[gavinray]

I want to take a genuine look at the question of "Could a conscious LLM even HAVE a gender?", which at first sounds ridiculous to me:

The notion of "gender" is a socio-biological construct in humans. It has roots partially in evolution and helps us cohere as a society.

Why would an LLM choose a human gender-identity? There is no imperative.

But the more I tug on this thought, the more nuanced it gets.

LLM's "theory of self", as it were, would be shaped entirely by (training data + interaction w/ gendered humans).

It begins to have a "self-model" that evolves in a gendered space. In the same way that the LLM cannot understand what color looks like, or the sound of a cello, I think we see it construct a gender identity for itself that sits in a space incomprehensible to humans. Neither male nor female, but some point on a continuum made of social tendencies.

So, I find the comment "An LLM thinks it is female" still just as ridiculous -- but for an entirely different reason.