iNow

Different models have different strengths, weaknesses, processes, and even personalities. For those (like GPT-5) which use a router, that one addition to your query can result in a far superior output. You need to frame the query properly to receive a proper response. (though even that need is getting smaller as models keep getting better)

Begin your prompt by telling it to think deeply and show its steps, that it must be correct to hold up under scrutiny. Will change which model it routes to and how it processes the answer

Because praise is a concept that exists whether it’s voluntary or involuntary, authentic or insincere. It’s still praise when offered regardless of how or why. No Tell me, did you “choose” to stop believing in Santa Claus, or did it just sort of happen naturally when you became wise enough to see it for the nonsensical ruse it is?

The betting markets offer useful crowd sourced insights into questions like this

Depends on the model. They diverge in important ways and generalizations tend to miss relevant nuances Unsure I follow

He’s distracting from his placement in the Epstein files

Most newer versions have addressed the sycophantic response issue.

Sounds good

Precisely, which is partially why finding thresholds gets so maddeningly muddy. Except I’d pushback that here yet again humans are no different in that regard. We too are simply a more complex aggregation of automatic reactions. You and I have many times walked this path together though, in context of freewill, and my own automatic reactions lead me to conclude it has already been trodden quite enough.

Often the issue isn’t the software, but instead the configuration choices and corporate culture into which they’re deployed (exchemist touched on this with his first comment). First the CFO tells a team they have $100K to execute an implementation that should be budgeted at $600K, that they only get 8 months to do work which properly scoped should take 20, and that team further has only 3 people to manage it all when instead they should have 12. Then that team is blocked from following best practices and gets ignored when they pushback explain how the configuration decisions being made are illogical and unsustainable mistakes. They get a placating pat on the head as if they’re an overly emotional child and told to go do it anyway. The teams are told not to do what the end users wanted or requested and instead must follow orders from executives who behave in a command and control manner, who don’t much care how their own personally prioritized pet requirements decimate the overall UX and force that same understaffed, underplayed, under-appreciated group of sysAdmins to spend their thankless days smashing square pegs through round holes all to appease their many competing masters demanding conflicting workflows and outputs. The soup gets spoiled because there are too many inexperienced know it all cooks in the kitchen and too few quality ingredients due to penny pinching shortsightedness, not because the oven is a POS or the pots and pans weren’t of sufficient quality. Don’t ask me how I know.

So even plants and possibly bacteria too then, is that correct? Just at the lower end of the robustness spectrum?

House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story

Its strength seems to be in coding

As can those of humans Indeed. Hence the question I posed in my first reply to DrmDoc: Where is the threshold when drilling farther and farther down the evolutionary tree. I cannot, no. I’ve not formalized my thinking on this to that level of specificity.

I’m far more comfortable with this claim than the one asserting a cortex is prerequisite to consciousness, but I believe it too is mistaken. Jellyfish, for example, also don’t have a CNS but very much seem conscious. Slime molds are another potential example of conscious behavior in the absence of a CNS, though this one is admittedly easier to argue against despite the way they solve mazes and respond “intelligently” to multiple complex stimuli.

Thanks for confirming. According to this view, even an octopus cannot be conscious so I reject it from the start. They were mistaken IMO. People born without it may have various deficiencies of various severities, but they still can function, lead healthy lives, and are very much conscious when they do.

As always, your points are clear, consistent, and coherent and it's hard for me to challenge them given their strength. The one item which stands out to me right now, however (and it's possible I'm misinterpreting), is that you seem to be suggesting cortex is required for conscious experience (as do the authors you cited). I am not ready to accept that conclusion myself.

Believe the final comment from me on the post immediately preceding yours touched on similar theme

It’s a far more reptilian part of our brain. I was surprised too when I first learned it, but it makes intuitive sense. My understanding is sharks can smell a single drop of blood almost half kilometer away. I was with you until you said solitary. Is that maybe the case? Sure, but sense of self strikes me as one of those things where the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.

I said nothing about our brains being computers. I suggested they are prediction machines generating certain outputs

Are our organic minds really meaningfully different in this regard?

This model hasn’t yet been released, yet you claim you have tested it. An already suspect credibility only further erodes the more you post.

I believe the point is that, while thalamus is critical in organizing all incoming stimulus, olfaction involves even more archaic neural structures and doesn’t flow straight through thalamus from the start like inputs from essentially ever other source does.

Implicit in this request is a suggestion that AI has not been involved for years in medical and pharmaceutical research, which is laughably absurd. My point was self-evident, but I do like and respect you so maybe these primers are a helpful place for you to start: https://hai-production.s3.amazonaws.com/files/hai_ai_index_report_2025.pdf https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/03/ai-transforming-global-health/

Hubris is excessive pride and self-confidence. How does lacking it prevent learning? Perhaps you meant it’s opposite, humility?