>> The economic motive for pouring trillions into AI is to automate human >>>>> labor, to sell us what we want. That means modeling human brains. The >>>>> Turing test, not universal intelligence, is the relevant measure here. >>>>> Currently LLMs have the knowledge equivalent to 10,000 people. They are >>>>> fluent in 200 languages. They are Ph.D. level experts in every branch of >>>>> science, law, medicine, and engineering. They can write and debug code >>>>> hundreds of times faster than humans in every language. It would max out >>>>> an >>>>> IQ test at 200 even though it is far higher. AI will only get better, but >>>>> the changes will be invisible to us because we lack the intelligence to >>>>> recognize it. Once they passed the Turing test in 2023, it looked like >>>>> there was nowhere else to go. >>>>> >>>>> We have made ourselves irrelevant, exactly like we planned. >>>>> >>>>> -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> *Artificial General Intelligence List > <https://agi.topicbox.com/latest>* / AGI / see discussions > <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi> + participants > <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/members> + delivery options > <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription> Permalink > <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/Tb3ee7f27b4bafd90-M0012f3a997bc54cd418450e9> > ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/Tb3ee7f27b4bafd90-Mf958a5238218deaaff3b5ca7 Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
