@technocrit While I agree with the main point that "AI/LLMs has/have no agency", I must be the boring, ackchyually person who points out and remembers some nerdy things.
tl;dr: indeed, AIs and LLMs aren't intelligent... we aren't so intelligent as we think we are, either, because we hold no "exclusivity" of intelligence among biosphere (corvids, dolphins, etc) and because there's no such thing as non-deterministic "intelligence". We're just biologically compelled to think that we can think and we're the only ones to think, and this is just anthropocentric and naive from us (yeah, me included).
If you have the patience to read a long and quite verbose text, it's below. If you don't, well, no problems, just stick to my tl;dr above.
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First and foremost, everything is ruled by physics. Deep down, everything is just energy and matter (the former of which, to quote the famous Einstein equation e = mc
, is energy as well), and this inexorably includes living beings.
Bodies, flesh, brains, nerves and other biological parts, they're not so different from a computer case, CPUs/NPUs/TPUs, cables and other computer parts: to quote Sagan, it's all "made of star stuff", it's all a bunch of quarks and other elementary particles clumped together and forming subatomic particles forming atoms forming molecules forming everything we know, including our very selves...
Everything is compelled to follow the same laws of physics, everything is subjected to the same cosmic principles, everything is subjected to the same fundamental forces, everything is subjected to the same entropy, everything decays and ends (and this comment is just a reminder, a cosmic-wide Memento mori).
It's bleak, but this is the cosmic reality: cosmos is simply indifferent to all existence, and we're essentially no different than our fancy "tools", be it the wheel, the hammer, the steam engine, the Voyager twins or the modern dystopian electronic devices crafted to follow pieces of logical instructions, some of which were labelled by developers as "Markov Chains" and "Artificial Neural Networks".
Then, there's also the human non-exclusivity among the biosphere: corvids (especially Corvus moneduloides, the New Caleidonian crow) are scientifically known for their intelligence, so are dolphins, chimpanzees and many other eukaryotas. Humans love to think we're exclusive in that regard, but we're not, we're just fooling ourselves!
IMHO, every time we try to argue "there's no intelligence beyond humans", it's highly anthropocentric and quite biased/bigoted against the countless other species that currently exist on Earth (and possibly beyond this Pale Blue Dot as well). We humans often forgot how we are species ourselves (taxonomically classified as "Homo sapiens"). We tend to carry on our biological existences as if we were some kind of "deities" or "extraterrestrials" among a "primitive, wild life".
Furthermore, I can point out the myriad of philosophical points, such as the philosophical point raised by the mere mention of "senses" ("Because it’s bodiless. It has no senses, ..."): "my senses deceive me" is the starting point for Cartesian (René Descartes) doubt. While Descarte's conclusion, "Cogito ergo sum", is highly anthropocentric, it's often ignored or forgotten by those who hold anthropocentric views on intelligence, as people often ground the seemingly "exclusive" nature of human intelligence on the ability to "feel".
Many other philosophical musings deserve to be mentioned as well: lack of free will (stemming from the very fact that we were unable to choose our own births), the nature of "evil" (both the Hobbesian line regarding "human evilness" and the Epicurean paradox regarding "metaphysical evilness"), the social compliance (I must point out to documentaries from Derren Brown on this subject), the inevitability of Death, among other deep topics.
All deep principles and ideas converging, IMHO, into the same bleak reality, one where we (supposedly "soul-bearing beings") are no different from a "souless" machine, because we're both part of an emergent phenomena (Ordo ab chao, the (apparent) order out of chaos) that has been taking place for Æons (billions of years and beyond, since the dawn of time itself).
Yeah, I know how unpopular this worldview can be and how downvoted this comment will probably get. Still I don't care: someone who gazed into the abyss must remember how the abyss always gazes us, even those of us who didn't dare to gaze into the abyss yet.
I'm someone compelled by my very neurodivergent nature to remember how we humans are just another fleeting arrangement of interconnected subsystems known as "biological organism", one of which "managed" to throw stuff beyond the atmosphere (spacecrafts) while still unable to understand ourselves. We're biologically programmed, just like the other living beings, to "fear Death", even though our very cells are programmed to terminate on a regular basis (apoptosis) and we're are subjected to the inexorable chronological falling towards "cosmic chaos" (entropy, as defined, "as time passes, the degree of disorder increases irreversibly").
@QueenHawlSera Warning: long and verbose reply ahead.
While this exact scenario is highly unlikely to happen for a computer, the phenomenon behind it happens with many electronic devices (e.g. USB chargers) and it's well-known in electronics. I'm not an electric/electronic engineer (I tinkered with electronics but I'm just a DevOps), but I'll try to explain it below.
In a nutshell, electricity isn't just "inside" the wire: a field emanates around it due to the flow of electricity, the electromagnetic (EM) field. A wire conducting electricity will emanate an EM field, while the EM field can be absorbed by a wire, inducing a current through it.
This is how, for example, voltage transformers work: there are two coils (spiralling wire), labelled primary and secondary, electrically insulated from each other and wrapped around a ferromagnetic piece (the iron core). As alternate-current electricity goes back and forth through the primary coil, an EM field is emanated, which is then "chanelled" by the ferromagnetic piece to the secondary coil, where the EM field will induce another alternated current.
A "similar" thing happens inside DC (direct current) motors and loudspeakers: there's a coil around a permanent magnet, and the coil gets repelled or attracted by the magnet whenever a current passes through the coil, depending on the electric current's direction/flow (Right-Hand Rule), and this happens because the flow of electricity makes the coil to emanate an EM field, roughly speaking.
Inductors, a type of electronic component, will emanate EM fields, and they will absorb their own EM field back when current stops flowing through them, and that's the principle behind LC oscillators. Similarly, capacitors can hold plenty of charge because they're roughly "fast batteries", and that's why people were advised not to disassemble CRT televisions, because their capacitors used to hold high-voltage even after a long period of being unplugged... Similar risks and advices are found for UPSes and computer PSUs as well.
Why am I explaining this? See, powering off a device isn't something instantaneous, it takes time before all capacitors get depleted by the circuit and before all EM fields disappear. Energy can't be created nor destroyed (First law of thermodynamics), so it must be transformed, and it's often a gradual transformation, sometimes taking a few nanoseconds, sometimes taking hours to weeks (e.g. gigantic industrial apparata).
As I said initially, a PC is highly unlikely to hold enough charge to continue functioning after being cut from its main source of electricity, but it will have some charge for up to a couple of seconds due to dozens-to-hundreds of capacitors and inductors across the circuitry, as well as the EM fields emanated from its DC motors (coolers / computer fans, HDD spindle for computers with mechanical HDDs).
I'm probably digressing and ackchuallying in my explanation, but the phenomenon you described does have a fundamentum.
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As for NDEs, I can't offer much of a scientific point about it, because I hold plenty of beliefs and uncertainties when it comes for death and The Death. I mean, while I personally believe in a "metaphysical realm" through syncretic spiritual concepts (Luciferian, Gnostic, "Thanathoeism" and "Lilitheism"), I've been leaning towards a Cosmicist Pessimistic/Nihilistic Apatheism lately: not Atheism, but "Apatheism", when the existence of deities, even when believed, doesn't really matter. I've been leaning (or trying to lean) towards the rationality and scientific explanation lately, even though I still hold some beliefs deep inside.
Deep down, I personally want to think there's nothing but ultimate darkness and nothingness after the bittersweet kiss of Death's dark-red lips, I personally want to believe in non-existence and annihilation after the last synaptic activity from my biological brain, even though I sometimes feel (and fear) that my consciousness might linger for a bit (seconds? minutes? aeons?) against my own will. Because "energy can't be created nor destroyed, so it must be transformed, and it takes time", and both the synaptic activity and biochemical reactions, interactions from which sentience and consciousness emerges, are energy (electrical and chemical, respectively).
Couple this with concepts like Quantum Superposition, Quantum Entanglement, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, among other concepts, and you end up with a fairly creepy uncertainty on whether a dead brain is definitely gone or if there are some "reverberation" from its past synaptic activity across the spacetime continuum, akin to how we can still hear the echoes of Big Bang nowadays or how many "stars" we see on the night sky are just light from past celestial bodies now long gone. I'm not justifying "spirits" or "haunting ghosts", but more of expressing some personal anxiety regarding the residual energy that could be interacting enough to keep some complexity inherent to the very phenomenon we refer to as "consciousness", one that couldn't even "manifest" as a living being, one that couldn't help themselves but watch and "experience" as they're still undergoing the process of dying.
(Edited to fix and clarify some of my previous statements).