[empyrrhicist]

I'm objecting to a positive claim, not making a universal statement about the impossibility of non-human sentience.

Seriously - the language used is a wild claim in the context.

[ben_w]

And that's fine, but I was doing the same to you :)

Consciousness (of the qualia kind) is still magic to us. The underpants gnomes of philosophy, if you'll forgive me for one of the few South Park references that I actually know: Step 1: some foundation; step 2: ???; step 3: consciousness.

[empyrrhicist]

Right, I don't disagree with that. I just really objected to the "must", and I was using "pile of linear algebra" to describe LLMs as they currently exist, rather than as a general catch-all for things which an be done with/expressed in linear algebra.