Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 363 posts

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#31

Post by davedx »

LASR wrote: post #5

Often the "stochastic parrot" line is used as a reduction on what an LLM truly is. I firmly believe that LLMs are stochastic parrots and also that humans are too. To the point where I actually think even consciousness itself is a next-token predictor. Where the industry is headed - multi-modal models. This really I think is the remaining frontier of LLM Human parity. I also have a 15 month old son. It's totally obvio…

Those who don’t understand a concept are doomed to reduce it to concepts they do understand.

I’m currently reading I Am A Strange Loop, a pretty extensive dive into the nature of consciousness. I’m reserving final judgment on how much I agree with the author, but I find it laughable to claim consciousness itself is on the same level as an LLM.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#32

Post by ChuckMcM »

Mattasher wrote: post #8

Humans have a long history of comparing ourselves, and the universe, to our latest technological advancement. We used to be glorified clocks (as was the universe), then we were automatons, then computers, then NPC's, and now AI's (in particular LLM's). Which BTW I don't think is a completely absurd comparison, see https://mattasher.substack.com/p/ais-killer-app

I always enjoyed the stories of 'clock work' people (robots).

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#33

Post by xianshou »

Pour one out for the decline of human exceptionalism! Once you get material-reductionist enough and accept yourself as a pure function of genetics, environment, past experience, and chance, this conclusion becomes inevitable. I also expect it to be the standard within a decade, with AI-human parity of capabilities as the key driver.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#34

Post by bena »

mirekrusin wrote: post #18
Probiotic6081 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I firmly believe that LLMs are stochastic parrots and also that humans are too. To the point where I actually think even consciousness itself is a next-token predictor. Almost every time I'm on hackernews I end up baffled by software engineers feeling entitled to have an unfunded opinion on scientific disciplines outside of their own field of expertise. I've literally never encountered that level of hubris from any…

Are you saying that ie. paralyzed people don't have consciousness?

First of all, paralyzed people do have bodies. And sensorimotor functions.

Second of all, it wouldn't matter if individually they did or did not. The species does and now our species has developed consciousness. It's part of the package.

If you wanted a counterexample, you should look to plant life. There is some discussion on whether or not plant systems have a form on consciousness. But, then again, plants have bodies at the very least.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#35

Post by throw0101a »

> But he could understand so much more than he could say. If you asked him to point to the vacuum cleaner, he would.

Perhaps worth noting that it is possible to teach infants (often starting at around 9 months) sign language so that they can more easily signal their desires.

Some priority recommended words would probably be:

* hungry/more

* enough/all done (for when they're full)

* drink (perhaps both milk/formula and water† gestures)

See:

* https://babysignlanguage.com/chart/

* https://www.thebump.com/a/how-to-teach-baby-sign-language

These are not (AFAICT) 'special' symbols for babies, but the regular ASL gestures for the work in question. If you're not native English-speaking you'd look up the gestures in your specific region/language's sign language:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sign_languages

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_language

† Another handy trick I've run across: have different coloured containers for milk and water, and consistently put the same contents in each one. That way the infant learns to grab a particular colour depending on what they're feeling like.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#36

Post by MichaelZuo »

Mattasher wrote: post #8

Humans have a long history of comparing ourselves, and the universe, to our latest technological advancement. We used to be glorified clocks (as was the universe), then we were automatons, then computers, then NPC's, and now AI's (in particular LLM's). Which BTW I don't think is a completely absurd comparison, see https://mattasher.substack.com/p/ais-killer-app

Each successive comparison is likely getting closer and closer to the truth.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#37

Post by jocaal »

function_seven wrote: post #12
LASR wrote: post #5

Often the "stochastic parrot" line is used as a reduction on what an LLM truly is. I firmly believe that LLMs are stochastic parrots and also that humans are too. To the point where I actually think even consciousness itself is a next-token predictor. Where the industry is headed - multi-modal models. This really I think is the remaining frontier of LLM Human parity. I also have a 15 month old son. It's totally obvio…

I'm in the same boat. It feels wrong to contemplate that our consciousness might not be a magical independent agent with supernatural powers, but is rather an emergent property of complex-but-deterministic actions and reactions. Like it somehow diminishes us. Reduces us to cogs and levers and such. But I can't imagine how it could be otherwise, though. I'm still baffled by the existence of qualia, phenomenology, etc.…

> emergent property of complex-but-deterministic actions and reactions

I think you mean non-deterministic. The last century of physics was dominated by work showing how deterministic systems emerged from non-deterministic foundations. It seems that probability and statistics were the branches of maths behind everything. Who would have thought.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#38

Post by IanCal »

LASR wrote: post #5

Often the "stochastic parrot" line is used as a reduction on what an LLM truly is. I firmly believe that LLMs are stochastic parrots and also that humans are too. To the point where I actually think even consciousness itself is a next-token predictor. Where the industry is headed - multi-modal models. This really I think is the remaining frontier of LLM Human parity. I also have a 15 month old son. It's totally obvio…

I disagree they're stochastic parrots, I find othello-gpt very convincing that these models can create world models and respond accordingly.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#39

Post by karmakurtisaani »

Nice article, great presentation.

However, it's a bit annoying that the focus of the AI anxiety is how AI is replacing us and the resolution is that we embrace our humanity. Fair enough, but at least to me the main focus in my AI anxiety is that it will take my job - honestly don't really care about it doing my shitty art.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#40

Post by dekhn »

Probiotic6081 wrote: post #10
LASR wrote: post #5

Often the "stochastic parrot" line is used as a reduction on what an LLM truly is. I firmly believe that LLMs are stochastic parrots and also that humans are too. To the point where I actually think even consciousness itself is a next-token predictor. Where the industry is headed - multi-modal models. This really I think is the remaining frontier of LLM Human parity. I also have a 15 month old son. It's totally obvio…

> I firmly believe that LLMs are stochastic parrots and also that humans are too. To the point where I actually think even consciousness itself is a next-token predictor. Almost every time I'm on hackernews I end up baffled by software engineers feeling entitled to have an unfunded opinion on scientific disciplines outside of their own field of expertise. I've literally never encountered that level of hubris from any…

Some of us who believe that humans are at least partly statistical parrots have PhDs in relevant fields- for example, my PhD is in Biophysics, I've studied cognitive neuroscience and ML for decades, and while I think embodiment may very well be a necessary condition to reproduce the subjective experience of consciousness, I don't think "having a body and sensorimotor interactions are established as fundamental preconditions for cognition and in turn consciousness". Frankly I think that's an impractical question to answer.

Instead, I work with the following idea: it seems not unlikely that we will, in the next decade or so, create non-embodied machine learning models which simply can't be told apart from a human (through a video chat-like interface). If you can do that, who really cares about whether it's conscious or not?

I don't really think philosophy of the mind is that important here; instead, we should treat this as an engineering problem where we assume brains are subjectively conscious, but that's not a metric we are aiming for.

Post reply on HN