> then let it run about during the day collecting a video feed while directing it to do "squirrel stuff".
Your phrase "squirrel stuff" is doing a lot of work.
What are the robo-squirrels "goals" and how does it relate to the physical robot?
Is it going around trying to find spare electronic parts to repair itself and reproduce? How does the video feed data relate to its goals?
Where do these goals come from?
Despite all their expensive training, LLMs do not emerge goals. Why would they emerge for your robot squirrel, especially when the survival of its brain is not dependent on the survival of its mechanical body.
The question is about sensory experience, not goals. Goals in the robot could be prompted in. Goals in the squirrel can be easily hacked using strong doses of opiates.
Go to any American metropolitan downtown, and you can see humans who have hacked their evolved reward system to seek heroin rather than reproduction.
Following Dawkin's the Selfish Gene, the idea that organisms consciously seek self-survival or the survival of their "race or species" is a complete fallacy. The higher order "goal" of the squirrel is to simply propagate fragments of its DNA. This type of "goal" is completely tangential to "intelligence"
Your phrase "squirrel stuff" is doing a lot of work.
What are the robo-squirrels "goals" and how does it relate to the physical robot?
Is it going around trying to find spare electronic parts to repair itself and reproduce? How does the video feed data relate to its goals?
Where do these goals come from?
Despite all their expensive training, LLMs do not emerge goals. Why would they emerge for your robot squirrel, especially when the survival of its brain is not dependent on the survival of its mechanical body.