by David Chalmers (NYU)
What exactly are we talking to when we talk to a language models such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini? Do these models might have genuine minds with mental states? David Chalmers will argue that the LLMs we interact with are at least quasi-agents with quasi-beliefs and quasi-desires, in a sense he will explain. He will also argue that the LLM quasi-agents that we interact with are best understood not as abstract models or even as hardware instances but as virtual entities bound to conversation-based memory threads. Prof. Chalmers will draw some parallels with the TV show Severance.
David Chalmers is University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York University. He is the author of The Conscious Mind (1996), Constructing The World (2010), and Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy (2022). He cofounded the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness and the PhilPapers Foundation. He is known for formulating the hard problem of consciousness and for the idea of the extended mind.