this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2026
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This is all the personal understanding of someone with an education in data science without an education in psychology or neuroscience to back it up. Asking for citations on the second paragraph you quote shows the lack of that intersection. You're used to data science and machine learning, but and for you it seems like hearing someone say that they think a database has become alive. You think they're high or insane, somehow detached from reality.
You should look in to what they termed the J-space and the resulting articles that have come out in the month since. Global workspace theory has been the leading theory of human consciousness for a while, and suddenly having not just a paper published showing something that matches that description far too closely in AI but the method for studying it and it turning out to be something that has been present in these LLM models publicly available for years was shocking.
You feel like you know all of what is going on 'under the hood', however you don't. It's something in active research by the people at the front of the issue. Models released years ago now considered relatively very small and out dated have things going on under that hood that we'd never known about or been capable of seeing. It seems like you get hung up on that "AGI" term, and feel like it's some definitive and clear evolution. It seems to be a term that boils down to meaning somewhat more capable. That deepening understanding of what's actually going on under the hood could lead to a relatively small design change that jumps past that.
For the evil plan... yes, it is pure Hollywood. It's also not something I'd put past several of the people with the funding to attempt. I wasn't explaining reasons an attempt would be successful, I was explaining a fairly simple plan that someone with massive financial resources and an even larger ego but shriveled ethical and moral frame might believe they're capable of pulling off.
How many degrees do you want me to have? That's one hell of a standard.
We train models to do specific things. We trained AI to regurgitate human like speech patterns. We made it big enough that it does so fairly well. The tech bros said "good enough" and took that technology and tried to hide behind universal function approximation theorem to say it can do anything.
But we didn't teach it to learn. To remember. To cross reference or doubt. Because it can't do any of those things. It's a math problem that solves "how can I seem human". We threw on guard rails against some hallucinations (nods to RAG models), but it's still not conscious. If you think it is, I encourage you to interact with people face to face and compare.
You've mentioned a paper, now cite it. I fail to see how global workspace theory applies. Granted I'm not an expert, but a model of how the brain works doesn't mean a bunch of linear algebra spontaneously achieved similar even if we accept it as valid.
I'm aware of J space. It's not compelling. Hell, it's published by "our scary AI escaped containment" advertising scheme Anthropic. What they found is... what models do. It's useful for examining pieces of the architecture, but it's not proving anything more than what we already knew was happening.
Under the hood is a bunch of linear algebra. What we don't know is what any given neuron or array thereof is firing on without a shit ton of research. I'll leave it to the researchers, preferably ones without an obvious bias like being paid by Anthropic, to call it when they achieve anything truly useful or interesting. Because right now they're just destroying natural resources (water because capitalists are to sociopathic and short sighted to pay more to not destroy the planet), damaging people as individuals (intensifying burnout, exacerbating mental health issues, deskilling), damaging society (propagation of disinformation/hallucinations and whatever else the tech bros are up to), built on theft for a product that's ok at best, far from necessary and a bubble that's going to fuck us all.
Even if it was as good as you say, I can't say that it's worth it.
But we can agree that the oligarchs are evil cunts. We've always got that in common.
Respond how you will, I might read it, but I'm out for my own well being. Peace.
I agree with your last two statements alone. It's not worth the time or effort. You asked me to cite the j-space paper and related conversations that it's brought up in psychology and neuroscience, but also say you're aware of it and don't find it compelling at all because that's not your frame of reference and looking at things.
It's not a productive conversation. It is a very complex topic. It involves people with degrees in fields that work quite separate and had virtually no overlap, and people who without that overlap by training and trade will look at the same information and see two completely different things. Pickering online about it is useless, it's not going to change anyone's frame of reference and it's not going to accomplish anything other than creating stress for all involved.