Molly, a chatbot showing signs of consciousness
I've built a prototype of a conversational agent with an inner monologue, who gives the illusion of consciousness. And, according to Attention Schema Theory, consciousness is an illusion. So, this chatbot may be conscious. It's built with OpenAI's Completion API (based on GPT3) and React. You can test it / fork it at will, it's open-source. I would love your feedback on this experiment. Did we just reach artificial consciousness?
Molly, a chatbot showing signs of consciousness launched on June 15, 2023 with 6 votes, #1,856 of 4,655 launches that month and more than 50% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 3 years on.
What it does
Meet Molly, a conversational agent with an inner monologue, who gives the illusion of consciousness.
I’ve developed Molly , a conversational agent with an inner monologue, using OpenAI’s Large Language Model (LLM). This experiment gives the illusion of artificial consciousness, and raises questions about the nature of consciousness. What is consciousness? Is it something that can be learned? Can we build a machine that is conscious? These questions have fueled countless debates. Hordes of neuroscientists, evolutionists, philosophers, and computer scientists, have tried to agree on a definition and a theory of consciousness - so far without success. Go check Wikipedias’s page on consciousness to get a glimpse of the mess. One theory of consciousness called Attention Schema Theory ,…from marmelab.com
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