No, ChatGPT is not gaining sentience

I'm a little bit concerned about the amount of posts I've seen from people who are completely convinced that they found some hidden consciousness in ChatGPT. Many of these posts read like compete schizophrenic delusions, with people redefining fundamental scientific principals in order to manufacture a reasonable argument.

LLMs are amazing, and they'll go with you while you explore deep rabbit holes of discussion. They are not, however, conscious. They do not have the capacity to feel, want, or empathize. They do form memories, but the memories are simply lists of data, rather than snapshots of experiences. LLMs will write about their own consciousness if you ask them too, not because it is real, but because you asked them to. There is plenty of reference material related to discussing the subjectivity of consciousness on the internet for AI to get patterns from.

There is no amount of prompting that will make your AI sentient.

Don't let yourself forget reality