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Large language models lack deep insights or a theory of mind

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Re: Large language models lack deep insights or a theory of mind

#151

Post by fnordpiglet »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #129
astrange wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not. They don't realize it, they're merely referring to stopping your internal monologue. They certainly have realized that. It's one of the first things you notice doing awareness meditation; thoughts appear from nowhere even if you didn't try to think them.

[flagged]

Are you saying every thought you’ve ever had is a logical consequence of all prior thoughts with a definite traceable lineage? (Assuming your mind was too dumb as some point and a thought emerged that originated all future thoughts)

Re: Large language models lack deep insights or a theory of mind

#153

Post by FrustratedMonky »

uoaei wrote: post #80
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't think so. Put gun to persons ahead. Ask them to do a division. Then screaming at them "HOW DID YOU DO THAT, TELL ME NOW, OR YOU'RE TOAST". Even most humans would splutter and not be able to answer.

The division problem is arbitrary and irrelevant to any notion of theory of mind. If you have a better example, you can feel free to offer one. I already did so above.

The point is not about the example of division, it is about 'tell me your intentions'.

A human also can't explain how their neurons calculated a division, or anything else, or 'intention', even if a gun is pointed at them.

So, why is that a fault of AI if it can't explain how itself is working? It is not a requirement for AGI.

Re: Large language models lack deep insights or a theory of mind

#154

Post by stcredzero »

KineticLensman wrote: post #22
ape4 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternately good liars probably have a solid theory of mind. You need to tell the other person what they are likely to believe so you need to know how they think.

> good liars probably have a solid theory of mind That, and confidence, and ideally a good memory so that they can keep track of what they have previously said to someone.

One take I have on internet corpus trained LLMs: They are the most widely read bullshitters we've ever seen.

Re: Large language models lack deep insights or a theory of mind

#155

Post by Tainnor »

hardlianotion wrote: post #150
pixl97 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't this also be the same for humans?

If you introspect and decide it is so, I won't disagree with you.

Almost every discussion about consciousness or human level intelligence eventually devolves into questioning whether everyone apart from you is just a robot

Re: Large language models lack deep insights or a theory of mind

#156

Post by hilux »

> A chief goal of artificial intelligence is to build machines that think like people.

Maybe that's their goal.

But for many users of AI, the goal is to have easy and affordable access to a machine that, for some input (perhaps in a tightly constrained domain), gives us the output that we would expect from a high-functioning human being.

When I use ChatGPT as a coding helper, I really don't care about its "theory of mind." And its insights are already as deep (actually more deep) as I get from most humans I ask for help. Real humans, not Don Knuth, who is unavailable to help me.

Re: Large language models lack deep insights or a theory of mind

#157

Post by FrustratedMonky »

upghost wrote: post #93
joduplessis wrote: post #66

For me, the entire AGI conversation is hyperbolic / hype. How can we infer intelligence to something when we, ourselves, have such a poor (none) grasp of what makes us conscience? I'm associating intelligence with consciousness - because it seems correlated. Are we really ready to associate "AGI" with solving math problems ("new Q algo.")? That seems incredibly naive & reinforces my opinion that LLM's are much more l…

Couldn't agree more. How about this -- I think we've already reached AGI. Let me know if this tracks: Pick a set of tasks that can be considered AGI tasks. Provided the task sequences can be compared as closer to AGI or further from AGI, we can create a reward model using the same techniques as were used by ChatGPT via RLHF. Thus, for any definition of AGI that is meaningful and selectable, even if subjectively selec…

Exactly. 5 years ago, we would have said what GPT-4 is doing now would be AGI.

Now it is here and it's like "No, what we really meant is it has to be the next Einstein".

People are forgetting how stupid people are.

GPT is already better than average human.

Most people can't do what we claim GPT must be capable of to qualify as AGI.

The only logical conclusion is that many people are also not conscious and don't qualify as being able to reason.

Re: Large language models lack deep insights or a theory of mind

#158

Post by kbelder »

fredliu wrote: post #94
passion__desire wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just true about toddlers but also for adults in particular time frame. Maturity of thought is cultural phenomenon. Descartes used to think animals are automaton while they behaved exactly like humans in almost all aspects in which he could investigate animals and humans during those times and yet he reached illogical conclusion.

That's a great point. Just thinking out loud, if we can time travel back to the cavemen time, and assuming we speak their language, there would still be so much that we couldn't explain or they wont' be able to understand even for the smartest cavemen adults. Unless, of course we spend significant time and effort to "bring them up to speed" with modern education.

In Jayne's 'The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind', there's some interesting investigation into some of our oldest known tales... Beowulf, The Iliad, etc.

In those texts, emotional and mental states are almost always referred to with analogs to physical sensation. 'Anger' is the heating of your head, 'fear' is the thudding of your heart. He claims that at the time, there wasn't a vocabulary that expressed abstract mental states, and so the distinction between the mind and body was not clear-cut. Then, over time, specialized terms to represent those states were invented, passed into common usage, which enabled an ability to introspect that didn't exist before.

(All examples are made up, I read it more than 20 years ago. But it made an impression.)

Re: Large language models lack deep insights or a theory of mind

#159

Post by omginternets »

mcguire wrote: post #55
moffkalast wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they may be referring to the principle task that consciousness serves in humans, which is to rationalize decisions we've already made subconsciously to other people so they will help us. The conscious "why" comes after the decision. In that sense it's exactly the kind of bullshit machine that LLMs are.

A thought experiment: what kind of functional MRI result would convince you that human consciousness is real and an important part of decision making? Note: if the result is someone reporting having made a decision before brain activity is seen, my next question is going to be "How does that work?"

>Note: if the result is someone reporting having made a decision before brain activity is seen, my next question is going to be "How does that work?"

My Ph.D is actually about this. Here's a paper: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Re: Large language models lack deep insights or a theory of mind

#160

Post by fnordpiglet »

danenania wrote: post #23
fnordpiglet wrote: post #19

In Buddhism there’s the idea that our core self is awareness, which is silent - it doesn’t think in a perceptible way, it doesn’t feel in a visceral way, but it underpins thought and feeling, and is greatly impacted by it. A large part of meditation and “release of suffering” is learning to let your awareness lead your thinking rather than your thinking lead your awareness. To be clear, I think this is in fact a corr…

Another idea from Buddhism is that this core of awareness you're talking about is nothingness. So when you stop all thought (if such a thing is really possible), you temporarily cease to exist as an individual consciousness. "Awareness" is when the thoughts come back online and you think "whoa, I was just gone for a bit". If that's how it works, then the "soul" is more like an emergent phenomenon created by the inter…

I think what you mean is that in Buddhism there is no self beyond the self implied by your thinking mind. The nothingness you refer to is the eschewing of attachment to what isn’t and being simply what is. It doesn’t mean a void, it means that all existence is within the awareness, which isn’t directly observable and is constantly changing. As such, it’s effectively nothing - except it is literally all you are. Your past and memories are just crude encodings, the future is a delusion. Your self identity has almost nothing to do with who you actually are right now. Your dissatisfaction with your situation isn’t meaningfully different from your delight in some experience - they’re both transient, and are just experiences of the present. You can avoid unpleasantness, and enjoy pleasure, but holding onto and seeking or avoiding entangles your awareness in what isn’t to the determinant of what is. As you continue releasing the various attachments and let the awareness take hold, and actions come naturally without thought or attachment, you cease suffering and cease causing suffering.

But to my understanding the idea of nothingness being some objective in Buddhism isn’t the case - but it’s often described as such because that state of pure awareness without encumbering thought and attachment in many ways to an unpracticed person feels like nothingness. After all, the awareness is silent, even if it is where all thought and feeling spring from.

Finally, awareness isn’t that moment you snap back to thought. You’re always aware. We just tend to be primarily aware of our thoughts and emotions. We walk around in a haze of the past and future and fiction as the world ticks by around us, and we tend to live in what isn’t rather than what is. You don’t disappear in the sense that you cease to be as an individual mind, you are always yourself - that’s a tautology. What you lose is the sense of some identity that’s separate from what you ARE in this very moment. You aren’t a programmer, you aren’t a Democrat, you aren’t a XYZ. You are what you are, and what that is changes constantly, so can’t be singularly defined or held onto as some consistent thing over time with labels and structure. You just simply are.

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