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Three Inverse Laws of AI

susam.net

361–370 of 388 posts

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely.. this is what the bozo AI-accelerants don't understand. What LLM's are is almost like a hacked-means of intuition. Its very impressive no doubt. But ultimately it isn't even close to what the well-trained human can infer at lightning speed when combined with intuition. The LLM producers really ought to accept their existing investments are ultimately not going to yield the returns necessary for a viable se…

> it isn't even close to what the well-trained human can infer at lightning speed when combined with intuition. It's a lot closer to that than anything was five years ago. Do you really think we're going to be interacting with them the same way five years from now?

This is an empty statement - if you pour in hundreds of billions should you not expect progress?

The question is will these firms be able to continue to spend at that rate. The managers of the firms don’t necessarily have control over that - ultimately punishment in the form of drop in stock price hurts many people involved and will force the management to act in the interest of marginal investors. Even Zuckerberg who has majority control had to concede when meta’s stock cratered to below 100.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#362

>Humans must not anthropomorphise AI systems. That is, humans must not attribute emotions, intentions or moral agency to them. Anthropomorphism distorts judgement. In extreme cases, anthropomorphising can lead to emotional dependence. Impossible. I anthropomorphise my chair when it squeaks. Humans anthropomorphise everything. They gender their cars and boats. This tool can actually make readable sentences and play a…

The problem is that humans use this as a coping mechanism for things they don't understand: I don't understand why the printer doesn't work, so I give it a mind of its own. This is harmless for inconsequential stuff like a chair, but when it's an LLM, people should at least understand it's behavior so they don't get trapped. That means not trusting it with advice meant for the user or on things it has no concept of,…

Humans have extremely limited understanding of their own processing? When you ask a human why they did something wrong, they usually confabulate an answer as well.

Human conscious introspection doesn't extend to actual processing, it is limited at best to recollection of internal experience leading up to the point in question. That internal experience in turn represents but a tiny fraction of what actually happens in the brain and does so on a pretty abstract level only.

"Anthropomorphizing" is a red herring. Humans understand themselves so insufficiently, they can't claim reasonably founded judgement either way. When you don't know what you're doing, you probably shouldn't be doing it.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we actually much more cruel to fish than to other animals that we slaughter?

We suffocate them to kill them when we pull them from the sea. That's quite mean. Few people would advocate the humanity of killing a cow in the same way.

Are you aware of how cows are actually killed?

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#364
post #236
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes LLM text prediction and peer-reviewed encyclopedias are the same. Good on you throwing internet pages in there too, that brings balance or something

My understanding of the parent is more charitable: If your thinking process relies on being told only the truth, you are going to fare lousy in this world. LLMs are an example, but so are random pages on the internet, a buch of stuff we get served by the media (mainstream or otherwise), "expert opinions" by biased or sponsored experts or experts in a different field, etc, etc. As the popular quip goes: It ain’t what…

Yes, you understand me 100%. vhantz is just picking a fight.

More importantly, we don't need to live in a world where every presentation of a fact comes with a disclaimer that it can be wrong.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best test for consciousness is “can it be turned off” … ie sleep. Mammals, birds, fish sleep, ergo they are conscious.

As opposed to the PhD student, who does not sleep and is not conscious.

for instance, see MMAcevedo aka Miguel https://qntm.org/mmacevedo

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and then look at any number of research papers showing that CoT output has limited impact on the end result. We've trained these models to pretend to reason.

> Right, and then look at any number of research papers showing that CoT output has limited impact on the end result. Which research papers? Do I have to find them? > We've trained these models to pretend to reason. I have no idea why that matters. Can you tell me what the difference is if it looks exactly the same and has the same result?

Examples:

https://arxiv.org/html/2506.02878v1

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.01191

Anthropic themselves: https://www.anthropic.com/research/reasoning-models-dont-say...

They were approaching this from an interpretability standpoint, but the more interesting finding in there is that models come up with an answer that fits their training and context provided. CoT is generated to fit the anticipated answer.

In these studies, there are examples of CoT that directly contradicts the response these models ultimately settle on.

This is not reasoning. This is pretense.

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that humans use this as a coping mechanism for things they don't understand: I don't understand why the printer doesn't work, so I give it a mind of its own. This is harmless for inconsequential stuff like a chair, but when it's an LLM, people should at least understand it's behavior so they don't get trapped. That means not trusting it with advice meant for the user or on things it has no concept of,…

Humans have extremely limited understanding of their own processing? When you ask a human why they did something wrong, they usually confabulate an answer as well. Human conscious introspection doesn't extend to actual processing, it is limited at best to recollection of internal experience leading up to the point in question. That internal experience in turn represents but a tiny fraction of what actually happens in…

[dead]

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#369

>Humans must not anthropomorphise AI systems. That is, humans must not attribute emotions, intentions or moral agency to them. Anthropomorphism distorts judgement. In extreme cases, anthropomorphising can lead to emotional dependence. Impossible. I anthropomorphise my chair when it squeaks. Humans anthropomorphise everything. They gender their cars and boats. This tool can actually make readable sentences and play a…

To me this rule is not necessarily something each individual must do on their own, but rather an objective for systems and societies.

In this frame the outcome is more: Companies providing chatbots should not encourage anthropomorphism by giving cute names, making them witty, using human like pictures, ...

Re: Three Inverse Laws of AI

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right, and then look at any number of research papers showing that CoT output has limited impact on the end result. Which research papers? Do I have to find them? > We've trained these models to pretend to reason. I have no idea why that matters. Can you tell me what the difference is if it looks exactly the same and has the same result?

Examples: https://arxiv.org/html/2506.02878v1 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.01191 Anthropic themselves: https://www.anthropic.com/research/reasoning-models-dont-say... They were approaching this from an interpretability standpoint, but the more interesting finding in there is that models come up with an answer that fits their training and context provided. CoT is generated to fit the anticipated answer. In these studies…

This is just a no-true-Scotsman defense of reasoning. We were talking about inferring intent.

If someone recorded the inner monologue of human decision-making, would it look like a logician’s workbook? No, I don’t think it would. People like to pretend they are rational.

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