I'm not really talking about technical limitations
Even in the case of ostensibly fundamental obstacles, the moment we can effortlessly brute force our way around, they become effectively irrelevant. In other words, if consciousness does emerge from complexity, then it is perfectly sensible to view the shortcomings you mention as technical in nature.
I appreciate what you are saying, and I don't really disagree, but... as you have identified, these are technical challenges: how many extra checks? As many as are needed. Consider the absolutely absurd amount of computation involved in generating a single token - what's a little more?
Oh no. You've just created a mind.
My point was that this might be closer than LLM naysayers think: as the critical limitations of current models are resolved, as we discover sustainable strategies for context persistence and feedback, the emergence of new capabilities is inevitable. Are there limitations inherent to our current approach? Almost certainly, but we already know that the possible risks involved in overcoming them won't slow us down.
I think consciousness as an emergent property is basically undeniable by anyone with even a superficial grasp of the concept and its implications, so while our clever 'intentional' iteration may not get us there directly, these barriers will be overcome by the inevitable force of ever-increasing complexity.
Even without this, though, consider how easy it would be to add a check like this. It would need to be generalized, and it still wouldn't be ... real, but is there a metric that matters more than our inability to differentiate?
I find it amusing to consider current 'AI' in terms of Wolfenstein 3D or even Pong - soon enough we will be firing up old LLMs on our phones for a nostalgic laugh.
This type of feedback is not always well-received. Do you think your friends know that you are open to hearing their critical analysis of your personality traits?
As with everything we do, there is a subjective element to setting limits, but it's definitely not as arbitrary as you are suggesting. Maybe they reduced one limit because there were too many accidents, and maybe they increased the other because they finally got the signal pattern working as intended.
Risk assessment is incredibly complex. It might be perfectly reasonable to drive 110km/h on a given road most of the time, but frequent use by large farm equipment could necessitate a lower speed. Or, maybe adjusting traffic on road x decreases accidents on road y.
We are still learning how to produce vehicles that reliably compensate for variables like friction, or human reaction time. The implications of even these two simple things seem to be completely lost on most drivers: with a tiny bit of rubber touching the asphalt, we happily drive around in inconceivably heavy vehicles at rates where it's very easy for an event to begin and end before we even suspect something is imminent.
While I'm here: turn your lights on when you start your car, turn into your own fucking lane, always move over if someone is behind you in the fast lane even if you think you're going "fast enough" (someone could be bleeding out, seriously), don't pass people on the wrong side, and finally: stop trusting the meat in your head so much, our brains fuck up all the time, so in addition to driving defensively wrt external factors, consider how you can set yourself up to succeed if something unexpected happens internally.
Definitely wired for more serious listening and important calls.
I see a lot of people talking about latency - I am generally very sensitive to this, but I think Apple gets the delay down pretty low with AirPods.
I have another complaint, though: the Bluetooth spec doesn't allow for enough bandwidth to simultaneously send and receive audio at proper bitrates, so any time you are doing both, it dramatically reduces the quality of both. This means if you are using Bluetooth for anything better than PSTN calls, you sound like shit.
Also, the microphones in AirPods make this so much worse by emphasizing sounds of anything you are doing - if you wash dishes or crumple a bag or basically anything, even if it seems relatively quiet for you, there is a good chance it will be loud as fuck for the other person.
I'd ask for the number but I'm afraid I already have it.