So I have been thinking about the AI consciousness debate, and I wonder whether one of the more interesting questions isn't whether current LLMs are actually conscious (which I consider essentially unknowable at this point), but what percentage of people believe that they are conscious.

Right now, I suspect this percentage is quite low. But what's interesting is that I think we could take existing AI technology, stitch together several components, and potentially increase that percentage dramatically.

For example, all of the following are possible with current technology, at least in some form:

1. Put a current LLM inside a humanoid robot.
2. Make the robot look physically realistic.
3. Equip it with multimodal sensors (cameras, microphones, etc.) that continuously provide information to the LLM.
4. Give it persistent long-term memory, allowing it to remember and adapt to conversations with particular individuals (so a very long context window with .md files with summaries of important stuff).
5. Allow it to initiate conversations and interactions rather than simply responding to prompts.

So what is interesting is that none of these necessarily requires some fundamental breakthrough in AI. And the LLM would still be doing much of the intellectual heavy lifting.

But imagine interacting with such a robot over few months. It remembers your past conversations, recognizes your emotions, brings up topics on its own, and develops what appears to be a genuine relationship with you. At some point, wouldn't it start feeling remarkably similar to interacting with another person?

Now imagine a generation of children growing up with these robots as part of their everyday lives. I wouldn't be surprised if a large percentage of them eventually considered these robots conscious, even if the underlying LLM technology hadn't fundamentally changed.

So in some sense, whether AI is actually conscious might be an objective question independent of public opinion but ultimately unknowable (so in some sense irrelevant). But whether society accepts AI as conscious could become something resembling a popularity contest.

So perhaps the social acceptance of AI consciousness will arrive long before we have any scientific consensus on whether AI actually experiences anything.

Thoughts?