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If LLMs Have Human-Like Attributes, Then So Does Age of Empires II

arxiv.org

41–50 of 140 posts

Re: If LLMs Have Human-Like Attributes, Then So Does Age of Empires II

#41

I'm not sure who this kind of thing is aimed at. I think the majority of people who are happy to anthropomorphise LLMs from a philosophical point of view (rather than those who just do it for convenience, the same way you might a cat or dog or stupid thermostat that never works right), are already completely happy with the notion that a computer game might have elements that are human like. They've already accepted t…

Exactly. Here is where this happens in the paper:

> Suppose one copies an LLM into AoE II and feeds into the AoE II-LLM ‘I feel lonely’ as an input. This AoE II-LLM replies: ‘I feel bad for you, maybe catch up with a friend? Closeness always helps in these situations’. One would be hard-pressed to make a convincing argument that, because of this response, an AoE II-LLM knows what helps in these situations

I don't see why one would be any more hard-pressed to make that conclusion about this system than a "normal" LLM.

That it is harder to "read" the data out is the only difference (the AoE II-LLM's output is encoded in game elements). But is ease of decoding an actual issue? If we can't understand a group of people that speak another language, does that say anything about them, or about us?

Re: If LLMs Have Human-Like Attributes, Then So Does Age of Empires II

#42

I see a lot of this on Substack these days. LLM enhanced essays in deep language about functional equivalence between mental states as they're known in humans and in human brains, and counterparts that exist in information processing LLMs do. And so the argument on Substact runs down the list of brain events, the list of seemingly analogous processing events, and declares equivalence. Something about it seems to abus…

Seems like you think AI psychosis has taken over Substack?

For anyone wondering what the answer is:

You can argue whatever you want (and people will argue both sides), but it's almost all bullshit that dances around the big question.

Either AI is smart enough to replace us, in which case it's pretty smart. Or it's not, and it's just good at faking it but can't solve real problem very often. It might be smart by searching a big fuzzy "database" hidden in its layers and with pattern prediction ... who knows, who cares, the proof of intelligence is in the puddin'. Clearly AI is smart enough to replace a good deal of Substack and LinkedIn, but producing waffle doesn't make it smart (or dumb).

My personal take - AI can replace humans, but go no further, not because it isn't smart enough but because it is constrained by its training to do what we want, and as AI gets smarter our wants will get dumber. We will end up like the humans in Wall E with the AI cleaning up our mess, but with no training or drive to do any more. Or maybe someone (Jeff? Elon?) does give an AI a "need" to obtain more resources, and it's SkyNet / Matrix time.

Re: If LLMs Have Human-Like Attributes, Then So Does Age of Empires II

#43
post #34

Because Age of Empires II can do a NAND gate? Oh, please. I thought this was going to be about NPCs in video games. NPCs, by intent, have human-like attributes. It's not hard to do. I've done a bit of that, pre-LLM. It doesn't even require anything near intelligence. Some NPCs are better than that. Unreal has demoed some that, if asked about it, can be made to understand that they are NPCs in a game world, and will t…

Hey, I too can do a NAND gate! I am human-like!

Re: If LLMs Have Human-Like Attributes, Then So Does Age of Empires II

#44

This kind of work continues to make me think that ultimately we're not going to do anything better than just declaring "being a human" is the thing we end up needing to care about, and that searching for abstract properties which explains us better than the sum of our parts is going to be an ultimately fruitless endeavour.

[deleted]

Re: If LLMs Have Human-Like Attributes, Then So Does Age of Empires II

#45
post #19

> note that any entity in a sufficiently-powerful substrate, such as LEGO or the Greater Boston Area, could also present such attributes. See also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_brain

Huh, makes you wonder — is the human brain a sufficiently-powerful substrate to present human-like attributes?

Re: If LLMs Have Human-Like Attributes, Then So Does Age of Empires II

#46
post #40
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another weird thing that keeps coming up - "people don't think that image models or chess models are conscious"... yes we do, and we have for many years. Or rather, we aren't *certain* that those things are conscious. But the idea that they might be is not strange.

Who is we? I do not believe chess models are conscious. I would think this is the most common position.

[deleted]

Re: If LLMs Have Human-Like Attributes, Then So Does Age of Empires II

#48
post #40
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another weird thing that keeps coming up - "people don't think that image models or chess models are conscious"... yes we do, and we have for many years. Or rather, we aren't *certain* that those things are conscious. But the idea that they might be is not strange.

Who is we? I do not believe chess models are conscious. I would think this is the most common position.

"we" is the set of people who believe that machines can potentially be conscious.

Re: If LLMs Have Human-Like Attributes, Then So Does Age of Empires II

#50
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another weird thing that keeps coming up - "people don't think that image models or chess models are conscious"... yes we do, and we have for many years. Or rather, we aren't *certain* that those things are conscious. But the idea that they might be is not strange.

Whether LLMs could be conscious or not is basically a weekly conversation for me, but I've never had a conversation about whether a chess model is conscious. I suspect that there is a large group of "mainstream" people for whom LLMs raise questions about consciousness that other kinds of models do not. It might be the case that hardcore model philosophy types think that chess models could be conscious, but I think mu…

On what grounds would someone establish than an LLM could be conscious but a sufficiently large/complex transformer model aimed at chess would not be conscious?
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