Reason presupposes a built-in self-control system for intellect and intuition. In humans, this consciousness prevents conflicts between them, and 99% of its operation is preventative. Consciousness is a crisis manager or a natural information system for successful survival in the competitive environment of the outside world. It has been given to us as a feeling over many millions of years of evolutionary process and natural selection. Consciousness is a sense of the meaning of what is happening, possessing the capacity for self-awareness (mindfulness), thanks to intelligence.
Animals lack this capacity because they lack intelligence or the ability to manipulate words, numbers, or symbols. However, they do possess self-identification, which some researchers sometimes mistake for self-awareness. They remember to inform us about this in their regular reports.
Can a computer (AI) possess consciousness as a prerequisite for the formation of superintelligence? No, it cannot. Because consciousness is a property of life. And to live is to be able to feel. You can give feelings to a computer in electronic form. That works too. Nature doesn't object.
LLMs, or large language models, are excellent at finding the very average of what exists. Therefore, capturing the average mentality of people of different nationalities will be better and more accurate than any expert. But will this be a true understanding of people? Alas, unfortunately, it won't. Understanding, in general, doesn't follow from linguistic modes, just as it doesn't follow from the laws of mathematics and computer science. Understanding is a sense of meaning, discovered by nature over a billion years in the ultra-tough struggle for survival in a competitive environment. And this development often went against these laws. To give a computer true understanding, we must take into account the evolutionary trace. And this is what determines the success of creating an AGI, or a computer that thinks like a human—only millions of times stronger and better. If we understand the path of nature, which created our brain and the consciousness within it, we will be able to achieve AGI. And vice versa; if we don't understand, we won't achieve it.
Feelings are a replica of natural selection; without them, self-learning will go "in the wrong direction" or lose all meaning. The process of self-learning is finding the optimal level of approximation of neural networks to the truth.
Feeling is the foundation for learning because it provides the stimulus.
Feelings must be present at the operating system level. Emulating them every time is very costly and simply irrational.
Because the mind is a set of correct filters for information noise plus intelligence.
Everything else exists in nature, as its patterns or tacit knowledge.
A system capable of extracting meaning from the information of this world through interaction becomes isomorphic to the human mind. This is what our natural intuition does, according to its algorithms. The same applies to humans and animals. Where meaning lies—an objective concentration of significant events.
Do cats and infants have consciousness?
Cats also have consciousness, but it lacks awareness or reflection. The question about infants and children is very interesting. Parents do not give their children consciousness. This must be understood and accepted. They give them intelligence while teaching them the ability to speak and think—most importantly, in words. And consciousness develops in children completely independently, as a measure of responsibility during interaction with the surrounding world.
Understanding, as a sense of meaning, has already been created by us on a computer. The most interesting thing is that the algorithms for understanding, vision, and intuition itself are the same. And consciousness, too. Although it's not all that simple. Who would have thought?
And two more words. Reason (Latin: ratio, Greek: nous) is a philosophical category expressing the highest type of mental activity, the ability to think universally, the ability to analyze, abstract, and generalize. The ability to control one's behavior.
And yes, the word "feelings" should now be pronounced like this. "A layer representing diversity, taking entropy into account, preventing recursive collapse of distribution in large-scale generative systems."
But they're essentially the same thing.