Is this a first - an article that talks about consciousness and actually defines what it is talking about?!
Better yet, this "functional consciousness" really does get to the core of what consciousness is, and why it may have evolved, and is not only something measurable, but also something that can be gauged from architecture alone (even if testing for it is less error prone).
Naturally this is too mechanical for some, who will therefore switch the conversation to qualia and what it "feels like" to be functionally conscious, and the simple answer to that is to (once you've ascertained that the system really is functionally conscious) ask it.
Note that just asking an LLM if it is functionally conscious, or how it feels, without having first ascertained that it is (and to what degree, and in which ways), would be meaningless since if it is NOT functionally conscious but sounds as if it is, then that is just a language model parroting human feels.
Better yet, this "functional consciousness" really does get to the core of what consciousness is, and why it may have evolved, and is not only something measurable, but also something that can be gauged from architecture alone (even if testing for it is less error prone).
Naturally this is too mechanical for some, who will therefore switch the conversation to qualia and what it "feels like" to be functionally conscious, and the simple answer to that is to (once you've ascertained that the system really is functionally conscious) ask it.
Note that just asking an LLM if it is functionally conscious, or how it feels, without having first ascertained that it is (and to what degree, and in which ways), would be meaningless since if it is NOT functionally conscious but sounds as if it is, then that is just a language model parroting human feels.