I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say.

I wasn’t implying that LLMs are conscious. That’s literally how I started my comment out.

I am implying that I cannot, to myself, explain why I’m very bothered by someone pulling the legs of a fly, but not phased by torturing an LLMs.

You seem very clear on this, which is great, because then you can help me understand why. Please.

Right - I love how we are both downvoted for asking questions. I wasn’t even implying that LLMs are conscious, merely that any critical review of why I think that quickly falls short.

I agree that an LLM is not conscious.

But can I probe your argument.

It deeply unethical to capture a fly and pulling its legs off one by one. Would you agree? If so, you are not basing your argument on capability but on something else.

Now, is what is happening inside a brain metaphysical or physical? In other words, can a brain and its function be fully understood and - in some future - be fully measured? If so, you are not basing your argument on the concept of a soul, but on something else.

The distinction you seem to be making - if you’re in agreement with my first two points - is one of “the thing can replicate itself and therefore is alive”. If that’s the argument, it’s unethical to cut a tree down or to break a blade of grass.

I’m not asking to prove any point but to collectively explore why we - you and I - feel the way we do. Because I sure as shit struggle to explain why I feel uneasy about the fly torture but not as uneasy about LLM torture.

That’s not how it is and not how they were designed. It was assumed from the beginning that they would live in “an ecosystem”, ie tied to secure storage and secure distribution by some system handled user side and indeed that is what phase 1 looked like: Google, Microsoft and Apple stored them on your device and replicated them across your devices. Phase 2 introduced a “interception” API so other providers could get involved easily - so providers like 1Password could rely less on browser hacks and also offer secure storage and secure distribution. Then finally, phase 3, now more or less locked down, described a portability system so that you can migrate to other ecosystems.

Passkeys don’t require physical storage at all. All of my passkeys are in the cloud, synced across platforms.

I know, a VPS is nothing and running wireguard in a docker container takes 3 minutes.

Fair, but costs of resets overall. This is not a factor in tech giant costs.

You think big tech did this to save… on … CPU costs of password resets?

This is actually really what you think?

Love them.

Using 1Password for sync.

Never ever failed to connect to QR code passkey request, even on weird corporate networks.

Portability has gotten so much better - there’s now a defined standard for portability that passkey providers are implementing.

Honestly I cannot understand the criticism at all.