> They're still autocomplete
if we transcribe your brain into a simulation and give it a tickrate, you will be just autocomplete too. the argument could be made that you are autocomplete anyway - neural dynamics.
the autocomplete reduction is vacuous.
A correct statement that is neither interesting or of much relevance to the discussion.
The underlying mechanisms for producing language are very different, in the same way birds and airplanes have different mechanisms for flying.
LLMs are more like human minds than we are willing to admit. Such reluctance is perhaps the least surprising aspect of any of this.
I disagree, language is the product of, not the mechanism for thought. People who lose their faculty of speech (or haven't gained them) have complete thoughts and executive function.
CoT is a hack to use language (i.e. autoregression) to simulate reasoning, and it's very effective at it. Human minds can acquire, hold and use axioms as building blocks for actual reasoning, LLMs use statistical likelihood.
This is not even slightly true. Even when trying, humans commit logical mistakes at notable rates, because the behavior of our minds is inherently nondeterministic. Human minds are not built for logic and need to twist themselves into knots and rely on symbolic representations to do it. There is such a thing as valid reasoning - predicate calculus, decision theory - and humans only emulate it with some accuracy, in hacky ways, and only because our brains were imperfectly taught to do that over millenia of evolutionary pressure. LLMs are much the same way.
> humans commit logical mistakes at notable rates
But then again, maybe to support your point people frequently say "start from first principles" when those are usually the thing that needs to be found, not the place you start. But LLMs, like humans, love to be confident about things they aren't sufficiently trained on
Equally, even if your axioms are right your logical execution can still fail.
Neither individual humans nor LLMs get either of those steps right as a default. Just as LLMs must use hacky CoT and other systems of error checking and correcting to even begin to emulate reasoning, humans must do the same thing.
We are apes. We are driven by emotion and solve problems either when we are forced to or as a sport. We did create the ultimate automata of logical execution: the deterministic von Neumann Machine, but a human brain in no way reflects that operation. Nor, as you have observed, does an LLM despite using one as its substrate.
langauge is only produced by the final layer every tick. and every layer can only interact with other layers on the same level.
the mechanics of LLMs and the restriction in how we can train them makes it appear as though all we are doing is forcing language onto them but once RL gets involved all bets are off regarding what's happening inside them (it's quite possible that a static corpus alone is sufficient for all the bets being off).
Which is actually an important part of the Navier-Stokes conversation. Solving hard problems expands the vocabulary. The problems are hard, illustrating a region we know where the language is insufficient. So the point isn't so much to solve the specific problem, but to figure out how to discuss problems like it.
But there's a big difference between talking about something in an extremely convoluted manner then people struggle to understand and inventing a new word that simplifies our discussions.
Though this is grossly oversimplified. It's a HN comment, not a lecture on metamathematics or metaml
Human egos are probably the reason we also resisted the concept of heliocentrism.
They were simply illustrating how the terms used to describe LLMs to make them sound simple and mechanical can equally be applied to humans.
If they don’t care about understanding reality then sure, they can use whatever mental model they want.
This is a https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Dissimile
I want to clarify, most people are using "autocomplete" specifically to differentiate from how we humans operate. Sure, there is an autocomplete aspect, but it's not the core nor anywhere near the full story.
This can apply equally to LLMs or humans. So what is the utility of the word if it just describes the whole range of things we are talking about?
If you over simplify everything then everything is the same. You have to have nuance. So don't just argue for the sake of arguing. Take that same passion to deeply understand these systems. Take that same passion to try to understand yourself and those around you
Maybe if we anthropomorphize llms we should give them rights too? Minimum wage, etc.
LLMs simulated more than simple autocomplete.
The autocomplete analogy is rebutting a different point: namely the fidelity of the simulation to reality.
This specific argument is valid. As sophisticated a simulation an LLM is, it is not “thinking” in the same sense we assume other people are thinking.
I am not making an argument about free will, or the uniqueness of human thought, just that the correspondence to how humans reach conclusions and how the simulation produces outputs do not match on a 1:1 basis; as a result attributing traits builds incorrect intuitions.
I am not sure how that link was made.
Good old ML, which is significantly simpler than LLMs, was capable of ensuring people would not be hired simply because of their names.
The fact that it is misaligned is also not being contended, if anything that contention is made easier to support.
When models are anthropomorphized intuitions of how humans behave end up driving discussion and ideas off track while being too attractive to avoid. This isn't helped when the terminology from the labs and other sources is "intelligence" "intent" and so on.
"you would be autocomplete too" "thoughts are just tokens" etc
You're not helping your case the way you think you are.
Best not tell them, because they're helping everyone who might otherwise believe their nonsense.
That's a really bad transcription, then. Brains do much more than output language.
Hmm, what do you think about? Unconscious control of the body's processes? REM-phase dreaming? Reaction to hallucinogenic substances? Automatic actions of trained fighters (soldiers or martial arts practitioners)?
Are they critical to distinguish actions we attribute to humans from "non-human" ones?
I don't see any human activity not directly, or at least indirectly but closely linked to the use of language.
I'm glad my brain has a better method.
The only evolutionary purpose of brains is to make decisions on what muscles to move when and how.
Language is one byproduct of that. Another byproduct that is not unique to humans is memory.