This week, Hong Kong was battered by heavy rain, and I took the chance to take a breather and recharge. The last few weeks have been manic. I’ve been working on three software projects at once. The non-stop pace had left me totally overloaded, so this rain break was just what I needed. I decided to visit my wife home village, a recharging place in the middle of the city’s forests. The air smelt of earth, and the quiet beauty of the landscape was a nice change. I could feel the tension of my tightly wound days begin to unravel, replaced by a sense of calm that felt long overdue. The mountains were like silent guards, making me think about the balance between creativity and rest.

The modern AI, most prominently represented by the Large Language Models (LLMs), prompts a fundamental question: Does it contain consciousness? To pose the question another way, the original wellspring of the AI concept is found where brain scientists, computer scientists and mathematicians began to explore if consciousness itself could be understood as a mathematical or computational process, as a system. This inquiry delves into whether today’s advanced automation is merely sophisticated mimicry or a genuine step towards the sentient machines envisioned by pioneers of the field. As Noam Chomsky openly criticises the GPT model as a fake intelligence, a copycat only. Or is there an even deeper question: is there any form of computing that can capture the differences between intelligence, awareness and consciousness? Or we simply don’t understand our kind. Those three words are just a game of our language, a misconception; they never exist.