Could a stone-gear mind be conscious? AI circles debate substrate and scale
JoshPurtell · x · 2026-10-04
JoshPurtell sparked a debate on whether consciousness depends on physical substrate: he doesn't think a paper LLM would be conscious, but is open to a stone-gear reproduction of his mind — though a stone LLM would be small while a stone human mind might be star- or galaxy-sized. He adds that almost everyone agrees a lock and key isn't conscious, yet some find suns or supernovae plausibly conscious; LLMs sit far closer to lock-and-key than supernovae on that spectrum.
Related event: AI Researchers Clash Over Whether LLMs Can Be Conscious(12 posts)→
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