[hermitShell]

I think this is an excellent point. I believe the possibility of 'computing' a conscious mind is proportional to the capability of computing a meaningful reality for it to exist in.

So you are begging the question: Is it possible to compute a textual, or pure symbolic reality that is complex enough for consciousness to arise within it?

Let's assume yes again.

Finally the theory leads us back to engineering. We can attempt to construct a mind and expose it to our reality, or we can ask "What kind of reality is practically computable? What are the computable realities?"

Perhaps herein lies the challenge of the next decade. LLM training is costly, lots of money poured out into datacenters. All with the dream of giving rise to a (hopefully friendly / obedient) super intelligent mind. But the mind is nothing without a reality to exist in. I think we will find that a meaningfully sophisticated reality is computationally out of reach, even if we knew exactly how to construct one.

[criddell]

Is anybody working on learning? My layman's understanding of AI in the pre-transformers world was centered on learning and the ability to take in new information, put it in context with what I already know, and generate new insights and understanding.

Could there be a future where the AI machine is in a robot that I can have in my home and show it how to pull weeds in my garden, vacuum my floor, wash my dishes, and all the other things I could teach a toddler in an afternoon?

[scotty79]

You can show to LLM how you expect your problem to be solved and it will adhere to the example you demonstrated within the context. If it can be done with textual AI I don't see why it shouldn't be possible for emodied ones.

[yannyu]

This is where the robotics industry wants to go. Generalist robots that have an intelligence capable of learning through observation without retraining (in the ML sense). Whether and when we'll get there is another question entirely.