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Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

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Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#341

Post by slibhb »

naasking wrote: post #340
slibhb wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Behaviour can't tell you there isn't internal life, but complex behaviour sure is a big red flag that there might be internal life there. I agree, behavior is evidence, but there are good reasons to suppose that, despite their behavior, computers lack internal lives. To try to make my argument more clearly: I know I have an internal life (due to subjective evidence). My internal life is related to the structure of…

> My internal life is related to the structure of my body in an unknown way That's right, an unknown way. So we know the internal structures of computers and their programs, but we don't know the internal structure of humans and how that leads to sentience, but somehow this translates into having good reasons for thinking the relationships in computers are not isomorphic to or meaningfully related to the unknown stru…

> That's right, an unknown way. So we know the internal structures of computers and their programs, but we don't know the internal structure of humans and how that leads to sentience, but somehow this translates into having good reasons for thinking the relationships in computers are not isomorphic to or meaningfully related to the unknown structures that lead to human sentience? Don't you see the big blank there? This just does not follow and is exactly the first point I made in this thread.

It absolutely follows. The evidence for consciousness is subjective human experience so it makes sense to assume that other humans and living things have consciousness (because living things are all related to each other).

Meanwhile it doesn't make sense to assume that a computer running some program is conscious just because it mimics human conversation. It isn't evolved life and doesn't have the same kinds of structures as evolved life.

It would be unbelievably weird if we reverse engineered consciousness without understanding how our bodies generate consciousness.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#342

Post by garfieldnate »

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…

What's most surprising to me there is that she actually recognized Snoopy as a dog. He's a pretty abstracted drawing, walking on two feet and pointing with human hands. There's something interesting to be said about perceptual development there. I believe that Daniel Everett said that even the adult Piraha couldn't understand abstracted 2D drawings at all.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#343

Post by robwwilliams »

smokel wrote: post #107
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.

The book "The Synaptic Organization of the Brain" appears to be from 2003. Is it still relevant, or is there perhaps a more recent book worth checking out?

It is great even though older. The chapter by Sterling on retina is amazing. Yes there is an updated version by Gordon Shepherd and colleagues: Handbook of Brain Microcircuits, but I actually prefer the 2003 edition.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#344

Post by robwwilliams »

__loam wrote: post #180
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.

I will continue to sigh. The visual cortex is relatively simple and linear. You're not saying something that's as impressive as you think it is.

Anything but simple and anything but linear.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#345

Post by Vecr »

NoGravitas wrote: post #320
Vecr wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't disprove your existence, I'm pretty sure that does not make any sense. "I think therefore I am." No need for free will of any type there, and a currently existing computer could probably do the same thing.

You can prove that "thinking is happening", but when you go looking for the "I", you'll never find it — only more thoughts. Gautama, Hume.

Sure, but how does that let you disprove your existence?

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#346

Post by ganzuul »

Vecr wrote: post #286
ganzuul wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For a personality construct it could be comforting.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#347

Post by dragonwriter »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #148
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step A: build a machine which reflects a reduced and simplified model of how some part of a human works Step B: turn it on its head "the human brain is nothing more than... " It's a bit tautological. The worry is that there's a Step C: Humans actually start to behave as simple as said machine.

What machines have we built that reflect a reduced and simplified model of how some part of a human works (other than as a minor and generally invisible research projects) ?

> What machines have we built that reflect a reduced and simplified model of how some part of a human works

A very large number, e.g., lots of implants and prosthetic devices for one fairly large class.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#348

Post by dragonwriter »

ImHereToVote wrote: post #46
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

Except LLM's are built on neural networks. That are based on how neurons work. The first tech that actually copies aspects of us.

Neural networks aren't based on how biological neurons work, though they are, I think, based on an outdated and even when less outdated simplified model of how they might work.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#349

Post by mock-possum »

garfieldnate wrote: post #342
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…

What's most surprising to me there is that she actually recognized Snoopy as a dog. He's a pretty abstracted drawing, walking on two feet and pointing with human hands. There's something interesting to be said about perceptual development there. I believe that Daniel Everett said that even the adult Piraha couldn't understand abstracted 2D drawings at all.

If we were indoctrinated into the tradition of keeping capybaras as pets then she probably would have assumed snoopy was a capy. As it stands - he’s not a cat, he’s not a bird, so he must be a dog.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#350

Post by dragonwriter »

schoen wrote: post #211
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

One attempt could be "it allows us to make better predictions about the mind". This article mentions excitement about neural networks overgeneralizing verb inflections, which human language learners also do. If neural networks lead to the discovery of new examples of human cognitive or perceptual errors or illusions, or to the discovery of new effective methods for learning, teaching, or psychotherapy, that could cou…

> If neural networks lead to the discovery of new examples of human cognitive or perceptual errors or illusions,

How would they, except as tools for analyzing research rather than research models? They don't work like human brains, so while they might sometimes exhibit something that looks like similar behavior when viewed a certain way, other than already having observed the behavior in human beings, there’s no reason to expect something they do to reflect what human brains, and moreover there’s no reason to expect useful insights from the corresponding behavior, since there is no reason to expect that the behavior responds similarly outside of the conditions where it is observed in both systems, leaving all the insight on the brain to cone from the brain (or models that, unlike artificial neural nets, we know have structural and behavioral similarities with (some parts of) human brains that are useful.)

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