Ontology, my new word for the day. So this is a wide ranging concept that is heavily weighing on computer scientists minds these days. "do concepts exist outside of human thought" seems to be the best one in my opinion. LLMs are arguably simple next word predictors or they actually have a the same concept of entities that our brains do. I.e. LLMs appear to exhibit an understanding of concepts and how they relate to each other in a meaningful way to us. It's quite a deep notion and concept to consider as it starts out with 'is the LLM just random', 'is the LLM able to have a minds eye', 'is the LLM thinking?', 'is the LLM capable of belief', 'Is it conscious?'.

Whilst most would say the last is not true, it's hard to disprove it as well given we can't explain conscious ourselves. The famous line of "to be or not to be" sums up the simplicity and yet the clear lack of understanding we all have of what being conscious actually is.

So does an LLM believe God exists?

Whilst the final result with DeepSeek-r1 gives the very insightful response

"The universe's complexity suggests it operates within known and unknown yet explainable principles... the evidence is inconclusive. Science remains a robust framework for explaining reality, with room for future discoveries that might involve a higher entity."

It's the process that is revealing that I would argue is a step towards consciousness if we're not already there (minus the feedback loop which no doubt is coming)

Here is what the LLM was 'thinking'

"I don't know much about this topic, but maybe I can start by thinking about what I've heard and experienced."

The fact it refers to itself as 'I' is a tell. Once you have a axiom such as 'I' it's very easy to build emotions, feelings, beliefs and consciousness on this.

I for one am in the camp of believing we could well end up defining consciousness as a result of analysing neural networks behaviour and it's ontology approach rather than the introspective philosophical approach we've tried for thousands of years.

Who'd of thought computer scientists would find themselves now crossing paths with the incredible world of philosophy and figuring out if the keyboard they are typing on is actually a real concept or not.