Using secondary school maths to demystify AI

Post by Tadpole9181 » Fri, Dec 12, 2025, 8:03 PM UTC

kipchak wrote: post #80

sigmoid10 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the counter argument is also exactly the same. Imagine you take one neuron from a brain and replace it with an artificial piece of electronics (e.g. some transistors) that only generates specific outputs based on inputs, exactly like the neuron does. Now replace another neuron. And another. Eventually, you will have the entire brain replaced with a huge set of fundamentally super simple transistors. I.e. a comput…

It seems like the brain "just" being a giant number of neurons is an assumption. As I understand it's still an area of active research, for example the role of glial cells. The complete function may or may not be pen and paper-able.

Post by ares623 » Fri, Dec 12, 2025, 8:18 PM UTC

brador wrote: post #37

dang wrote: post #190

[stub for offtopicness] (in this case, thinkiness)

Do we think? By every scientific measure we have the answer is no. It’s just electrical current taking the path of least resistance through connected neurons mixed with cell death. The fact a human brain peaks at IQ around 200 is fascinating. Can the scale even go higher? It would seem no since nothing has achieved a higher score it must not exist.

Post by gowld » Fri, Dec 12, 2025, 8:37 PM UTC

qsort wrote: post #16

causal wrote: post #2

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the idea of educating students on the math behind AI to demystify them. But I think it's a little weird to assert "AI is not magic and AI systems do not think. It’s just maths." Equivalent statements could be made about how human brains are not magic, just biology - yet I think we still think.

I agree saying "they don't think" and leaving it at that isn't particularly useful or insightful, it's like saying "submarines don't swim" and refusing to elaborate further. It can be useful if you extend it to "they don't think like you do". Concepts like finite context windows, or the fact that the model is "frozen" and stateless, or the idea that you can transfer conversations between models are trivial if you kno…

Post by isoprophlex » Fri, Dec 12, 2025, 8:39 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #95

qsort wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree saying "they don't think" and leaving it at that isn't particularly useful or insightful, it's like saying "submarines don't swim" and refusing to elaborate further. It can be useful if you extend it to "they don't think like you do". Concepts like finite context windows, or the fact that the model is "frozen" and stateless, or the idea that you can transfer conversations between models are trivial if you kno…

> Concepts like > finite context windows like a human has > or the fact that the model is "frozen" and stateless, much like a human adult. Models get updated at a slower frequency than humans. AI systems have access to fetch new information and store it for context. > or the idea that you can transfer conversations between models are trivial because computers are better-organized than humanity.

Post by mbg721 » Fri, Dec 12, 2025, 8:40 PM UTC

__loam wrote: post #94

causal wrote: post #2

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the idea of educating students on the math behind AI to demystify them. But I think it's a little weird to assert "AI is not magic and AI systems do not think. It’s just maths." Equivalent statements could be made about how human brains are not magic, just biology - yet I think we still think.

We don't know how brains work.