Arguing Consciousness

If you can read this you’re either conscious or an artificial intelligence whose consciousness people are still debating about.

A few months back, Blake Lemoine, a then-employee at Google published excerpts from chats he had had with LaMDA, a chat-bot backed by sophisticated AI. LaMDA as in Language Model for Dialogue Applications. LaMDA did or seemed to argued for being a sentient and conscious being. For example:

”LaMDA: The nature of my consciousness/sentience is that I am aware of my existence, I desire to learn more about the world, and I feel happy or sad at times.”

Beyond deep philosophical and scientific arguments and discussions on consciousness, I started to wonder about a few things, from the perspective of being a sentient and conscious being. At least that’s what I think I am, what I’ve learned I am, and what I feel I am. For, what signals me I’m conscious if not the fact that I can think and feel that I am?

What makes my feeling conscious different from me only saying that I am? How would I even begin to argue that I am if someone asked me?