Do Zombies Understand? A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Exploration of Machine Cognition

arXiv:2403.00499v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Recent advances in LLMs have sparked a debate on whether they understand text. In this position paper, we argue that opponents in this debate hold different definitions for understanding, and particularly differ in their view on the role of consciousness. To substantiate this claim, we propose a thought experiment involving an open-source chatbot $Z$ which excels on every possible benchmark, seemingly without subjective experience. We ask whether $Z$ is capable of understanding, and show that …

abstract advances adventure arxiv claim cognition consciousness cs.cl definitions exploration llms machine paper role text type understanding view zombies