I wish I would've learned about ANNs in elementary school. It looks like a worthwhile and cool lesson package, if only they'd do away with the idiotic dogma...
Using secondary school maths to demystify AI
121–130 of 264 posts
Re: Using secondary school maths to demystify AI
#122[stub for offtopicness] (in this case, thinkiness)
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.
Define "think".
We observe through our senses geometric relationships.
Syntax is exactly that; letters, sentences, paragraphs organized in spatial/geometric relationships.
At best thought is recreation of neural networks in the brain which only exist as spatial relationships.
Our senses operate on spatial relationships; enough light to work by, and food relative to stomach to satisfy our biological impetus to survive (which is spatial relationships of biochemistry).
The idea of "thought" as anything but biology makes little sense to me then as a root source is clearly observable. Humanity, roughly, repeats the same social story. All that thought does not seem to be all that useful as we end up in the same place; the majority as serfs of aristocracy.
Personally would prefer less "thought" role-play and more people taking the load of the labor they exploit to enable them to sit and "think".
Re: Using secondary school maths to demystify AI
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would say a different problem: There's many definitions of "thinking". AI and brains can do some, AI and brains definitely provably cannot do others, some others are untestable at present, and nobody really knows enough about what human brains do to be able to tell if or when some existing or future AI can do whatever is needed for the stuff we find special about ourselves. A lot of people use different definitions…
What's a definition of thinking that brains definitely provably can't do?
Computing the Kolmorgorov constant?
Re: Using secondary school maths to demystify AI
#124Earlier 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.
Yeah. This whole AI situation has really exposed how bad most people are at considering the ontological and semantic content of the words they use.
Indeed, people confidently assert as established fact things like "brains are bound by the laws of physics" and therefore "there can't be anything special" about them, so "consciousness is an illusion" and "the mind is a computer", all with absolute conviction but with very little understanding of what physics and maths really do and do not say about the universe. It's a quasi-religious faith in a thing not fully comprehended. I hope in the long run some humility in the face of reality will eventually be (re)learned.
Re: Using secondary school maths to demystify AI
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
> much like a human adult. I do hope you're able to remember what you had for lunch without incessantly repeating it to keep it in your context window
I do hope you're able to remember what buttons you just pressed without staring at your hands while doing so to keep it in your working memory
I do hope you're able to remember what was your browser tab 5 tab switches ago without keeping track of it...
Re: Using secondary school maths to demystify AI
#126Earlier 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.
It's just provencial nonsense, there's no sound reasoning to it. Reductionism being taken and used as a form of refutation is a pretty common cargo culting behavior I've found. Overwhelmingly, I just don't think the majority of human beings have the mental toolset to work with ambiguous philosophical contexts. They'll still try though, and what you get out of that is a 4th order baudrillardian simulation of reason.
"Just" is used here as a reductive device. You reduce others to a few sentences.
Sentences constructed of words and representations of ideas defined long before you existed. I question whether you can work with ambiguous contexts as you have had the privilege of them being laid out in language for you already by the time you were born.
From my reference frame you appear to merely be circumlocuting from memory, and become the argument you make about others.
Re: Using secondary school maths to demystify AI
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, a better retort would be "Human brains are not magic, just physics. Protons, neutrons and electrons don't think". But I think most people get what GP means.
Until you can define what thinking is, you can't assert that particles don't think (panpsychism).
Panpsychism is actually quite reasonable in part because it changes the questions you ask. Instead of “does it think” you need to ask “in what ways can it think, and in what ways is it constrained? What types of ‘experience/qualia’ can this system have, and what can’t it have?”
When you think in these terms, it becomes clear that LLMs can’t have certain types of experiences (eg see in color) but could have others.
A “weak” panpsychism approach would just stop at ruling out experience or qualia based on physical limitations. Yet I prefer the “strong” pansychist theory that whatever is not forbidden is required, which begins to get really interesting (would imply that for example an LLM actually experiences the interaction you have with it, in some way).
Re: Using secondary school maths to demystify AI
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Equivalent statements could be made about how human brains are not magic, just biology - yet I think we still think. They're not equivalent at all because the AI is by no means biological. "It's just maths" could maybe be applied to humans but this is backed entirely by supposition and would ultimately just be an assumption of its own conclusion - that human brains work on the same underlying principles as AI becaus…
Unless you're supposing something mystical or supernatural about how brains work, then yes, it is "just" math, there is nothing else it could be. All of the evidence we have shows it's an electrochemical network of neurons processing information. There's no evidence that suggests anything different, or even the need for anything different. There's no missing piece or deep mystery to it. It's on those who want alterna…
AI operates alot like trees do as they are both using maths under the hood.
This is the point, we don't know the delta between brains and AI any assumption is equivalent to my statement.
Re: Using secondary school maths to demystify AI
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Human brains might not be explained by the same type of math AI is explained with, but it will be some kind of math...
There's no reason to believe this to be the case. Godel says otherwise.
Brain damage? If thought was outside physics, it would be a bit more durable than Humpty Dumpty.
Re: Using secondary school maths to demystify AI
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Human brains might not be explained by the same type of math AI is explained with, but it will be some kind of math...
There's no reason to believe this to be the case. Godel says otherwise.
Human brains and experiences seem to be constrained by the laws of quantum physics, which can be simulated to arbitrary fidelity on a computer. Nit sure where Godel’s incompleteness theory would even come in here…