The "LLMs will attain intelligence/consciousness if we just throw enough neurons at the problem" crowd really seems to be engaging in cargo cult thinking to me.

The "LLMs will attain intelligence/consciousness if we just throw enough neurons at the problem" crowd really seems to be engaging in cargo cult thinking to me. Not that I think it would be impossible to make a conscious or intelligent mind using simulated neural networks — I don't think that there's some kind of "special mystical property" about humans like a soul or something — it's just that the structure and training of LLMs is fundamentally wrong for producing intelligence, that's all. It's an easy, simple route that gives you startling results for the first 30% but it's a dead end in the long run for achieving what they want, yet they're insisting that if they just keep pantomiming hard enough real intelligence will come.