With the rise of LLMs, I think we’re witnessing something fascinating. For decades, many people implicitly assumed that if you built something intelligent enough, consciousness would eventually emerge. But now we have systems capable of reasoning, writing code, solving problems, debating philosophy, and even appearing empathetic—yet there is still no compelling evidence that they have any subjective experience. This makes me wonder if we’ve been mixing up two fundamentally different concepts: Intelligence = the ability to process information, reason, learn patterns, and solve problems. Consciousness = the existence of an inner point of view. The fact that there is “something it is like” to be you. Maybe intelligence is an emergent property of computation. But what if consciousness isn’t? If consciousness were only an emergent property of sufficiently complex information processing, where do we draw the line? A biological brain? An artificial neural network? The Internet? A future planetary-scale AI? A civilization? At what point does subjective experience suddenly appear? LLMs seem to demonstrate that intelligence can emerge from mathematics alone. Yet they don’t appear to possess an inner life. So here’s a speculative thought: What if the brain doesn’t generate consciousness, but instead provides the specific physical organization required for consciousness to interact with the physical world? In that picture, intelligence could be computational, while consciousness would be something more fundamental that requires a very particular kind of interface. I’m not claiming this is true—only that current AI seems to separate intelligence from consciousness more clearly than ever before. Curious what others think. Has AI strengthened the case for consciousness as an emergent property… or has it exposed a gap in that explanation? submitted by /u/GateSpiritual5717
Originally posted by u/GateSpiritual5717 on r/ArtificialInteligence