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Thoughts on thinking

dcurt.is

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Re: Thoughts on thinking

#151

Post by dvrp »

wuj wrote: post #150

A good analogy is lifting. We lift to build strength, not because we need that extra strength to lift things in real life. There are plenty machinery to do that for us. But we do so for the sense of accomplishment of hitting our goals when we least expect it, seeing physical changes, and the feeling that we are getting healthier rather than chasing the utility benefits. If we perceive lifting as an utility, we realiz…

What a coincidence! I think we both commented noting the phenomenon of abundance and the repercussions for us humans at the individual level. Especially from a fulfillment and autonomy point of view.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#152

Post by garrickvanburen »

hammock wrote: post #146
don_neufeld wrote: post #3

Completely agree. From all of my observations, the impact of LLMs on human thought quality appears largely corrosive. I’m very glad my kid’s school has hardcore banned them. In some class they only allow students to turn in work that was done in class, under the direct observation of the teacher. There has also been a significant increase in “on paper” work vs work done on computer. Lest you wonder “what does this gu…

> I’m very glad my kid’s school has hardcore banned them. What does that mean, I’m curious? The schools and university I grew up in had a “single-sanction honor code” which meant if you were caught lying or cheating even once you would be expelled. And you signed the honor code at the top of every test. My more progressive friends at other schools who didn’t have an honor code happily poo-pooed it as a repugnantly ha…

I don’t see the problem.

I’m not sure how LLMs output is indistinguishable from Wikipedia or World Book.

Maybe? and if the question is “did the student actually write this?” (which is different than “do they understand it?” there are lots of different ways to assess if a given student understands the material…that don’t involve submitting typed text but still involve communicating clearly.

If we allow LLMs- like we allow calculators, just how poor LLMs are will become far more obvious.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#153

Post by gavinray »

wuj wrote: post #150

A good analogy is lifting. We lift to build strength, not because we need that extra strength to lift things in real life. There are plenty machinery to do that for us. But we do so for the sense of accomplishment of hitting our goals when we least expect it, seeing physical changes, and the feeling that we are getting healthier rather than chasing the utility benefits. If we perceive lifting as an utility, we realiz…

I lift because since I was a child, I always wanted to look like an Anime character.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#154

Post by zmmmmm »

I don't agree directly with this, but a variant of it does bother me: will the auto-regressive nature of AI eventually limit the novelty of the ideas humanity can come up with?

So many breakthroughs come from people who work either in ignorance or defiance of existing established ideas. Almost by definition, in fact - to a large extent, everything obvious has already been thought. So to some extent, all the real progress happens in places that violate norms and pre-established logic.

So what's going to happen now if every idea has to run the gauntlet of a supremely intelligent but fully regressive AI? It feels like we could lose a tremendous amount of the potential for original thought from humanity. A good counter argument would be that this has already happened and we're still making progress. I just wonder however if it's a question of degree and that degree matters.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#155

Post by zebez »

gavinray wrote: post #153
wuj wrote: post #150

A good analogy is lifting. We lift to build strength, not because we need that extra strength to lift things in real life. There are plenty machinery to do that for us. But we do so for the sense of accomplishment of hitting our goals when we least expect it, seeing physical changes, and the feeling that we are getting healthier rather than chasing the utility benefits. If we perceive lifting as an utility, we realiz…

I lift because since I was a child, I always wanted to look like an Anime character.

Is it working?

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#156

Post by zerox22 »

qudat wrote: post #125

Man people are using LLMs much differently from myself. I use it as an answer engine and that’s about where I stop using it. It’s a great tool for research and quick answers but I haven’t found it great for much else.

That's exactly what I do as well. Sometimes I stumble upon a question that I know I won't find an answer for just by googling, so it's easier to formulate it fully to an AI. In some cases it's like a more convenient search engine, where I'm pretty sure I will get an answer to my question without needing to trick the engine with a good query. Which is rather tedious more often than not.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#157

Post by BobbyTables2 »

zmmmmm wrote: post #154

I don't agree directly with this, but a variant of it does bother me: will the auto-regressive nature of AI eventually limit the novelty of the ideas humanity can come up with? So many breakthroughs come from people who work either in ignorance or defiance of existing established ideas. Almost by definition, in fact - to a large extent, everything obvious has already been thought. So to some extent, all the real prog…

Indeed. Major advancements throughout history often happened because someone looked at a problem differently than traditional approaches.

The AI will have been trained predominantly on the traditional approaches.

I feel AI will be fundamentally limited to regurgitating past ideas and intelligence.

It may at least use a breadth of knowledge to save some people time by helping them avoid repeating work already done.

I’d love to see an AI trained only on knowledge up to 1800 come up with a single invention of the past 200 years. (It won’t happen)

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#158

Post by hammock »

garrickvanburen wrote: post #152
hammock wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m very glad my kid’s school has hardcore banned them. What does that mean, I’m curious? The schools and university I grew up in had a “single-sanction honor code” which meant if you were caught lying or cheating even once you would be expelled. And you signed the honor code at the top of every test. My more progressive friends at other schools who didn’t have an honor code happily poo-pooed it as a repugnantly ha…

I don’t see the problem. I’m not sure how LLMs output is indistinguishable from Wikipedia or World Book. Maybe? and if the question is “did the student actually write this?” (which is different than “do they understand it?” there are lots of different ways to assess if a given student understands the material…that don’t involve submitting typed text but still involve communicating clearly. If we allow LLMs- like we a…

If LLMs are allowed then sure. However, when LLMs are explicitly banned from use, is the case I am talking about.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#159

Post by abathologist »

I think we are going to be seeing a vast partitioning in society in the next months and years.

The process of forming expressions just is the process of conceptual and rational articulation (as per Brandom). Those who misunderstand this -- believing that concepts are ready made, then encoded and decoded from permutations of tokens, or, worse, who have no room to think of reasoning or conceptualization at all -- they will be automated away.

I don't mean that their jobs will be automated: I mean that they will cede sapience and resign to becoming robotic. A robot is just a "person whose work or activities are entirely mechanical" (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=robot).

I'm afraid far too many are captive to the ideology of productionism (which is just a corollary of consumerism). Creative activity is not about content production. The aim of our creation is communication and mutual-transformation. Generation of digital artifacts may be useful for these purposes, but most uses seem to assume content production is the point, and that is a dark, sad, dead end.

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