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Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

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Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

#61

Post by c_crank »

agentultra wrote: post #59

... ChatGPT is a bigger, fancier mechanical turk. It's still aligned by the manual labour of underpaid people given no benefits for their work. They get exposed to some of the most horrible content on the Internet every day as part of their job. It's trained on data mined from other humans. It regurgitates that content and if it's too close to verbatim with the training data we have manual labour fixing that. There's…

You can give them agency or a good approximation of that via self generated prompts. Of course, just agency + intelligence doesn't equal SkyNet.

Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

#62

Post by mercurialsolo »

It's not combining an LLM with data/memory recollection and infinite agency that will lead to leaps in cognition. Complex systems still can do that and still not have self-awareness / cognition. We will need to take some more fundamental leaps to synthesize memory, agency and prediction to operate within a single system where self-awareness resides in the entity and not in the building blocks. LLM's represent a building block towards that cognitive unit, but the real deal is still some ways away

Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

#63

Post by curiousllama »

Andrex wrote: post #60
agentultra wrote: post #59

... ChatGPT is a bigger, fancier mechanical turk. It's still aligned by the manual labour of underpaid people given no benefits for their work. They get exposed to some of the most horrible content on the Internet every day as part of their job. It's trained on data mined from other humans. It regurgitates that content and if it's too close to verbatim with the training data we have manual labour fixing that. There's…

Combine an LLM with long-term memory formation/recollection and a protracted (~18 year?) incubation period where it interacts with the outside world, and... the line between AI and consciousness would be pretty blurry at that point.

> the line between AI and consciousness would be pretty blurry at that point

This is like saying the difference between Cillian Murphy and Oppenheimer is pretty blurry because, look, we can watch Murphy do do all the same things Oppenheimer did!

For some reason with "AI" we get all mystical and act like imitation = the real thing. Just because I can convince you I'm a doctor doesn't make me one

Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

#64

Post by ben_w »

danaris wrote: post #54
ben_w wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's a large language model doing when it's not being queried? Nothing. > Am I correct that they only compute information when dealing with a prompt? Yes. > If so, that seems like a fundamental flaw. Flawed in what way? It clearly doesn't need to be like us to be useful, because it's useful and definitely not like us. > An actual "thinking machine" would be constantly running computations on its accumulated exper…

> It clearly doesn't need to be like us to be useful, because it's useful and definitely not like us. For many people, the question is not—and has never been—"is it useful?", but "is it conscious?", or "when will it bring the singularity?" Yes, it is useful as it is. But it is not conscious, and if it is a step closer to the still-very-hypothetical singularity, then it is not a particularly large one, because of thes…

> But it is not conscious

How can we tell? We don't have a single working definition of what "consciousness" is, rather we have at least half a dozen wildly different definitions, some of which aren't testable[0], some of which include VHS players[1], some of which exclude many humans most of the time[2].

If consciousness exists purely in working memory and not short/long term, then LLMs may have it within any given context window, even if they're effectively amnesiac between contexts.

Possibly. Like I said, we don't know what consciousness is.

> But engaging with people who are clearly talking about whether AI is conscious by responding as if they're talking about whether it is useful could very easily be seen as engaging in bad faith.

It may seem clear to you, but it didn't to me; furthermore, the singularity doesn't seem to me to require any of the many definitions of consciousness that I'm aware of, merely the capabilities for problem solving that LLMs increasingly demonstrate regardless of if they're conscious or not.

[0] what even is qualia

[1] can record sensory experiences in memory and change responses based on this

[2] rational/logical reasoning

Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

#65

Post by danryan »

mercurialsolo wrote: post #62

It's not combining an LLM with data/memory recollection and infinite agency that will lead to leaps in cognition. Complex systems still can do that and still not have self-awareness / cognition. We will need to take some more fundamental leaps to synthesize memory, agency and prediction to operate within a single system where self-awareness resides in the entity and not in the building blocks. LLM's represent a build…

Bingo.

Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

#66

Post by Aerroon »

Zambyte wrote: post #12
optimalsolver wrote: post #10

What's a large language model doing when it's not being queried? Am I correct that they only compute information when dealing with a prompt? If so, that seems like a fundamental flaw. An actual "thinking machine" would be constantly running computations on its accumulated experience in order to improve its future output.

Also, based on its continuous experience, it would be able to prompt you (send multiple messages in a row after not getting a response) or it should be able to wait for you to send multiple messages before responding.

>it would be able to prompt you (send multiple messages in a row after not getting a response)

This already happens. When you play around with local LLMs you'll run into the situation where the model answers your prompt. After that it will generate a new query as a response to it and then reply to that too.

Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

#67

Post by strikelaserclaw »

mercurialsolo wrote: post #62

It's not combining an LLM with data/memory recollection and infinite agency that will lead to leaps in cognition. Complex systems still can do that and still not have self-awareness / cognition. We will need to take some more fundamental leaps to synthesize memory, agency and prediction to operate within a single system where self-awareness resides in the entity and not in the building blocks. LLM's represent a build…

Although i fundamentally agree with you, i will say that it is impossible to know which "tricks" will lead to a leap in cognition, even looking evolutionarily, the difference in genome between a monkey and human is very small percentage wise, yet the effects of that small difference are stark.

Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

#68

Post by danaris »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #57
danaris wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. This is one of the questions far too few people seem to be paying attention to. "Thinking" in any way that we truly understand the term requires consciousness , and consciousness requires much more continuity than LLMs have. It would need continuity of input as well as continuity of learning in order to even be able to begin to approach something we might recognize as consciousness.

Imagine a hypothetical black box that could correctly answer any question you ask it and perform any task that you instruct it to perform. In terms of the impact such a thing would have on the world, would it matter if it were conscious? Would it even be desirable for it to be conscious? IMO, discussions of consciousness and self-awareness are a complete red herring when it comes to the topic of AGI.

Two things:

1) They may feel like a red herring to you, but they are a big part of what a lot of people are talking about, and coming into a discussion that is clearly talking about whether an AI is conscious or how we could decide if it was and saying "that's all pointless, you shouldn't even be having this discussion" is kind of rude.

2) I am deeply skeptical that it is possible to have anything we could reasonably deem an "AGI" without it demonstrating at least what appears to be consciousness. Certainly, the "singularity" that many people talk about as being either an inevitability or an actual goal seems impossible without an AGI that can self-analyze and self-improve, which seem, at least to me, like they probably require consciousness, at least at the level being talked about.

Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

#69

Post by Andrex »

curiousllama wrote: post #63
Andrex wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Combine an LLM with long-term memory formation/recollection and a protracted (~18 year?) incubation period where it interacts with the outside world, and... the line between AI and consciousness would be pretty blurry at that point.

> the line between AI and consciousness would be pretty blurry at that point This is like saying the difference between Cillian Murphy and Oppenheimer is pretty blurry because, look, we can watch Murphy do do all the same things Oppenheimer did! For some reason with "AI" we get all mystical and act like imitation = the real thing. Just because I can convince you I'm a doctor doesn't make me one

> Just because I can convince you I'm a doctor doesn't make me one

Because our society has decided you need to become certified to be a doctor, and to do that you have to be a human being. There's no reason to think an AI couldn't have the same level of skill as a human doctor.

The film comparison doesn't work for me, Cillian and Robert are real people.

I think at the end of the day it's how you view the philosophy of the human soul. For me, it follows that if brains are matter and can produce the illusion of consciousness, so can electronics.

Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

#70

Post by rsynnott »

Thoeu388 wrote: post #15
Kbelicius wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So far "nigerian email spam" was easy to recognize. Grammar mistakes, bad translation, very bad wording... But now every fringe group, can generate gigabytes of text and arguments that make sense! "nigerian email spam" contains grammar mistakes, bad translation, vary bad wording... by design. To weed out those unlikely to end up sending money. I don't know how you can make an argument that makes sense about being c…

[dead]

If someone is running an actual 419 scam in crypto, probably yes; they only want the really easy marks (because there's a non-zero incremental cost to each person engaging so they only want the ones who are likely to convert). Most crypto scams are either pump and dump schemes or some sort of Ponzi, though, and for those it really doesn't matter; there's no incentive to cut the number of participants.
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