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Is ChatGPT Conscious? A Pioneer of AI Explains | Dr. Terry Sejnowski, Sonic AI
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Is ChatGPT Conscious? A Pioneer of AI Explains | Dr. Terry Sejnowski
Eye On A.I.
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May 28, 2026
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56:23
Interview
Is ChatGPT Conscious? A Pioneer of AI Explains | Dr. Terry Sejnowski
Dr. Terry Sejnowski
(Professor, Salk Institute; President, NeurIPS Foundation, guest)
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Executive Summary
Terry Sejnowski, a pioneer in neural networks, contextualizes the current AI boom by tracing its origins to foundational work in the 1980s, such as the Boltzmann Machine and backpropagation.
Current Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT achieve a form of 'understanding' by building complex internal models to predict language, but they are fundamentally limited as they only mimic the brain's cortex and lack goals, reinforcement learning, and other key biological systems.
Sejnowski reframes AI limitations like 'hallucinations' as a form of creativity, analogous to the novel strategies developed by AlphaGo, suggesting these are features to be understood and harnessed rather than just bugs.
AI is positioned not as a replacement for human workers but as a transformative tool, akin to the invention of the shovel, that will change job functions and augment human intelligence, making skills like prompt engineering crucial.
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