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Talking About Large Language Models

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Re: Talking About Large Language Models

#151

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That's an amusing aphorism from a giant in the field, and it was a reasonable thing to say about the technology of that time, but it avoids, rather than answers, the much bigger question of whether machines could ever think.

Humans can think; humans are machines; therefore machines can think.

That works for me, but I feel it is like Dijkstra's aphorism in the sense that neither seems likely to change the minds of many people who are not already aligned with it.

Then there are those, like Searle and Penrose, who agree but insist that thinking is beyond the abilities of any merely Turing-equivalent device.

Re: Talking About Large Language Models

#152
post #96

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OK well - sure - even if that is how we work, then language models are much worse at it than we are. They are better than us at some things already, but do I think they will be better than us at EVERYTHING? No.

out of interest, is there anything specific you think humans will always be better at than AI?

Hmmm, unsure. Maybe insight? Creativity? I would not call the art models creative, they are copying things similarly to how GPT-3 does. Very impressive but I don't think that is "creativity."

Re: Talking About Large Language Models

#153

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You're making an assumption out of thin air here: that consciousness is somehow produced or emergent, or that if it isn't you're in the realm of spiritual or something. What's your basis for that assumption other than just asserting it?

> that consciousness is somehow produced or emergent, or that if it isn't you're in the realm of spiritual or something. I'm reading the parent's comment as "Either consciousness is super natural or is created from nature." I don't think this is an unreasonable assumption (literally "all things are either hot dogs, or not hot dogs", it is simple but not unreasonable). If you have a third possibility I'd like to know…

Thank you, that was exactly what I wanted to say.

Re: Talking About Large Language Models

#154

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We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. Please don't create accounts to do that with.

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Re: Talking About Large Language Models

#155
post #88

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You’re looking for someone to argue with, but your arguments are trivial and meritless. You’re not a scientist and never have been. The fact that you’re posting with a throwaway account created an hour ago says it all. HN should not allow people like you to post.

Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes everything worse.

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Re: Talking About Large Language Models

#156

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You fundamentally misunderstand the scientific method which includes falsifiability but is not limited to it, moved the goalpost away from peer review for journals into general bar stool philosophy all while continuously insulting the GP. What is ironic is you hiding behind throwaway accounts and asserting superior knowledge while fundamentally misunderstanding the issue of positive claims in science.

Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes everything worse.

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Re: Talking About Large Language Models

#157
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that consciousness is somehow produced or emergent, or that if it isn't you're in the realm of spiritual or something. I'm reading the parent's comment as "Either consciousness is super natural or is created from nature." I don't think this is an unreasonable assumption (literally "all things are either hot dogs, or not hot dogs", it is simple but not unreasonable). If you have a third possibility I'd like to know…

Thank you, that was exactly what I wanted to say.

I don't think it was a misstep in what you said. I also don't think wellpast was intentionally misreading. I think it was a miscommunication due to working off of different priors (psychological priming). One thing I wish we (the AI community) would do more is talk about alignment among humans and how this often leads to miscommunications and can actually cause unintended fights. This is why I think it is so important to operate under good faith conditions and constantly remind ourselves to do this. I'll give Godelski's Corollary to Hanlon's Razor: never attribute to malice what can easily be attributed to miscommunication. I think this is especially important to remember in a globalized world with a compressed form of communication --text (all communication is compressed. We're compressing our thoughts to communication and then decompressing it when listening. But text is more compressed than verbal or in person). We're highly lacking on context clues (cultures can often be part of this) but those contexts often make up the majority of communication (something I think AI will have a wildly difficult time solving and might/likely require AGI to do so).

Re: Talking About Large Language Models

#158
post #154

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