Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

They’re made out of weights

maxleiter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 739 posts

Re: They’re made out of weights

#311

Post by IsTom »

Joeri wrote: post #267
IsTom wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This way of thinking can only explain externally-visible parts of consciousness. It does nothing to address internal experience of being conscious and qualia. I don't think the internal experience has any bearing on physical reality (P-zombies would act the same externally) which makes this something outside of the realm of currently understood physics.

Internal to what? The brain is not a monolithic thing, it is different parts communicating and interconnecting. When the connection between the halves is cut, the person objectively becomes two people, but still experiences and presents themselves as one. Observing ourselves is just one part of the brain responding to another, or theorizing on past behavior. There is probably no actual introspection going on inside o…

Internal as in that which is feeling things. In this context the physical brain is what is responsible for what you do and feel, but it is not physically different from other matter and it requires no "internal observer" do do its thing.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#312

Post by shaky-carrousel »

darkwater wrote: post #240
Planktonne wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could absolutely write a compelling story about a sentient toaster; it's been done before [1]. That is entirely separate to whether or not it would be a meaningful way to understand the world; a convincing story is not the same thing as one that is true. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brave_Little_Toaster

But that toaster would just be a device to talk about consciousness in general. In this case it does that and also it talks specifically of the LLM case, which can spark the discussion. Unless you believe to have the only valid and true opinion on the matter, and affirm that a normal toaster is just the same as an LLM in this topic.

An LLM is as conscious as a toaster...

Re: They’re made out of weights

#313

Post by SlinkyOnStairs »

codeflo wrote: post #259
f_klem wrote: post #161

After reading Being and Time from Martin Heidegger, What Computers can't still do by Hubert Dreyfus, and some authors in cognitive linguistics (Langacker and Lakoff mainly), I strongly tend to disagree with any theory about emergent consciousness in modern or future AI systems, any theory proposing a similarity between AI systems and the human brain/mind, or any theory about the computational mind. What all these the…

> These theories are flawed in the sense that they cannot account for subjective experience and agency, amongst other things. On the contrary, it's precisely this assumption, that there is a "subjective experience" that requires explanation beyond the material, that is axiomatically assumed without evidence. It falls apart quickly, any "subjective experience" is completely tied to neurons, knock out the neurons and t…

There's two meanings to "the body is a complex machine" and I think you're missing the forest for the trees here.

1) The abstract "dictionary" version: It'd be technically correct to say that the body is a machine under the definition of "A machine is a thermodynamic system that uses power to apply forces and control movement to perform an action.".

2) But there's also the less abstract/technical: "The body is alike the complex machines we have built", and this is much less true. Especially for the brain. The "neuron" analogy in machine learning is effective, but entirely wrong; We do not fully know how even a single neuron works, nevermind any complex system made out of multiple of them.

With regard to AI, there's a lot of people extrapolating "There is no magical animating spirit, the brain is just a pile of stochastic molecules following the laws of physics" into "The brain is an inert pile of matter, computers are an inert pile of matter, ergo AI/LLMs are like the brain!"

Especially so by people who have a financial/legal interest in doing so. "AI is just like a brain, fire your employees and buy our LLM now!", "AI is just like a brain, so it's totally not copyright infringement!"

Re: They’re made out of weights

#314

Post by deadbabe »

What if instead of creating weights out of language we could somehow record many events and create weights out of long chains of causes and effects, so that an LLM could predict the next thing to happen?

Re: They’re made out of weights

#315

Post by skydhash »

Lplololopo wrote: post #230
sumitkumar wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this is more like compression to remember and not for learning/understanding.

Compression is the reason why these Models are able to learn and understand. My brain is doing the exact same thing. I learned enough to compress concepts like a bike and what a bike does and for what i can use a bike. Ask a LLM and it will answer you similiar to humans. Blind people learn concepts of bikes too and in a smiliar way: by description. LLMs just have so much data in form of text available and are able to…

> Blind people learn concepts of bikes too and in a smiliar way: by description.

And by touch and sound. And maybe some were daring enough to drive one, or unlucky enough to get hit by one. But have way more input than just texts.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#316

Post by chadgpt3 »

shaky-carrousel wrote: post #312
darkwater wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that toaster would just be a device to talk about consciousness in general. In this case it does that and also it talks specifically of the LLM case, which can spark the discussion. Unless you believe to have the only valid and true opinion on the matter, and affirm that a normal toaster is just the same as an LLM in this topic.

An LLM is as conscious as a toaster...

There is no evidence for this statement

Re: They’re made out of weights

#317

Post by cjg »

gobdovan wrote: post #83

You can take the weights and model description, write them down on a notebook, then, by hand, compute the next token. Try to do the same with meat.

> You can take the weights and model description, write them down on a notebook

Can you though?

Re: They’re made out of weights

#318

Post by garganzol »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #248
DougBTX wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weights are code, the prompt is code, the output is code. Is the meat code?

Yes. Is it data? Yes. Is the distinction between "code" and "data" just someone's opinion? Yes. There is no such distinction in reality.

That's why encountering something like LISP for the first time (by writing a LISP interpreter, for example) creates a big bang event in form of an imminent intellectual catharsis. People who encountered it just once, will never be able to see the world through the old "meaty" lenses afterwards.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#320

Post by keybored »

dsign wrote: post #118

Oh, this was a fun read and one that kids should have in school before they turn ten. Because we are not taking things seriously. If ClosedAI or DeepDisTrust or Posthropic come up with something that quacks like a sentient being, our built-in innate reaction is going to be to scorn it, dismiss it and end the conversation. The alternative, to even consider that we fungible creatures who live in apple-eating-sin that g…

How commmon is Panpsychism belief and vegan-on-ethical-grounds among the AI Soulists?
Post reply on HN