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This seems less like a philosophically significant matter of classification and more like a mere difference in function. The organism is controlled by an intelligence optimized to maneuver a physical body through an environment, and part of that optimization includes reactions to external damage.
Well, so what? We could optimize an AI to maneuver a little robot around an unknown environment indefinitely without it being destroyed, and part of that optimization would probably involve timely reaction to the perception of damage. Then you could jab it with a hot poker and watch it spin around, or what have you.
But again, so what? Optimizing an AI toward steering a robot around the environment doesn't make it any smarter or fundamentally more real, at least not in my view.
Well sure. But I think we're less likely to reach good conclusions in philosophically significant matters of classification if we are confused about differences in function.
And while such a device might not have qualia, it makes more sense (to me, anyway) to say that such an entity would have the ability to e.g. touch or see than an LLM.
In my view, the computer guidance section of the AIM-54 Phoenix long range air-to-air missile (fielded 1966) is fundamentally "more real" than the smartest GAI ever invented, but locked in an airgapped box and never interfacing with the outside world. The Phoenix made decisions that could kill you. AI's intelligence is relevant because it has impact on the real world, not because it happens to be intelligent.
But anyway, it's relevant right now because people are suggesting LLMs are conscious, or have solved the problem of consciousness. It's not conscious, or if it is, it's consciousness is a strange one with little bearing on our own, and it does not solve the question of qualia (or perception).
If you're asking if it's relevant or not if an AI is conscious when it's guiding a missile system to kill me - yeah I'd say it's mostly an intellectual curiosity at that point.
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