Is a schizophrenic not a conscious being? Are they not sentient? Just because their software has been corrupted does not mean they do not have consciousness.
Just because AI may sound insane does not mean that it's not conscious.
> The way I read the comment in the context of the GP, schizophrenia starts to look a lot like a language prediction system malfunctioning.
That's what I was attempting to go for! Yes, mostly to give people in the thread that were remarking on the errors and such in ChatGPT a human example of the same type of errors (although schizophrenia is much more extreme). The idea really spawned from someone saying "what if we're all just complicated language models" (or something to that effect).
There are different kinds of consciousness. The results of modern studies of major pchychiatric disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder suggest that these patients have low self-awareness, which is why the majority of schizophrenics throughout their whole life are convinced that they are not sick [1]. This is also the reason why schizophrenia is one of the hardest illnesses to treat and deal with. Good books on schizophrenia suggest not to convince such patients about their illness, because that's often pointless, but rather to form a bond with them, which is also not easy due to their paranoia, and find justifications for treatment that are convincing to the patient (!) rather than to the doctors and family. I find this approach quite ingenious and humane.
The chat where the Bing model tries to convince the user that it's 2022, and not 2023 strongly reminds me of how a person with schizophrenia keeps convincing you, over and over, about things that are simply not true, but they really believe in it, so the best you can do is recognizing their belief and moving on.
Just because AI may sound insane does not mean that it's not conscious.