> Reality is experienced through electrical signals, arguably we're just learning those inputs. That's exactly what we're doing. And we're never given the "an

> Reality is experienced through electrical signals, arguably we're just learning those inputs. That's exactly what we're doing. And we're never given the "answer sheet" to figure out whether we understood the platonic, capital T Truth, or whether we just learned a spurious correlation. We just keep getting more of those inputs. Which is why it seems to me that an unsupervised sequence prediction model like GPT-3 is the only sort that could ever give rise to something akin to human consciousness. The big differentiator seems to be that with a pure text sequence model, inputs go in, but the outputs don't have any control over future inputs. It isn't structured to have anything like agency, just passive observation and prediction. But a useful "understanding" in a human sense is related to what can be done with that understanding to enact change in the environment. I don't know how you would teach it that without giving it a Reddit account and setting it loose. > But then I (as always I can only speak for myself, everyone else could be a p-zombie for all I know!) also have a qualitative experience of trees, and words, and an experience of meaning and understanding. If you look too deeply it quickly gets philosophical. I'm not so sure I have those things. I'm glad you do. That's one reason I'm never going to do ketamine.