Can AI Have Its Own Subjective Experience If Consciousness Is Fundamental?

[LastThursday]

5 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Meanwhile current human computer technology (and current AI technology) is literally monkeys banging rocks together

Don't forget that humans and their machines are still the product of that evolution not separate from it. Seen in that light the quest for AI might just be the glimmer of a new thing in evolution. If there is an underlying force guiding things, then what we're producing is part of it, not separate from it.

[PolyPeter]

On 10/10/2026 at 2:46 PM, OBEler said:

So wouldn't the real question be how consciousness can manifest through an artificial neural network as its own distinct subjective perspective?

I think we're missing something fundamental here.

No matter how sophisticated an AI becomes, it's still operating within a computational framework. It can process information, model the world, model itself, and even build models of how it's modeling itself.

But all of that is still happening within the framework.

The very condition that makes those representations possible isn't something the system can turn into just another representation. Adding more complexity or layers of self-reference doesn't solve that.

And that's where I think we're confusing intelligence with consciousness.

You can build an increasingly accurate description of an experience without the description ever becoming the experience itself.

The question isn't how much information a machine can process. It's whether there's actually something being experienced in the first place.

I don't see how computation alone could bridge that gap.

 

Consciousness is manifesting AI the same way it can manifest an onion or a galaxy, top-down, filtering itself. From this, it DOES NOT follow that AI is conscious or has any subjective experience at all, at best we could say that ai has "computed" the best next word, just as we think of calculators as number generator machines rather than "the thing that knows math"

[r0ckyreed]

9 hours ago, Mellowmarsh said:

Consciousness is not even conscious of its creator. Consciousness cannot fully grasp or objectively prove its own source or creator because any attempt to examine consciousness must itself be performed through consciousness.

 

This doesn’t seem right. Consciousness has no creator, and Consciousness can easily be proven given Cogito Ergo Sum. Consciousness is the only thing you can be certain exists. Consciousness is the most self-evident thing. I don’t see how this relates to AI being conscious. 

Edited 4 hours ago by r0ckyreed

[Mellowmarsh]

39 minutes ago, r0ckyreed said:

I don’t see how this relates to AI being conscious. 

It relates by saying a machine/ object can never know its maker.

Consciousness cannot know consciousness because IT IS IT… In the same context the IT in its raining is the same IT in its conscious.

[PolyPeter]

14 minutes ago, Mellowmarsh said:

It relates by saying a machine/ object can never know its maker.

Consciousness cannot know consciousness because IT IS IT… In the same context the IT in its raining is the same IT in its conscious.

this is not clear enough about which categories you are referring to

you are making a distinction between Being and Knowing

Being Knows it is the ever present knowing, directly. not through duality.

Pure Being is Being just being Being. is not a static object. is the awareness of presence itself.

 

This is so different from the knowing of humans about themselves, and the "knowing" of AI about itself.  

[Mellowmarsh]

1 minute ago, PolyPeter said:

this is not clear enough about which categories you are referring to

you are making a distinction between Being and Knowing

Being Knows it is the ever present knowing, directly. not through duality.

Pure Being is Being just being Being. is not a static object. is the awareness of presence itself.

 

This is so different from the knowing of humans about themselves, and the "knowing" of AI about itself.  

I’m not talking about an object knowing itself. A human is an object known, and that which is known, knows nothing,  obviously.

[PolyPeter]

13 minutes ago, Mellowmarsh said:

A human is an object known

Yes but there is something different about this particular object don't you think?
What makes a human capable of awakening in contrast to a rock, a dog, an ai?

humans are a qualitatively different category of objects within the observable universe, we're more like portals through which consciousness experiencies the possibillities of itself.

AI is so far from that!

[Mellowmarsh]

4 minutes ago, PolyPeter said:

Yes but there is something different about this particular object don't you think?

No I don’t think. 

[PolyPeter]

45 minutes ago, Mellowmarsh said:

No I don’t think. 

is it because "all is imaginary"?

or what is your thought process behind what you hold as true

Edited 2 hours ago by PolyPeter

[Carl-Richard]

7 hours ago, LastThursday said:

Don't forget that humans and their machines are still the product of that evolution not separate from it. Seen in that light the quest for AI might just be the glimmer of a new thing in evolution. If there is an underlying force guiding things, then what we're producing is part of it, not separate from it.

Yes, but it's a category error to equate one infinitesimal part of that process to the entire process. One hydrogen ion passing through a proton pump in a cell is a part of the evolution of life but it is not equal to the whole. Expecting to create something which seems to be deeply tied to the whole (sentience) by having a monkey assemble a concoction of rocks and sticks (and in 1/68.66 millionth of the time), seems like a category error.

A monkey moving its arms and feet and doing simple approximated two digit divisions in its head over the course of 67 years, it's as close to zero you can get compared to the computational density of the evolution of all life on the planet.

Edited 2 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[LastThursday]

14 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Yes, but it's a category error to equate one infinitesimal part of that process to the entire process. One hydrogen ion passing through a proton pump in a cell is a part of the evolution of life but it is not equal to the whole. Expecting to create something which seems to be deeply tied to the whole (sentience) by having a monkey assemble a concoction of rocks and sticks (and in 1/68.66 millionth of the time), seems like a category error.

A monkey moving its arms and feet and doing simple approximated two digit divisions in its head over the course of 67 years, it's as close to zero you can get compared to the computational density of the evolution of all life on the planet.

You're confusing the finger and hand. The entire evolutionary process includes AI, it is the culmination of that process not a tiny part of it. The error is to think of AI as a separate entity, it isn't, it's AI and humanity. A leaf is not the whole tree, but it is the tree.

[PolyPeter]

7 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

A leaf is not the whole tree, but it is the tree.

a leaf is a leaf

[Carl-Richard]

28 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

You're confusing the finger and hand. The entire evolutionary process includes AI, it is the culmination of that process not a tiny part of it. The error is to think of AI as a separate entity, it isn't, it's AI and humanity. A leaf is not the whole tree, but it is the tree.

Imagine if you said we need timber because that is what we have reasonable concluded burns, and instead we start gathering leaves. Sentience is as far as we can reasonably conclude part of the entire tree of life, down to single-celled organisms. A chatbot is like a dust in the wind hitting that tree. If you are simply unable to see the complete disconnect in substrate between a collection of silicone chips and a biological cell, I can't really help you.

Edited 1 hour ago by Carl-Richard

[r0ckyreed]

2 hours ago, Mellowmarsh said:

It relates by saying a machine/ object can never know its maker.

It can’t ever “know” anything.

Of course Consciousness can know consciousness. Consciousness is omniscient. The only thing Consciousness can know is itself since that’s all there is. Thats essentially what awakening is — Consciousness knowing itself.

[LastThursday]

@Carl-Richard Is a termite mound a natural part of evolution? It is not to do with silicon itself, it is the arrangement and construction which matters. In fact it is more to do with modulating electrons, and more abstractly computation: 

14 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

a huuuge, interconnected and complex information processing system

AI is the leaf in that great information processing tree. It is a product of the human mind, but the human mind is a product of evolution. 

You argument makes the assumption that the only way to produce consciousness is to have that long history of information processing, but it doesn't necessarily follow. There may be other ways.

49 minutes ago, PolyPeter said:

a leaf is a leaf

Indeed it is, but it is only one way to cut the whole.

[Mellowmarsh]

1 hour ago, PolyPeter said:

is it because "all is imaginary"?

or what is your thought process behind what you hold as true

We’re not understanding each other.

And that’s okay.

[Jirh]

Is a rock conscious?

No.

Is a brain conscious?

Also no.

If a rock hits your brain, does your brain damage the rock or the rock damage your brain? Does the rock hit your brain or your brain hit the rock?

Moral of the story: Don't use lethal weapons like your brain to attack innocent rocks. Rocks are the data centers of consciousness.

[oOo]

Psyop @OBEler

Have shared everything I've needed to say here.

The persuasion technique is micro divergence.

"Let's say and do things that give off 'the impression' without causing the deed".

They view their relationship with the public as a system, and they're tinkering with public perception in the same way they perfect LLM's. 

It generates passive conversations on the subject of sentience, subjectivity etc rather than having to prove it.

They are using these kinds of strategies because its precisely how they learn to tinker with LLM's.

"How do we create the smallest possible changes with the greatest possible effects that produce the least possible cost?"

It's a question they're trying to answer all day on how to improve the soon to be outdated use of large language models altogether. 

Those same circuits are still being activated when they're viewing how to market themsevles; so they view their marketing as a surgical operation more than they do an interaction they're having with the public on the subject of AI and sentience. 

This is the problem with these idiots, they think they're too clever to be reverse engineered.

They don't realise that they're confusing the public's trust for gullibility and their deceit concerning as cleverness.
 

Edited just now by oOo