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Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

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Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#201

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

Retr0id wrote: post #177
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then never say to yourself "AI is no big deal because it can't do X". Say instead (for example) "It is important that I understand the differences between both the capabilities and internal mechanisms of AI and people, even if, over some period of time, the capabilities may appear to converge".

I'm not terribly interested in truisms, I'm more interested in figuring out what AIs actually cannot fundamentally do, if anything (present or future).

What are the things that humans actually cannot fundamentally do, if anything?

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#202

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

dekhn wrote: post #178
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What machines have we built that reflect a reduced and simplified model of how some part of a human works (other than as a minor and generally invisible research projects) ?

any chemical or large industrial plant built in the last 30 years

I think most industrial chemists would likely disagree. But I guess YMMV.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#203

Post by mempko »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #4
carlossouza wrote: post #3

Great essay; impressive content. The fact that it's very unlikely for any of the current models to create something that even remotely resembles this article tells me we are very far away from AGI.

don't underestimate exponentials

Exactly. Global Warming and species decline/extinction (we are in the 6th mass extinction) all appear to be exponential. The question is, will we have AGI before we destroy ourselves?

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#204

Post by mempko »

LLMs are like human minds the same way airplanes are like birds. Both birds and airplanes can fly, but very differently. Birds can land on a dime, airplanes can't. Airplanes can carry a lot more weight and go faster.

Similarly LLMs can do things humans can't. No human has as much knowledge about the world as a typical LLM model. However, an LLM model can't generalize outside it's training set well (recent Deep Mind research). LLM doesn't have a memory outside it's input. LLM isn't Turing complete (has fixed amount of steps and always terminates).

We are building airplanes, not birds. That much is obvious.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#205

Post by alexwebb2 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #194
alexwebb2 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a well-documented concept called "God of the gaps" where any phenomenon humans don't understand at the time is attributed to a divine entity. Over time, as the gaps in human knowledge get filled, the god "shrinks" - it becomes less expansive, less powerful, less directly involved in human affairs. The definition changes. It's fascinating to watch the same thing happen with human exceptionalism – so many cries…

I honestly don't know where this is supposed to be happening. I have observed the opposite for decades. When Gary Kasparov was beaten by Stockfish, people proclaimed the end of chess and went on AI hyperboles. Same with Watson winning Jeopardy, Alexa, etc. Every time computers outperform humans in some domain this is conflated with deep general progress, panicked projections of replacement and job losses, the end tim…

“but AI can’t create art”

“but AI can’t write poetry”

“but AI can’t do real work”

Panic is probably not warranted. Too much incentive stacked against the truly apocalyptic scenarios. But yeah, a lot of jobs are probably going to shrink.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#206

Post by Terretta »

jtr1 wrote: post #199
dsign wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. To that I’m going to add that the blood of our civilization is culture (sciences, technology, arts, traditions). The moment there is something better at it than humans, it’s our “horse-moment”.

Simplifying greatly, but 1. LLMs “create” these cultural artifacts by recombining their inputs (text, images, etc), all of which are cultural artifacts created by humans 2. Humans also create cultural artifacts by recombining other cultural artifacts. The difference is that they combine another input which we can’t really prove AI has: qualia, the individual experience of being in the world, the synthesis of touch an…

Oh! TY for this thought.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#207

Post by Izkata »

chrbr wrote: post #103
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs don't create new information, they only compress existing complexity in their train and inference data sets. Humans definitely create new information. (Well, at least some humans do.)

I agree. A thought experiment I had recently: Let's say we could somehow train an LLM on all written and spoken language from the western Roman civilization (Republic + Western Empire, up until 476 AD/CE, just so I don't muddy the experiment with near-modern timelines). Would it, without novel information from humans, ever be able to spit out a correct predecessor of modern science like atomic theory? What about stea…

> Let's say we could somehow train an LLM on all written and spoken language from the western Roman civilization (Republic + Western Empire, up until 476 AD/CE, just so I don't muddy the experiment with near-modern timelines). Would it, without novel information from humans, ever be able to spit out a correct predecessor of modern science like atomic theory?

Funny example - depending on how close the predecessor has to be, the answer is maybe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomism

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#208

Post by liminalsunset »

djmips wrote: post #129
cperciva wrote: post #16

When my toddler was first learning to talk, we had some pictures of felines hanging on the walls; some were cats and others were kittens. She quickly generalized; henceforth, both of them were "catten".

My toddler understood that places to buy things were called stores and understood eating - so restaurants were deemed 'eating stores'. And we just went with that for a long time and now they are grown we still call them eating stores for fun sometimes. :)

Interestingly, in Chinese, the actual word for a "restaurant" is often quite literally translated, "meal/food store", or 饭店, and a 店 is just a store.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#209

Post by soks86 »

brainbag wrote: post #96
throw0101a wrote: post #35

> But he could understand so much more than he could say. If you asked him to point to the vacuum cleaner, he would. Perhaps worth noting that it is possible to teach infants (often starting at around 9 months) sign language so that they can more easily signal their desires. Some priority recommended words would probably be: * hungry/more * enough/all done (for when they're full) * drink (perhaps both milk/formula an…

I had heard about this before my son was born. We didn't try to teach him anything, anytime we remembered (which was sporadic) we just used the gestures when talking to him. I was amazed at how quickly he picked up on it, and he was able to communicate his needs to us months before he was able to verbalize. It took very minimal effort on our part, and was very rewarding for him; certainly a lot better than him crying…

I'm not crying, you're crying!

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#210

Post by zmgsabst »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #148
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step A: build a machine which reflects a reduced and simplified model of how some part of a human works Step B: turn it on its head "the human brain is nothing more than... " It's a bit tautological. The worry is that there's a Step C: Humans actually start to behave as simple as said machine.

What machines have we built that reflect a reduced and simplified model of how some part of a human works (other than as a minor and generally invisible research projects) ?

Electronic are a simplified model of the brains used by computers:

They emulate the faculty, rather than biology.

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