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Thoughts on thinking

dcurt.is

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Re: Thoughts on thinking

#211

Post by BobbyTables2 »

JackFr wrote: post #136
zdragnar wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who has learned a second language can tell you that you aren't proficient just by memorizing vocabulary and grammar. Having a conversation and forming sentences on the fly just feels different- either as a different skill or using a different part of the brain. I also don't think the nature of LLMs being a negative crutch is new knowledge per se; when I was in school, calculus class required a graphing calcula…

Well I can extract a square root by hand. We all had to learn it and got tested on it. No one to day learns that anymore. The vast, vast majority have no idea and I don’t think people are dumber because of it. That is to say, I think it’s not cut-and-dried. I agree you need to learn something, but something’s it’s okay use a tool.

The manual methods are also the foundation for higher approaches involving approximation and iterative solutions. These are widely used in engineering and science.

Pressing a calculator key doesn’t give the same insight.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#212

Post by double0jimb0 »

99% (or more?) of human written work is filler/fluff. LLMs seem to doing a great job of reducing this by actually getting to the point.

There is still a limit at which “points” can be groked, humans can only read so fast.

What is the problem here?

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#213

Post by BobbyTables2 »

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…

Today such infractions might result in a verbal warning…

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#214

Post by BobbyTables2 »

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…

Oral presentation without notes and a live Q&A would be some ways…

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#215

Post by jerjerjer »

uludag wrote: post #26

What happens to conversation in this case? When groups of people are trained to use LLMs as a crutch for thinking, what happens when people get together and need to discuss something. I feel like the averageness of the thinking would get compounded so that the conversation as a whole becomes nothing but a staging ground for a prompt. Would an hour long conversation about the intricacies of a system architecture becom…

I want to see people who used LLMs all their conscious life enter the workforce. It's going to be amazing. I mean soon we'll see people who are essentially raised by LLMs.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#217

Post by BobbyTables2 »

azinman2 wrote: post #122
johnisgood wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can learn a lot from LLMs though, same with, say, Wikipedia. You need curiosity. You need the desire to learn. If you do not have it, then of course you will get nowhere, LLMs or no LLMs.

Never underestimate laziness, or willingness to take something 80% as good for 1% of the work. So most are not curious. So what do you do for them?

Realistically, putting them into trades sooner could almost be a good thing. Kids who don’t want to learn end up dragging down the class and distracting those who do.

But, these are kids… Hard to argue that adults should selectively deny education when it is their responsibility to do otherwise.

We don’t neglect the handicapped because it is inconvenient to provide them with assistance.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#218

Post by drdaeman »

wcfrobert wrote: post #92
curl-up wrote: post #31

> The fun has been sucked out of the process of creation because nothing I make organically can compete with what AI already produces—or soon will. So the fun, all along, was not in the process of creation itself, but in the fact that the creator could somehow feel superior to others not being able to create? I find this to be a very unhealthy relationship to creativity. My mixer can mix dough better than I can, but…

I think the article is getting at the fact that in a post-AGI world, human skill is a depreciating asset. This is terrifying because we exchange our physical and mental labor for money. Consider this: why would a company hire me if - with enough GPU and capital - they can copy-and-paste 1,000 of AI agents much smarter to do the work? With AGI, Knowledge workers will be worth less until they are worthless. While I'm g…

> With AGI, Knowledge workers will be worth less until they are worthless.

The article you've linked fundamentally relies on the assumption that "the tasks can be done better/faster/cheaper by AIs". (Plus, of course, the idea that AGI would be achieved, but without this one the whole discussion would be pointless as it would lack the subject, so I'm totally fine with this one.)

Nothing about AGI (as in "a machine that can produce intelligent thoughts on a given matter") says that human and non-human knowledge workers would have some obvious leverage over each other. Just like my coworkers' existence doesn't hurt mine, a non-human intelligence is of no inherent threat. Not by definition.

Non-intelligent industrial robotics is well-researched and generally available, yet we have plenty of sweatshops because they turn out to be cheaper than robot factories. Not fun, not great, I'm no fond of this, but I'm merely taking it as a fact, as it is how it currently is. So I really wouldn't dare to unquestionably assume that "cheaper" would be true.

And then "better" isn't obvious either. Intelligence is intelligence, it can think, it can make guesses, it can make logical conclusions, and it can make mistakes too - but we've yet to see even the tiniest hints of "higher levels" of it, something that would make humans out of the league of thinking machines if we're ranking on some "quality" of thinking.

I can only buy "faster" - and even that requires an assumption that we ignore any transhumanist ideas. But, surely, "faster" alone doesn't cut it?

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#219

Post by jen729w »

emporas wrote: post #208
abathologist wrote: post #159

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…

It is knowledge that gets automated, rather than reasoning. I was thinking of the first solar civilization, which lives totally in space. Near a star, but not in a planet, and no gravitational pull anywhere. They build tubes 10 km long, a shot board is put at one end, and the players at the other end. They shoot darts at the board, and each shot takes 5 hours to reach the target. That's their national sport. Problem…

Oh turns out ChatGPT generates exactly the level of banality that one would expect.

https://chatgpt.com/canvas/shared/6827fcdd3ec88191ab6a2f3297...

I don't want to read this story. I probably want to read one that a human author laboured over.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#220

Post by jen729w »

fennecbutt wrote: post #181
abathologist wrote: post #159

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…

99% if not 100% of human thought and general output is derivative. Everything we create or do is based on something we've experienced or seen. Try to think of an object that doesn't exist, and isn't based on anything you've ever seen before, a completely new object with no basis in our reality. It's impossible. Writers made elves by adding pointy ears to a human. That's it.

> Try to think of an object that doesn't exist, and isn't based on anything you've ever seen before, a completely new object with no basis in our reality. It's impossible.

Pick up an Iain M. Banks book, my friend.

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