Comment by mxkopy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mxkopy | Hacker News Reader

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> would this mean they're equivalent to a language model?

This is just a bad question. For one, we know that ChatGPT doesn't use neurological mechanisms. It has no proteins. It's not analogous. You're comparing meters to radians. I'm going to say no, a human without sensory organs is not just an LLM, not because of some complicated argument about how evolution imposes structure on the brain prior to any experiences it has, but because the premise is just bad.

> Here you seem to agree with my point. We cannot be sure. Why?

This is not the same type of 'sure' as in "we're not sure if there's life out there." It's 'sure' as in "we're not sure monkeys can build a bridge on their own."

Side note: when did it become standard rhetoric to say "you're agreeing with me now."? I'm obviously not agreeing with you. Do you think I need reminding? Or do you need reminding?

It's made me somewhat interested in having an informative argument to actively disinterested in anything other than telling you how wrong you are. Can we keep it to reddit please?

How can we confidently state we know ChatGPT doesn't use neurological mechanisms, when we don't yet completely understand our own neurological mechanisms, nor emergent mechanisms that may be at work within ChatGPT?

At the same time, we can already comprehensively model some biological neurological systems in their entirety, in silicon. This will continue and the human mind will not be immune to such progress, making the question important.

I see it as a question that cuts to the core of the matter - long-standing, unanswered philosophical questions:

What does it mean to "perceive"? Can a machine be conscious? Are our biological processes meaningfully differentiable from equivalents when mimmicked by a machine? Are our "perceptions" special? Or not?

Putting the point another way:

We can't be objective about "perception" from within the constraints of perception.

While we routinely "imagine" an objective reality that exists beyond our perception, that we believe our perceptions reveal, there is no way to conclusively prove that's actually happening. Possibly, ever.

(As for the side note: I genuinely interpreted it that way, hence the word "seem", I didn't think about whether or not you'd missed it. I too assumed a conversation precisely unlike reddit... my default assumption here.)

You can't "cut to the core of deep philosophical questions" when you don't know the basics. For example, this

> we can already comprehensively model some biological neurological systems in their entirety, in silicon.

is just patently wrong.

> How can we confidently state we know ChatGPT doesn't use neurological mechanisms, when we don't yet completely understand our own neurological mechanisms, nor emergent mechanisms that may be at work within ChatGPT?

How can we confidently state that the sun isn't alive when we don't ourselves know what life is? I mean, it's got different layers like a cell. It has a source of energy, a lifecycle and it eventually dies. The sun has been around for much longer than chatGPT so I think we should answer this question first.

> While we routinely "imagine" an objective reality that exists beyond our perception

I'll just say this - if you really want to believe you're a brain floating in space, why don't you live life like it's GTA? Because obviously none of it is real, right?

Look up 'solipsism', this isn't a new or for that matter important philosophical position. Unless you want to write about how much fun whatever video game you're playing is in lieu of reality.

Solipsism implies there is only the self. However, it is possible that we all have similar enough brains that have evolved for us to share a false reality together, like Donald Hoffman's recent theories. On that note I do often wonder about the sentience of stars, photons, everything in between. So chatgpt is not much of a stretch and is exciting in that context.

The thing is that words are supposed to be useful. If a word can't tell the difference between photons, stars, and everything in between, then it's not very useful anymore. Calling all of these things 'alive' would just defeat the meaning of the word - we can't resuscitate a rock, we can't talk to photons, feed an atom - all these things that we associate with being alive are just rendered inapplicable.

> is just patently wrong.

Not really, here's one I found in seconds, that I hadn't even seen yet - where they specifically remark on the similarities to AI networks:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add9330

> How can we confidently state that the sun isn't alive when we don't ourselves know what life is? I mean, it's got different layers like a cell. It has a source of energy, a lifecycle and it eventually dies.

Well, I've learned from your previous comment you're not agreeing with me, but here's another instance I'd have thought you might be.

These are exactly the kinds of questions we should pose and explore. Are such a massive, complex, long-lasting sequences of nuclear processes "alive" or potentially intelligent? Might they have a detectable consciousness?

What are we but a vast sequence of chemical and electrical processes? In that sense, not much different.

(Science has indeed so far rather arbitrarily defined "alive", and this shows in some of the more controversial categories of "life", such as viruses.)

> I'll just say this - if you really want to believe you're a brain floating in space, why don't you live life like it's GTA?

I've never stated that, I've posed a relevant, important philosophical question I think lies at the centre of the issue of whether or not an AI can be considered to "hallucinate". As was the topic. Your response seems to be "no", and that's fine.

> I've never stated that, I've posed a relevant, important philosophical question

If you think this then go publish a paper and see how the community receives it. They decide what's important and relevant, not you.

Your side note is unwarranted - his statement about agreement was perfectly normal.

Again, do people need reminding of who agrees with who? What is the purpose other than to give points to each other? And I obviously wasn't agreeing with them, under any reading of the reply.

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