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Large language models lack deep insights or a theory of mind

arxiv.org

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

#171

Post by krainboltgreene »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #157
upghost wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 quali…

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

okay, and 500 years ago we would have said it was magic, that doesn't make it magic. people who don't understand the thing often are confused about the thing. as soon as you explain how the whole mechanism works it's obvious that it's not that thing.

> 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.

citation massively needed, this sounds like it was written by someone who thinks idiocracy was a documentary and not a comedy.

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

#172

Post by hilux »

krainboltgreene wrote: post #167
hilux wrote: post #156

> 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…

Look this is the only time I'll engage in this sort of discussion on HN[1], but first Donald Knuth is a real Human and it's extremely weird to position world class experts as something otherworldly. Second, suppose you got what you wished for (you used the "us" pronoun), is that not a sentient mind that you're forcing to do your labour? Does that not raise a ton of red flags in your ethics? [1] normally I find HN dis…

I don't understand your objection about Don Knuth. I'm well aware who he is. My point is that I don't have access to that kind of insightful human helper. So I "settle" for ChatGPT.

And by "us" I mean "those of us who choose to use ChatGPT," and not that I was forcing you to use ChatGPT.

It's true, I don't morally object to asking ChatGPT to "do my labour." It raises no red flag for me. (Okay, there's the IP red-flag about how ChatGPT was trained, but I don't think that's what you mean.)

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

#173

Post by famouswaffles »

tivert wrote: post #120
theptip wrote: post #117

This is a terrible eval. Do not update your beliefs on whether LLMs have Theory of Mind based on this paper. The eval is a weird, noisy visual task (picture of astronaut with “care packages”). Their results are hopelessly narrow. A better eval is to use actual scientifically tested psychology test on text (the native and strongest domain for LLMs), for example the sort of scenarios used to gauge when children develop…

> A better eval is to use actual scientifically tested psychology test on text (the native and strongest domain for LLMs), for example the sort of scenarios used to gauge when children develop theory of mind (“Alice puts her keys on the table then leaves the room. Bob moves the keys to the drawer. Alice returns. Where does she think the keys are?”) which GPT-4 can handle easily; it is very clear from this that GPT ha…

How do I know you have theory of mind or are concious if not the "right" response to a test ?

As far as I'm concerned, the only person I can be certain is concious is me.

It doesn't have to be a "scientifically tested psychology test"

Construct your own story with multiple characters of varying knowledge and beliefs and see how it does.

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

#174

Post by dweinus »

verytrivial wrote: post #161

I was having a drunken discussion with the philosophy lecturer a few weeks back. He was making a very similar point. I kept saying it does it really matter? Lacking a theory of mind and deep insights describes 90% of all perfectly normal people. And perhaps training will be able to "fake it" (he went off on bold tangents about the definitions of this and that), or the language model will be an adjunct to some other m…

Of course they don't! But I think the most fascinating and exciting part about LLMs is: a sufficiently large model can produce things that look a lot like cognition, without having it at all. That is shocking and suggests maybe AGI is not even goal worth hitting.

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

#175

Post by tim333 »

tivert wrote: post #127
poulsbohemian wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree, and while we are at it... look I'm just a guy, not an expert, but I can't understand why there's so much focus on AGI. It feels like there are so many niche areas where we could apply some kind of analytical augmentation and by solving problems in the small, might learn something that would help figure the larger question of intelligence. I don't need the AI to replace everything I do, I need it to…

> ...but I can't understand why there's so much focus on AGI. Lots of software engineers have spent their lives reading sci-fi that features AGI, and they're excited by/lost in that fantasy. It's interesting to see that in people who often view themselves as hyper-rational.

AGI as in computer intelligence that out does humans would be a huge deal in practical terms. Chat GPT and similar are kind of like handy toys. With proper AGI you could link it to a robot body and tell it to go off, design a better version of itself, make a billion more robots and take over the world. It's a different category of thing. And if you think that's just sci-fi I think you'll get a surprise at some point during your life.

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

#176

Post by verytrivial »

dweinus wrote: post #174
verytrivial wrote: post #161

I was having a drunken discussion with the philosophy lecturer a few weeks back. He was making a very similar point. I kept saying it does it really matter? Lacking a theory of mind and deep insights describes 90% of all perfectly normal people. And perhaps training will be able to "fake it" (he went off on bold tangents about the definitions of this and that), or the language model will be an adjunct to some other m…

Of course they don't! But I think the most fascinating and exciting part about LLMs is: a sufficiently large model can produce things that look a lot like cognition, without having it at all. That is shocking and suggests maybe AGI is not even goal worth hitting.

Exactlyyyy-ish. I'm firmly in the camp that believes that there is no magic central kernel to consciousness or intelligence, that it's an emergent property. We are seeing partial emergence now and it's only going to get more complex.

Edit: this is may turning to a search for truth and definitions of reality question. When the last person alive is no longer able to tell whether they're speaking to an AI, does it actually matter whether it's true generalized intelligence or just an emergent approximation?

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

#177

Post by TeMPOraL »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #107
I_Am_Nous wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of The Last Question by Isaac Asimov. I also think if we stopped expecting all LLMs to have an immediate answer, it would be relatively easy to shim some kind of "conscience" to direct the output in different ways. Similar to the safeties already in place in LLMs, but instead of it just saying "NO DON'T SAY THAT" it can dialog internally to change what the output is until it reaches what it believes t…

It would have an emotional reaction to certain "thought constructs" and would be guided by that. Or we could just give them three laws

Obligatory reminder that the "three laws" were invented to be deconstructed, with Asimov spending a lot of pages showing many ways in which they completely fail, illustrating that AI alignment is a hard problem.

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

#178

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #151
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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)

I'm saying that I'm extremely confident that...

1. Most people (including Buddhists) think that their internal monologue comprises their thoughts, in majority or even in total.

2. Can't conceive of the possibility of a thought existing other than expressed in their spoken language

3. Find it difficult or impossible to suppress their inner monologue.

4. When successful at suppressing it believe that their thoughts have ceased.

5. Are apparently unaware of the paradox that belief entails... if they are no longer thinking, how is the decision made to initiate thinking once more? That's a conscious decision, or else successful Buddhists would turn into vegetables and die of starvation in their little meditation pose.

This isn't a matter of speculation anymore. We can see inside the brain, non-invasively, while these things occur. Any mystical element is an artifact of people poorly defining words, or being completely ignorant of how a brain must operate in principle. You're all very confused.

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

#179

Post by tivert »

tim333 wrote: post #175
tivert wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...but I can't understand why there's so much focus on AGI. Lots of software engineers have spent their lives reading sci-fi that features AGI, and they're excited by/lost in that fantasy. It's interesting to see that in people who often view themselves as hyper-rational.

AGI as in computer intelligence that out does humans would be a huge deal in practical terms. Chat GPT and similar are kind of like handy toys. With proper AGI you could link it to a robot body and tell it to go off, design a better version of itself, make a billion more robots and take over the world. It's a different category of thing. And if you think that's just sci-fi I think you'll get a surprise at some point…

> With proper AGI you could link it to a robot body and tell it to go off, design a better version of itself, make a billion more robots and take over the world.

^^^^^ literally a plot ripped from the pages of science fiction used to reason about the real world.

> And if you think that's just sci-fi I think you'll get a surprise at some point during your life.

Such faith that fantasy can be made real. Wake me up when you have my hyperdrive ready.

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

#180

Post by TeMPOraL »

rf15 wrote: post #40
tinco wrote: post #30

I think that if they would, that would be very surprising and indicative of a lot of wastefulness inside the model architecture. All these tests are simple single prompt experiments, so the LLM's get no chance to reason about their responses. They're just system 1 thinking, the equivalent of putting a gun to someone's head and asking them to solve a large division in 2 seconds. I bet a lot of these experiments would…

they can't reason though, sadly - the premise does not hold.

That's literally GP's point though - they don't reason because reasoning requires a loop, which you deny them and then say "see, it can't reason".
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