Raw LLM Responses

The best broad test that I've yet heard of to separate the living from the non-living is this: does it do anything whether or not you switch it on? A car can run faster than a cheetah, and weighs more than a rhinoceros. It oxidizes petrol for energy and reproduces via factories. So it's probably got at least as much claim to being alive as a virus. But until a human being provides intentionality to it, until a person switches it on, it just sits there rusting in a field. It is a machine. Similarly; ChatGPT can do many spectacular things. But until you tell it to do something the entire system will just sit there spinning its wheels. And you can tell it to do one thing (i.e. compose a short essay about how capitalism is the greatest economic system yet invented) and then turn around and tell it to do the opposite (a short essay about how capitalism is the worst economic system yet invented), and it will do so uncomplainingly. It is still a machine. But even a bacterium will work to do its thing regardless of what a human wants - it will metabolize sugars and produce copies of itself without any input. It has clear wants and needs (sugar, mitosis) that it pursues regardless. It is alive. There is nothing inherently stopping a man-made thing from becoming alive in this way, but so far as I know of no machine (including AIs) has been designed to be.