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Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

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Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#281

Post by kqr »

dools wrote: post #219
hiisukun wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is good advice but with a caveat: some of the muscle control required for particular signs is not able to be learned by children until they're a bit older. For example, voluntary supination/pronation of the forearm is generally not something a 9month old can do. If you try and teach them a common sign for "enough/finished" (fist closed, thumb pointed out, then rotation of the forearm back and forth), or "done" a…

Yeah my daughter used to stick out her index finger and wave it back and forth for finished. One of my favourite memories of that was when we went to see the Vivid light show in Sydney and there was a contortionist on the street so we stopped to watch. I looked into the stroller and said "What do you think?" and she made the sign for "finished". So we moved on.

> Yeah my daughter used to stick out her index finge

This is interesting. My son also did "index finger up" in response to "thumbs up" for the longest time. Why is the thumb so hard to manipulate? Late addition to the evolutionary sequence?

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#282

Post by ganzuul »

Vecr wrote: post #247
ganzuul wrote: post #144

You are an evolutionary being, part of a much greater process than the process in your head. Your mind extends beyond your body and even if your mind was frozen in time like an LLM it would still be alive because it remains in a living environment. Like so the Earth is alive and the universe would not be complete without you. Rest easy, little bird. One day you will spread the wings of your soul and the wind will do…

> Like so the Earth is alive and the universe would not be complete without you. That's a definitional argument, there is very little actual meaning there. The argument can't discriminate between a baby and a nuclear explosion destroying Manhattan.

The part about your mind being frozen in time is a lot to take in. It is reflected in concept by spreading your wings and letting the wind alone do the work of flight.

This defines a transcendence of mortal concerns and ascending to eternity so it doesn't need to treat a baby and a bomb in a city differently. When we attempt to find peace with AI this is qn appropriate universe of discourse.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#283

Post by Planktonne »

naasking wrote: post #226
jtr1 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the argument is that you need to ask how you are measuring when you say it seems more correct than anything that came before. You may just be describing the experience of swimming in the dominant paradigm

Have you managed any kind of conversation with a clock before? Because you can actually have an intelligent conversation with an LLM. I think that's a pretty compelling case that it's not just swimming in the dominant paradigm.

People thought they were having intelligent conversations with Eliza; people even have satisfying emotional conversations with teddy bears.

It's not a good measurement.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#284

Post by ImHereToVote »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #163
robwwilliams wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you study retinal synaptic circuitry you will not sigh so heavily and you will in fact see striking homologies with hardware neural networks, including feedback between layers and discretized (action potential) outputs via the optic nerve. I recommend reading Synaptic Organization of the Brain or getting into if you are brave, the primary literature on retinal processing of visual input.

Actually it’s funny my best friend is a neuroscientist and studies the retina and in particular the way different types of retinal cells respond to stimulus. I have watched her give presentations on her work and I do see that there are some similarities. But it is nonetheless the case that “neural networks” are not called that because they are based on the way neurons work.

They literally are:

https://www.ibm.com/topics/neural-networks#:~:text=Their%20n...

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#285

Post by intended »

persnickety wrote: post #277
intended wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would very strongly urge people to actually work and build tools with LLMs. Its readily apparent after a point that the previous poster is correct, and that these are simply tools. They are impressive tools yes. But life they are not. At best, they are mimics.

I can't help but notice that you backed up your assertions with nothing objective at all.

effort commensurate to the depth of the thread and effort of others.

I have longer comments in my history, you can read those if you must.

Besides, why wouldnt someone build things? This is HN.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#286

Post by Vecr »

ganzuul wrote: post #282
Vecr wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like so the Earth is alive and the universe would not be complete without you. That's a definitional argument, there is very little actual meaning there. The argument can't discriminate between a baby and a nuclear explosion destroying Manhattan.

The part about your mind being frozen in time is a lot to take in. It is reflected in concept by spreading your wings and letting the wind alone do the work of flight. This defines a transcendence of mortal concerns and ascending to eternity so it doesn't need to treat a baby and a bomb in a city differently. When we attempt to find peace with AI this is qn appropriate universe of discourse.

I don't have a problem with the "frozen in time" thing, as I have a reasonably good understanding of context windows, the feed-forward nature of the next token predictor, and information erasing computation. I agree that you would still be alive, but I'm not sure being in a "living environment" has any bearing on that.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#287

Post by Jasp3r »

dools wrote: post #218
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…

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…

When signing dog, was she referring to reindeers?

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#288

Post by fsckboy »

yojo wrote: post #59
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…

FWIW, I tried this with both my sons. They both started using the gestures the same day they started actually talking :-/ I have friends who had much more success with it, but the value will largely depend on your child’s relative developmental strengths. A friend’s son with autism got literally years’ benefit out of the gestures before verbal speech caught up.

>They both started using the gestures the same day they started actually talking

were you always talking when you signed to them? maybe they thought it went together.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#289

Post by glandium »

Jasp3r wrote: post #287
dools wrote: post #218

Earlier 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…

When signing dog, was she referring to reindeers?

Charlie Brown -> Snoopy, would be my guess.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#290

Post by [deleted] »

misja111 wrote: post #261
_nalply wrote: post #252

I am a father and this story touches me a lot. I have two boys not toddlers anymore. Both go to school. The older one told me laughingly: "That's funny, there's no Father Nature, but Mother Nature!". The younger one learnt yesterday not to touch a cake even if I didn't lock it away. I said: "Tomorrow this cake is for you and for your brother. If you eat it today, you won't have cake tomorrow." This said, there's an i…

I see instincts as something like a pre-installed ROM. It shouldn't be too hard to add something like that to LLM. In fact, I think this is being done already, for instance by hardwiring LLM to not have racist or sexual conversations. To make LLM's more similar to humans, we'd need to hardwire them with a concept of 'self', and, importantly, the hardwired idea that their self was unique, special, and should survive.…

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