maxdoop

I wonder how this will play out.

Yes, it’s pretty awesome and yes, helpful. But if we extend the timeline, doesn’t this likely lead to AI-generated responses talking to AI-generated questions about AI-generated presentations?

This begs several questions -- one of which being, "what is intelligence, then?"

The part I push back on is the confidence with which people claim these LLMs “are definitely not intelligent / thinking”.

We can’t even define clearly what human thinking is, yet so many folks claim “nope, LLMs are just pattern matching. Wake me up when it actually has a thought.”

And there are two points to make on that: the first is again, we can’t even explain our own thoughts or rational thinking. And second, I’ve yet to see how it even matters .

The output of GPT-4, for example, is pretty much on point with your average person on certain topics. Whether or not it’s “truly thinking” under the hood is irrelevant, imo, if it gives a really good illusion of it.

What would impress you, or make you think something other than "wow, sad how people think this is anything special".

Genuine question.

Thank you.

Every single step forward with AI is met with a massive amount of people shrugging it off for whatever latest goal post they plant.

The comments on this thread are proof of the AI effect: People will continually push the goal posts back as progress occurs.

“Meh, it’s just a fancy word predictor. It’s not actually useful.”

“Boring, it’s just memorizing answers. And it scored in the lowest percentile anyways”.

“Sure, it’s in the top percentile now but honestly are those tests that hard? Besides, it can’t do anything with images.”

“Ok, it takes image input now but honestly, it’s not useful in any way.”

How is it dehumanizing to explore the potential similarities between new AI and LLMs and ourselves?

We still have the experience of being human. Isn’t that enough to savor? The experience itself?

Clinging to this idea of “I’m human, made of meat, and special” doesn’t really make for an argument as to why / how we are different.

I don’t think it’s dehumanizing at all. It’s exciting, and does nothing to take away from our experience of being human.

Do you think your concern here is part of why you have the opinion about AI that you do?

I agree it’s alarming to think that we may be creatures that take in data, store it, map it , then predict / output ideas and actions from that. But emotions aside — what’s wrong with that?

We have the experience of love and other emotions. Why we have that experience doesn’t really matter, does it? If someone proved flat out that the reason I say “I love you” to my family is that I’m just correlating patterns and remembering past experiences — so what? It changes nothing about my experience of love.

I feel like many people are against these claims about AI and even current LLMs simply because they are worried it takes it away the magic of being human.

But I don’t think it takes away anything at all. If anything, it’s exciting to think about the potential similarities as it might just help us understand our own selves .

It’s usually semantics.

What do you mean by free will? Yes, we make decisions. Yes, we have the experience of having will and choosing things.

But where does the “freedom” of that will come from? Everything we desire or have preferences for, and everything we decide is based upon some prior event or factor.

It’s an illusion of free will. People often get caught up on this because they feel it scary and dehumanizing to say “we don’t have free will”, but really, determinism or at least compatibilism make way more sense than some magic “free will” that just arises out of thin air.

The problem I have with claims like “LLMS aren’t thinking— they are just parrots”, is we don’t even know what human thinking really is! So many people want to assume that human complexity makes us special, yet there is not any proof of that right now.

This article claims “AI is not intelligent”— and I’ll counter with, “what is intelligence?” And further, say that we somehow prove LLMs aren’t “thinking” as humans do, but they still give (eventually) a near perfect illusion that they do — what does it matter that it’s not “really thinking?” I feel like crazy AI cultist at times when discussing this, but my main (admittedly petty) point is that such strong confidence about similarity or dissimilarity of human thinking to LLMs is unfounded.

It’s like we are comparing the insides of two black boxes and trying to make absolute claims on them.

I have read Deutsch’s book as well — awesome read.

The problem I have with claims like “there is no such process going on”, is we … don’t know. And the model of conjecture is a theory, also hard to prove — and thus my main (admittedly petty) point is that confidence about similarity or dissimilarity are both unfounded.

It’s like we are comparing the insides of two black boxes and trying to make absolute claims on them.

How are you so confident in your claims?

“The actual intelligence emerges elsewhere “— can you even define intelligence ? And does what an LLM does differ from what humans might do?

I’m not claiming the human brain and an LLM are identical. Rather, I’m pushing back on the confident claims of “LLMs aren’t intelligent or doing anything that’s real intelligence”.

OpenAI releases a pretty awesome LLM.

Journalist , who apparently had 30 years as a computer scientists, begins to think treat it as though it’s some real-time fact machine; a cleaner, simpler Google with only “factual” results.

Journalist has zero clue how an LLM works.

Journalist becomes scared and wants all LLM progress to be stopped.

But we do know of humans who have something like “locked in” syndrome, where they are full conscious but cannot use their body.

And I am not sure sentience is binary . It may be a spectrum, and if that is the case, I again am not sure why people are so confidently dismissive of the question when applied to LLMs .

Maybe not the current version, but future stuff especially.

Define sentience.

Every keeps claiming so confidently that they just KNOW LLMs aren’t sentient.

And I’m not saying I disagree — but tell me how you are so confident humans are any different.

And so if we provided physical inputs to a system that utilized GPT-4+, would you call that sentient? If we have a system video / ocular input, and sound (just throw a microphone into the mix), and finally a fuck ton of sensors on its physical “body”— does that qualify?

I feel like a crazy person when I discuss this, I admit. But I have not found one solid rationale for a proof we

-know what sentience even is -LLMs confidently do NOT have it

And how can that claim be made with confidence? We can’t even define our own sentience and consciousness (are those things the same?) and yet folks are constantly making a strong claim that LLMs are definitely , definitely not sentient.

I have not seen one reason why that confidence should exist. People seem to think we are special because we are made of meat, and we are “more complex”. But I still ask — what is so different about the human brain than an LLM? And further, what proof is there that we know what sentience truly is, and that LLMs don’t have it?

I see this confidence and your same claim all the time now, and I think it’s so wrongly dismissive.

Why can we be so confident it’s not sentient? I’m not of the belief it is, but I don’t have proof. We don’t even know what our own consciousness is, and yet so many folks claim that AI is not and cannot be conscious because “all it does it take in text then predict what might be next based on that training and input”.

Are humans so different?

I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

And what about if they said “COVID might’ve been a lab leak ?”

You have valid examples, yes, but GP comment has a point as well.

I think the sentiment is mostly online (here and Reddit). In “real life”, Airbnb just beat earnings, and I personally know so many people that only use AirBnbs to stay .

I see this comment often, but cannot understand how our brains are that different even that what an LLM does. Do we not "consume" enormous amounts of data, then predict what to do/say next based on that data?

Is that not what an LLM is doing?

Note that I'm not saying LLMs are sentient or anything (however, I have thoughts on sentience in general). I am simply saying there's an obvious similarity between how humans think and LLMs -- and for whatever reason, so many people think we are special simply because we are "made of meat".

Are you just talking about transformers? OpenAI utilized them, yes, but they are the ones who authored the original GPT paper. I am not sure I follow.

I share your feelings on this.

It is an awesome thing to lower (or eliminate entirely) your social media usage. To begin "doing", creating, and being in the present moment with yourself. It's liberating, and after the odd "brain itch" feeling wears off from not using social media anymore, I truly did recognize a state of contentedness that I'd long not felt.

But then you go to visit your family and friends. They begin talking about that viral video they shared on Facebook. About the funny TikTok challenges that they are all doing. About the latest internet fad that they got interested in over the last week.

And suddenly, you are an outsider. No one cares about that poem you wrote last week. Or if they do, they don't discuss the content of the poem or its meaning -- they tell you to start an Instagram page and start building an audience. They tell you to start that Youtube channel so you can maybe monetize that creative spark inside you.

It's very isolating.

I know there are many people out there who aren't on social media and share the same thoughts/experiences as me, but unfortunately, those people are not most the people I'm close with. Or even aware of.

Instead, most people are exactly like most people: living online.

This does seem to fit what I've seen.

I often have this weird imposter syndrome, where I sit on calls for 2 weeks and create some detailed end-to-end design. I then take that design and present it to a a team of engineers are are tasked with actually implementing it.

It feels strange to be doing that, and not having a hand in the implementation (i.e. coding). But then, those same engineers are the ones who come to me for the high-level questions.

This is reassuring.

I have a buddy that is a pure coder -- individual contributor type of guy. He will often share his latest clever idea in some code snippet, and while I understand it abstractly, I feel lost when I focus on the finer details. I definitely couldn't sit alone in a room and come up with it myself at this point.

At the same time, _he_ is a bit lost when I talk the more broad architectural stuff I work on.

Thus, I often go back-and-forth on what I should be focused on, especially as it relates to future opportunities. It's helpful to hear I'm not necessarily abnormal or falling off (as it sometimes can feel).