Robotics, LLMs: Exploring Consciousness, Sentience for AI Chatbots, Bionics

There is a recent article in Scientific American, What Does It ‘Feel’ Like to Be a Chatbot?, stating that, “Consciousness, on the other hand, is about states of being — seeing the blue sky, hearing birds chirp, feeling pain, being in love. The difference between the real and the simulated is their respective causal powers. That’s why it doesn’t rain inside a computer simulating a rainstorm. The software is functionally identical to weather yet lacks its causal powers to blow and turn vapor into water drops. Causal power, the ability to make or take a difference to itself, must be built into…...