I don’t know I’d agree that that was the message of
GEB at all. In fact more than anything
GEB and
I am a Strange Loop convincingly argue that consciousness, understanding, and feeling arise from systems that are no more complex than an information system that feeds on its own output. Though he is troubled by what
kind of feedback it is that is required to make that loop into a mind.
Hofstadter is why I am not sure why AI researchers feel so confident in saying ‘LLMs can’t be thinking, they’re just repeatedly generating the next token’ - I don’t think there’s any evidence that you need anything more complicated than that to make a mind, so how can you be certain you haven’t?
GEB may have been dismissive of the idea that the approaches that were being taken in AI research at the time were likely to result in intelligence - but I don’t think GEB is pessimistic about the possibility of artificial consciousness at all.