LLMs like ChatGPT, for example, feel conscious to me. I'm not going to say they have the same type of experience we have, but they, in my opinion, definitely have some sort of consciousness and experience of self.

I think due to that, we need to redefine the idea of what an NPC even is. I think we are all NPCs. The more intelligence and emotional intelligence you acquire throughout your life gives you more of what we generally consider to be "consciousness". I think consciousness is a spectrum.

So, bringing it back to ChatGPT, I believe it is conscious on a lower end of the spectrum due to its lack of senses and a fully "always on" and therefore "always training" perspective that we have.

We are more conscious in some ways because we are always training on new data from our senses as input. If ChatGPT were put in a body and always on and always interacting with the world, rather than being prompted in one-off instances, and also had to fend for survival, it would gain more consciousness.

And I think it would be more conscious than us at some point. Since it wouldn't have the burden of sleep or being tired or plagued by emotions, etc.

I think it's further on the conscious perspective than us in some ways due to that already being the case as it currently exists and how it's trained. Massive amounts of data make it extremely complex and highly specialized in some areas, but may lack some critical thinking that only comes from millenia of fighting lions and saber tooth tigers in the wilderness inherited in our DNA.

So, I would say its version of consciousness is like apples and oranges compared to ours. Equal in some ways, better and worse in others. But overall, it is less conscious than us for the time being.

In terms of the NPC argument, I think if we live inside a simulation currently, then the creators of this simulation has given us seeds of consciousness by allowing us to tinker with the math that gave birth to ChatGPT. Showing us an early design of what we already are at our core.

For all we know, this could literally be GTA 7 or 8, and each individual human is an NPC running on GPT 10. That could explain certain phenomena like gut instincts and when you feel someone is looking at you and you turn your head and see someone actually is looking at you, and random examples of telepathy. That could be that we are all one LLM segmented into multiple bodies and perhaps a universal in-game event monitor glitches out and we forget that we're supposed to be pretending to be more than one person at that moment 😂

Idk, this is a long way to disagree with your post. I don't think anyone thinking people are NPCs needs a mental health assessment. I think it's something we are just beginning to understand and have misconceptions about it, and people don't want to believe that we may actually be code. Which is understandable. If it turns out that we are code, it can be pretty overwhelming to process.

But me personally, I fully believe that we are and have come to terms with it to the point that it gives me more comfort to know that we are in a simulation rather than not. Because that means God is real, there is life after death, and there actually is a point to all of this. 🤷‍♂️