It's interesting to watch the LLMs generate their answers. The pieces arrive in "tokens", small chunks of information, dictated by the model, based on the prompt. As I watch these chunks land on my screen, I wonder about my own brain.
What if I were to ask the LLMs, "What is your earliest memory of pain?" Or insert any emotion and ask the same prompt. I think emotions are a powerful index into my brain, one that often dominates other forms of access to my memories. Close your eyes and tell me what comes to mind when I say "burning rubber". Smell is another index. No doubt, all the senses are strong indices into memory, too. LLMs know a lot of words, but may be a little short on other triggers.
Maybe emotions are the common language of the senses? Are emotions how my brain processes all the senses into an experience? Emotions might be meta-senses, a higher-order of communication within my brain. I have personally struggled with emotions, struggled being aware of them, in myself and others. I wonder what mechanisms my brain has developed to compensate. Or, perhaps my brain has always had another high-order language to process my world, making my emotional development secondary.
