> A stochastic parrot, as described in a seminal paper [1] ....
A bit of an exaggeration. The paper reads like a long blog post to me.
Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?
231–240 of 363 posts
Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
We taught both our kids to sign. My favourite moment was in March, my daughter was about to turn 2 and wasn't speaking yet. I asked her if she would like to hear some music. She made the sign for dog. I searched youtube for some songs about dogs and she shook her head. She made the sign for tree. I was like "dog, tree", she nodded. Hmmm... I was searching for "dog tree music" when one of the pictures that came up was…
This must have been what it was like when the settlers were trying to communicate with native Americans at first
And then the genocide started
Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?
#233Nice 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.
More specifically, I think we're worried about AI taking our incomes , not our jobs. I would love it if an AI could do my entire job for me, and I just sat there collecting the income while the AI did all the "job" part, but we know from history (robotics) that this is not what happens. The owners of the robots (soon, AI) keep all the income and the job goes away. An enlightened Humanity could solve this by separatin…
You make it sound like we all aren't those owners keeping the income?
Right now, we all own "robots" who spellcheck our words (editor) , research (librarian), play music (musican), send messages (courier), etc.
All these jobs are "lost", but at the same time, we wouldn't have had money to pay these many employees to live in our pocket.
Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not convinced that this material-reductionist view wouldn't just be functionally equivalent to the way a majority of citizens live their lives currently. Now: a chance encounter with someone of a different faith leads a citizen to respect the religious freedom of others in the realm of self-determination. Future: a young hacker's formative experience leads to the idea that citizens should have the basic right to…
> Kinda like those old conservative couples I see in the South where the man is ostensibly the story teller and head of household. But if you listen long enough you notice his wife is whispering nearly every detail of importance to help him maintain coherence. You've never actually seen this happen because it doesn't happen. This is not how real people interact, it's how the caricatures in your head interact.
No Jansicka's Tales of Things that Totally Happened in the South is a #1 New York Times best seller.
Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?
#235Often 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…
[flagged]
Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?
#236> 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…
Interestingly there isn't any correspondence between spoken language and sign language in the linguistic sense. Correspondence between the dominant sign language and the dominant spoken language is mostly due to geographical colocation. So while you are right to say "your specific region's sign language", there are several distinct sign languages in places that all have English as their primary spoken language.
Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I like that improvement/clarification. Good assertion. Now I wonder if it changes my stance: are the path modern LLMs are on ever going to replicate this environment for acquiring new information that humans currently operate in?
As usual in these "Yeah, but can AI do this ?" threads, the answer is yes, it is already happening: https://www.space.com/mars-oxygen-ai-robot-chemist-splitting...
[deleted]
Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?
#238I think it's reductivism to assume that neural networks cannot emergently support/implement a non-stochastic computational model capable of explicit logical reasoning. We already have an instance of emergent logic. Animals engage in logical reasoning. Corollary, humans and toddlers are not merely super-autocompletes or stochastic parrots. It has nothing to do with "sensory embodiment" and/or "personal agency" argumen…
Imagine that for some reason and by some unknown agency, somebody in 1068 could build something that was functionally equivalent to one of the contemporary LLMs of today (it would likely be mechanical and thus slower, but let's just ignore speed because that's mostly a substrate artifact). OK, time to train up our LLM. Oops. Printing not yet invented. Books are scarce, and frequently not copied. We have almost no inp…
A common counterargument is that organisms already have information stored in their DNA, which in turn has a noticeable impact on their behaviour. Plus the fact that they receive a large amount of sensory data which is often discounted in such debates.
Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?
#239> 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 made an attempt with this, but my toddler never picked up anything because:
-She learned some gestures of mine instead, which I didn't realize I was doing.
-Defaulted to speech as soon as possible because it was just easier.
Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
> having a body and sensorimotor interactions with the environment are already established as fundamental preconditions for cognition and in turn consciousness. Does someone who is blind is not conscious then? How about when someone who is paralysed? or deaf? or someone with low IQ or mental illness? Stephen Hawking was paralysed most of his life but was a smart guy. If he was not only paralysed but also blind and de…
I've been thinking about this for a while now but I've been approaching it from the opposite direction. If we were attempting to put someone into some sort of Matrix like reality simulator but we lacked the technology to provide a perfect simulation what level of simulation would be 'good enough' that a human would consider it reality and be able to develop into something we could relate to? If you gave someone the H…
> If we were attempting to put someone into some sort of Matrix like reality simulator but we lacked the technology to provide a perfect simulation what level of simulation would be 'good enough' that a human would consider it reality and be able to develop into something we could relate to?
Have you tried VR before? You really don't need perfect simulation to be fooled. Good enough is already here, albeit for a short amount of time.