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Life is more than an engineering problem

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Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#151

Post by compiler_queen »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #74
abecedarius wrote: post #68

Chiang makes some insightful points, e.g. about what we mean by magic. Then I come to > [LLMs] can get better at reproducing patterns found online, but they don’t become capable of actual reasoning; it seems that the problem is fundamental to their architecture. and wonder how an intelligent person can still think this, can be so absolute about it. What is "actual" reasoning here? If an AI proves a theorem is it only…

Even most intelligent people can hallucinate, we still haven't fixed this problem. There's a lot of training material and bias which leads many to repeat those things "LLM's are just a stochastic parrot, glorified auto complete/google search, Markov chains, just statistics", etc. The thing is, these sentences sound really good and so it's easy to repeat them when you have made up your mind. It's a shortcut.

> Even most intelligent people can hallucinate, we still haven't fixed this problem.

No we have not, neurodiverse people like me need accommodations not fixing.

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#152

Post by ip26 »

abecedarius wrote: post #68

Chiang makes some insightful points, e.g. about what we mean by magic. Then I come to > [LLMs] can get better at reproducing patterns found online, but they don’t become capable of actual reasoning; it seems that the problem is fundamental to their architecture. and wonder how an intelligent person can still think this, can be so absolute about it. What is "actual" reasoning here? If an AI proves a theorem is it only…

Can an LLM discover a new theory of natural law, such as prove or disprove string theory? This is what I ponder. The creation or discovery of something new that it can’t just copy, that would have to be discovered via human thought otherwise. Something provably true. The equivalent of discovering general relativity before humans had.

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#153

Post by eterps »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #135
eterps wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and wonder how an intelligent person can still think this, can be so absolute about it. What is "actual" reasoning here? Large language models excel at processing and generating text, but they fundamentally operate on existing knowledge. Their creativity appears limited to recombining known information in novel ways, rather than generating truly original insights. True reasoning capability would involve the ability…

"Their creativity appears limited to recombining known information" There are some theories that this is true for humans also. There are no human created images that weren't observed first in nature in some way. For example, Devils/Demons/Angels were described in terms of human body parts, or 'goats' with horns. Once we got microscopes and started drawing insects then art got a lot weirder, but not before images were…

I understand your point, but it's not comparable:

Humans can suddenly "jump" cognitive levels to see higher-order patterns. Gödel seeing that mathematics could describe mathematics itself. This isn't combining existing patterns, but seeing entirely new levels of abstraction.

The human brain excels at taking complex systems and creating simpler mental models. Newton seeing planetary motion and falling apples as the same phenomenon. This compression isn't recombination - it's finding the hidden simplicity.

Recombination adds elements together. Insight often removes elements to reveal core principles. This requires understanding and reasoning.

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#154

Post by photochemsyn »

Barrin92 wrote: post #146
photochemsyn wrote: post #118

> “It’s like imagining that a printer could actually feel pain because it can print bumper stickers with the words ‘Baby don’t hurt me’ on them." Problem: the human brain has no pain receptors, no nociceptors. It just takes in messages from remote nerves and 'prints a bumper sticker' that tells higher cognitive centers 'you're feeling pain!'. What's the difference? > "LLMs are like a search engine that rephrases info…

>What's the difference? The pain receptors. The human brain doesn't just "have" pain receptors. Your entire body, including your brain, is one system. Your brain isn't piloting your body like a mech. This brain body dualism is a misconception of how biological organisms work. You are your pain receptors just like you are your brain, and removing any part would alter your perception of the world. >How does this differ…

If you were technologically advanced to the point of being able to float a human brain in a vat, and connect up all the nerves going into that brain to synthetic sensors with the appropriate signalling outputs, then you could construct a synthetic reality for that brain that it would not be able to distinguish from its previous brain-in-a-body experiences.

As far as learning, human learning is certainly much slower than machine learning but it's not really clear at a biochemical-molecular level that they're entirely different, eg the formation of memories and so on, considering a wide range of alternate hypothesis before selecting one, etc.

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#155

Post by asdf6969 »

ChrisKnott wrote: post #14

> "It’s like imagining that a printer could actually feel pain because it can print bumper stickers with the words ‘Baby don’t hurt me’ on them. It doesn’t matter if the next version of the printer can print out those stickers faster, or if it can format the text in bold red capital letters instead of small black ones. Those are indicators that you have a more capable printer but not indicators that it is any closer…

> You need to really get into the weeds of what "actually feeling" means.

We don’t even know what this means when it’s applied to humans. We could explain what it looks like in the brain but we don’t know what causes the perception itself. Unless you think a perfect digital replica of a brain could have an inner sense of existence

Since we don’t know what “feeling” actually is there’s no evidence either way that a computer can do it. I will never believe it’s possible for an LLM to feel.

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#156

Post by whatever1 »

ip26 wrote: post #152
abecedarius wrote: post #68

Chiang makes some insightful points, e.g. about what we mean by magic. Then I come to > [LLMs] can get better at reproducing patterns found online, but they don’t become capable of actual reasoning; it seems that the problem is fundamental to their architecture. and wonder how an intelligent person can still think this, can be so absolute about it. What is "actual" reasoning here? If an AI proves a theorem is it only…

Can an LLM discover a new theory of natural law, such as prove or disprove string theory? This is what I ponder. The creation or discovery of something new that it can’t just copy, that would have to be discovered via human thought otherwise. Something provably true. The equivalent of discovering general relativity before humans had.

I mean the vast vast majority of people cannot prove/disprove theorems either, but we still consider ourselves as intelligent.

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#157

Post by watwut »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #74
abecedarius wrote: post #68

Chiang makes some insightful points, e.g. about what we mean by magic. Then I come to > [LLMs] can get better at reproducing patterns found online, but they don’t become capable of actual reasoning; it seems that the problem is fundamental to their architecture. and wonder how an intelligent person can still think this, can be so absolute about it. What is "actual" reasoning here? If an AI proves a theorem is it only…

Even most intelligent people can hallucinate, we still haven't fixed this problem. There's a lot of training material and bias which leads many to repeat those things "LLM's are just a stochastic parrot, glorified auto complete/google search, Markov chains, just statistics", etc. The thing is, these sentences sound really good and so it's easy to repeat them when you have made up your mind. It's a shortcut.

It is not hallucination. When people do what we call halucination in chatGPT, it is called "bullshiting", "lying" or "being incompetent".

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#158

Post by asdf6969 »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #78
ChrisKnott wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that with current LLMs the error goes the other way; they appear more conscious than they are, compared to, say, crows or octopuses which appear less conscious than they actually are. My point is that "appears conscious" is really the only test there is. In what way is a human that says "that hurts" really feeling pain? What about Stephen Hawking "saying it", what about if he could only communicate through pr…

The only actual difference in my view is that somehow we feel that we are so uber special. Besides that, it seems there's no reason to believe that we are anything more than chemical signals. But the fact that we have this strong "feeling" that we are special refuses us to admit that. I feel like I'm special, I feel like I exist. That's the only argument for being more than something else.

> I feel like I exist.

This is pretty much the only thing in the world that you can definitely prove to yourself. It’s not a feeling

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#159

Post by dexwiz »

inglor_cz wrote: post #105
OptionOfT wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think those are 2 different issues. Searching for something, and finding it, is different from what ChatGPT / Claude does. Google (in the good old days) is like the library. You want to search 'how to plant potatoes on Mars'. No results. Well, you split it up, maybe a book on planting potatoes, and a book about missions to Mars that describes soil composition. Then, when you have those books you start reading, pars…

OK, so I asked ChatGPT how to plant potatoes on Mars... ================================================= Planting potatoes on Mars would be a pretty fascinating (and challenging) task! While Mars has conditions that make growing traditional crops difficult—like low temperatures, low atmospheric pressure, and a lack of oxygen—scientists have been experimenting with ways to grow plants in Martian-like conditions. Here…

What is this supposed to prove? The question isn’t particular novel. There are decades of speculative terraforming discussions on the internet that you can search via Google, especially after the Martian book and movie.

Re: Life is more than an engineering problem

#160

Post by mfuzzey »

mola wrote: post #93
sukruh wrote: post #34

I agreed with almost all of it until: >My stance on this has probably shifted in a negative direction over time, primarily because of my growing awareness of how often technology is used for wealth accumulation. I don’t think capitalism will solve the problems that capitalism creates, so I’d be much more optimistic about technological development if we could prevent it from making a few people extremely rich. What's…

Wealth is power. When you have enough and the rest don't, it's inevitable you will use it for political power. This obsession with anti government sentiment that Americans have gives them a blind spot for the fact the power accumulation in the hands of the few is the problem. Not government. How exactly could you stop so called 'wealth laundering'?

Some abuse of wealth for political power may be inevitable but some countries are a lot better at limiting it than others.

For example here in France the amount of money politicians can spend on campaigning is strictly limited (and reimbursed by the state for those that pass a certain threshold of the vote). I'm not saying that it's perfect or that abuse doesn't sometimes still occur (as the current court case involving ex president Sarkozy shows) but I think it does improve things a lot.

Contrast that with the American system where to have any chance of becoming president (no matter which party you support) you basically have to be rich. And where multiple lobbyists and special interest groups basically buy the policies they want...

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