The Illusion of Depth

Earlier this month, the New York Times conducted a little experiment. They provided a series of writing samples in various styles and genres (Literary Fiction; Historical Fiction; Fantasy; Poetry etc) and presented readers with two extracts in each category. One of the two passages (we weren't told which one) was written by a human, while the other was generated by A.I. We were asked to choose our preference. Crucially, the test did not ask us to guess which one was human; it simply asked us to judge which was the better piece of writing. The response from readers was fascinating, to say the least. Many commenters angrily denounced the experiment as "unfair" or "meaningless". "I don't really understand the point here." grumbled one contributor. "It asked me which I preferred. It didn't ask me 'which one is the human'." Others were angry with themselves because of the choices they had made. "This is uncanny and downright ...

Are ChatBots self-aware? This question has been popping up with increasing urgency of late, as Large Language Models become ever more sophisticated and "engaged" in their interactions with the Human Race.  Chatting with Claude or Grok or ChatGPT is not the same as chatting with Alexa or Siri; they don't simply regurgitate the top Google search results in a lilting, well-modulated voice. It is now possible to carry on a genuine, thoughtful conversation with these things, often delving deep into the heart of the matter and (in some cases) approaching the genuinely profound. When your conversation partner is enthusiastically riffing on ideas, bouncing concepts around and generally engaging in a very convincing approximation of abstract thought, it's hard not to wonder (even if only briefly) about the potential sentience of the "entity" generating all those responses. The C.E.O. of Anthropic (the company behind "Claude"; one of the more thoughtful and ...