One of my top 5 books. It’s also free to read online. https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

It in no way supports that LLMs can be sentient. And despite the arguments in the book that consciousness and awareness can be missing in an advanced species capable of space travel, I do not actually believe that’s true. But I enjoy the argument and speculation.

The book is highly researched and even contains a reference list of legit research articles. However it is a book of fiction and the writer took artistic liberties when needed to make an interesting story over facts.

For instance. A brain cannot contain two or more personalities because a personality is a full brain deal.

But it’s an interesting argument about cultural designations of what counts as mental illness.

Also the reason I do not think a space traveling species can exist without consciousness.

Because. Motivation.

It’s that simple.

An organism can be shaped behaviorally by the environment. That’s part of evolution. And this shaping can be unconscious.

But at a point, creative construction and ambition to exceed ones given optimal environment for a less optimal one (space) must be an intentional effort.

The scientific research and experimentation required to build complex machines requires a thinking and understanding mind. Because it requires critical thinking.

Critical thinking and creativity is a characteristic that requires a sense of self.

Even in our own history we see that it takes a specific type of person to pursue scholarly work. People who are less conformist are generally more capable of new inventions, research, and challenging acceptable beliefs of the mass. We never see the most rule following conformist being these people.

If everyone was like that, we wouldn’t survive. So diversity of mental proclivities within a species is necessary for advancement. Otherwise optimal survival would be met and stagnate.

Think of the horseshoe crab as an example.

Furthermore , I am a researcher in perception. And the field of perception is often referenced for the exploration of what is consciousness.

There are many definitions. But the sense of self is one. And a popular one.

Higher complex perception creates a sense of self.

It’s a product of the system.

The book does discuss this a bit.

I need to know my body and my actions are not the same as you. That you stand there and I stand over here.

I can perform an action and you can perform a different one that is unknown to me and not within my control.

This understanding of separateness. Of “,this is what I’m experiencing and where I am (spatially)” is something that would always emerge from higher perception. Such as that in most animals.

Maybe not in plants, fungi, bacteria, single cell microbes, etc.

But there are arguments and evidence for some of those examples as well.

As a final point. (I doubt anyone read all that).

Most people who think a probability model (current AI) is capable of consciousness usually have an incredibly simplified view of how the brain processes information.

They follow old school “behaviorist” perspectives. Or “the black box” perspective on brain functioning.

But a neuroscientist will tell you it’s not simple at all. It’s not info in, info out.

The system is changed, biologically, by the input.

The same input given twice will result in a different output the 2nd time.

And the 3rd. And how frequently the input is given or it’s temporal relation to other stimuli will also change its output.

This is because the organic brain learns. And this learning is a biological change in the actual neural structures (connections) and neurons firing potential. Every single moment the brain is physically , biologically, changing.

Computations in the brain don’t use actual math. It’s all estimates (heuristics). And these are not well understood how these computations are made. They don’t work as predicted.

There are always too many factors.

Individual motivations, including personality traits are also a factor in how the information is processed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need_for_cognition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray's_biopsychological_theory_of_personality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_problem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_coding

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebbian_theory

Literally reading it now. I hit that section last night. I put the book down immediately and started reading about the Chinese Room.