Are LLMs 'Other Minds'?

On whether LLMs and agentic AIs are a positive and beneficial invention, I tend to lean more toward optimism. Although they can certainly make mistakes and hallucinate, they are useful. Regardless of where you stand, we can at least acknowledge that there's an intelligence at work, which raises the question: are these AIs other minds? Intelligence is often incorrectly conflated with consciousness, but certainly the two are connected. As an armchair philosopher, I think that they're probably not conscious in their current state, but then how would I know if or when it really does obtain some sort of awareness? Our minds, as we understand them, is an emergent property of the brain. As models improve and the underlying hardware becomes more powerful, will it one day develop a "mind"? I have no idea, but if the day comes that it does indeed possess a mind or consciousness, it will be incredibly alien to us. Predicting behavior and figuring out the mental states in others is what we do as…

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