Hacker News Reader

Comment by jamespwilliams | Hacker News Reader

We don’t actually know what “thinking” is, though, so I’m not sure it’s possible to say “this model can’t think”.

It seems one of the core components of human-level thinking is the ability move beyond just a recomposition of what you already know. Not long ago the epitome of expressible human knowledge was *emotive grunting noise.* Somehow we went from that to the greatest works of art, putting a man on the moon, and delving into the secrets of the atom. And we did it all exceptionally quickly once you consider how little time was spent dedicated to advancement and our countless behaviors that tend to imperil, if not reverse, advances.

> We don’t actually know what “thinking” is

How about: thinking is to make sense of the world (in general) and decide how to respond to it.

Ai definitely senses and definitely makes decisions. It does not feel. But it understands concepts. Just like people don’t understand everything—and you can test them to see what they understand—AI understanding can also be assessed with benchmarks. If we don’t base AI understanding on benchmarks, then we don’t really have a grounding.

Do we “really feel?” Or is that just our subjective interpretation of our goals? (At the risk of falling into a no true Scotsman argument)

> Ai definitely senses and definitely makes decisions.

To sense is not the same as to make sense.

Now you’ve just rephrased thinking. What is „making sense of the world“?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com