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Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

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Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#111

Post by beepbooptheory »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #36
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.

Very curious to know what the telos of "truth" is here for you? A comparison is a comparison, it can get no more "true." If you want to say: the terms of the comparisons seem to verge towards identity, then you aren't really talking about the same thing anymore. Further, you would need to assert that our conceptions of ourselves have remained static throughout the whole ordeal (pretty tough to defend), and you would also need to put forward a pretty crude idea of technological determinism (extremely tough to defend).

Its way more productive and way less woo-woo to understand that humans have a certain tendency towards comparison, and we tend to create things that reflect our current values and conceptions of ourselves. And that "technological progress" is not a straight line, but a labyrinthine route that traces societal conceptions and priorities.

The desire for the llm to be like us is probably more realistically our desire to be like the llm!

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#112

Post by westurner »

Language acquisition > See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_acquisition

Phonological development: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_development

Imitation > Child development: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imitation#Child_development

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33800104 :

> "The Everyday Parenting Toolkit: The Kazdin Method for Easy, Step-by-Step, Lasting Change for You and Your Child" https://www.google.com/search?kgmid=/g/11h7dr5mm6&hl=en-US&q...

> "Everyday Parenting: The ABCs of Child Rearing" (Kazdin, Yale,) https://www.coursera.org/learn/everyday-parenting

> Re: Effective praise and Validating parenting [and parroting]

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#114

Post by EvanAnderson »

throw0101a wrote: post #35

> 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 an…

Every kid is different. YMMV. We did some ASL gestures/words with our daughter and it worked very well. I'd encourage everyone to at least give it a try. She took to it and was "talking" to us (mainly "hungry" and "milk", but we got "enough" sometimes too) pretty quickly.

I can't remember exact ages and timeframes-- that time of my life is "blurry". I wish I could remember all the gestures we used. (The only ones I can remember now are "milk", "apple", and "thank you".) As she became verbal she quickly transitioned away from them.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#115

Post by dsign »

xigency wrote: post #56

Regarding dismissals of LLM’s on ‘technical’ grounds: Consciousness is first a word and second a concept. And it’s a word that ChatGPT or Llama can use in an English sentence better than billions of humans worldwide. The software folks have made even more progress than sociologists, psychologists and neuroscientists to be able to create an artificial language cortex before we understand our biological mind comprehens…

Exactly. To that I’m going to add that the blood of our civilization is culture (sciences, technology, arts, traditions). The moment there is something better at it than humans, it’s our “horse-moment”.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#116

Post by dekhn »

renewiltord wrote: post #110
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sigh Neural networks are not based on how neurons work. They do not copy aspects of us. They call them neural networks because they are sort of conceptually like networks of neurons in the brain but they’re so different as to make false the statement that they are based on neurons.

Doesn't really matter to modern CS, but Rosenblatt's original perceptron paper is a good read on this. ANNs were specifically inspired by Natural NNs and there were many attempts to build ANNs using models of how the human brain works, specifically down to the neuron.

I;m sure you know but one of the best ways to get neuro folks worked up is to say anything about neural networks being anything like neurons in brains.

(IMHO, Rosenblatt is an underappreciated genius; he had a working shallow computer vision hardware computer long before people even appreciated what an accomplishment that was. The hardware was fascinating- literally self-turning potentiometer knobs to update weights.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#117

Post by alexwebb2 »

Retr0id wrote: post #63

This is a really beautiful article, and while there are certainly fundamental differences between how a toddler thinks and learns, and how an LLM "thinks", I don't think we should get too comfortable with those differences. Every time I say to myself "AI is no big deal because it can't do X", some time later someone comes along and makes an AI that does X.

There's a well-documented concept called "God of the gaps" where any phenomenon humans don't understand at the time is attributed to a divine entity.

Over time, as the gaps in human knowledge get filled, the god "shrinks" - it becomes less expansive, less powerful, less directly involved in human affairs. The definition changes.

It's fascinating to watch the same thing happen with human exceptionalism – so many cries of "but AI can't do ". It's "human of the gaps", and those gaps are rapidly closing.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#118

Post by esafak »

brainbag wrote: post #96
throw0101a wrote: post #35

> 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 an…

I had heard about this before my son was born. We didn't try to teach him anything, anytime we remembered (which was sporadic) we just used the gestures when talking to him. I was amazed at how quickly he picked up on it, and he was able to communicate his needs to us months before he was able to verbalize. It took very minimal effort on our part, and was very rewarding for him; certainly a lot better than him crying…

In other words, you can invent your own sign language because your child won't need to use it with other people.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#119

Post by dekhn »

nix0n wrote: post #53
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…

> software engineers feeling entitled to have an unfunded opinion on scientific disciplines outside of their own field of expertise There's an XKCD about this behavior[0]. The title is actually "Physicists", but I also have seen it on HN (especially with psychology). [0] https://xkcd.com/793/

This is known as the "Why don't you just assume a spherical cow?"

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#120

Post by BlueTemplar »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #70
function_seven wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Indeed our consciousness is an emergent property from a complex system, however the complexity of that system - the human brain - is almost unfathomably beyond the complexity of anything we might make in silicon now or in the foreseeable future. For example, it is possible to write down a (natural/whole) number that completely describes the state of an LLM - its connections and weights etc - for example by simply tak…

Under the assumption that human brains are limited by our current understanding of physics, their state is finite - infinities are forbidden by definition.

( See the relationship between information theory and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle that results in the law of paraconservation of information : http://www.av8n.com/physics/thermo/entropy-more.html#sec-pha... )

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