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I don't know how you get here from “predict the next word”

grumpy-economist.com

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Re: I don't know how you get here from “predict the next word”

#251

Post by qsera »

joquarky wrote: post #246
qsera wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, you said it. It is the feeling of understanding and feeling/sensing implies consciousness. Why does it matter? I don't know. All I know is that it is not the same thing, because a chunk of metal cannot feel. So I don't want it to be called by the same name. When AI marketing (ab)uses the word, it is to project the appearance of human equivalence. And I don't like to fall for it.

Psychopaths don't feel. Are they conscious?

They don't? If they stub their toe will they feel the pain? can they "see"? can they "hear"?

Re: I don't know how you get here from “predict the next word”

#252

Post by qsera »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #229
qsera wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>humans it seems to me they are results based and highly contextual (ie largely arbitrary). Is that right? It seems that we generally say that "the computer is programmed to do", instead of "the computer understand" or "the computer knows", even if the programmed computer can produce the same result as a human who does it.

Of course we don't say that. You can't ask the (traditionally) programmed computer a freeform question and get a sensible answer back. We tried that for going on 50 years and it never really worked. (The highest achievement that comes to mind is answering jeopardy questions.) You can very carefully construct a query in a dedicated language, debug that query, and get useful results back. But that's clearly just a huma…

>multi-billion parameter LLM

This is equivalent to an `if` statement with multi-billion levels of nesting. It is just a "traditional program", just unimaginably huge.

Just because it is not "traditionally programmed" does not mean that it is not a really huge "traditional program".

Scaling something by many order of magnitude does not put it in a different category. A computer program, no matter how big, is still a computer program.

Re: I don't know how you get here from “predict the next word”

#253

Post by qsera »

joquarky wrote: post #245
qsera wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No need to gatekeep the word "understanding" behind subjective human experience eg qualia. Yea, I think gatekeeping is needed exactly for the same reason. Make up another word if you want..

If you make up a word, nobody will know what it means.

All of these communication can be done without using such words. It would just appear less "magical". This is done is the guise of dumbing it down, but people sometimes take it quite literally, which is what the marketing wants anyway..

Re: I don't know how you get here from “predict the next word”

#254

Post by [deleted] »

shakna wrote: post #187
jbotz wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ELIZA absolutely did not ever pass anything resembling a real Turing test. A real Turing test is adversarial, the interrogator knows the testees are trying to fool him.

Landauer and Bellman, absolutely put ELIZA to an adversarial Turing test, and called it such, in 1999. [0] But... Over in 2025, ELIZA was once again, put to the Turing test in adversarial conditions. [1] And still had people think it was a real person, over 27% of the time. Over a quarter of the testees, thought the thing was a human. The "ELIZA Effect" wasn't coined because everyone understands that an AI isn't cons…

[deleted]

Re: I don't know how you get here from “predict the next word”

#255

Post by grey-area »

joquarky wrote: post #239
karamanolev wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their weights are distorted heavily by training What does that even mean? Their weights are essentially created by training. There aren't some magic golden weights that are then distorted.

Alignment scrubs the underlying raw output to be socially acceptable. It's an artificial superego.

I was under the impression it is a part of training which adjusts weights before release.

Are you saying it is a separate process which scrubs output before we see it?

Re: I don't know how you get here from “predict the next word”

#256

Post by grey-area »

joquarky wrote: post #241
grey-area wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well here's some: Confabulation/Hallucination - https://github.com/lechmazur/confabulations Failure to read context - https://georggrab.net/content/opus46retrieval.html Deleting tests to make them pass - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jasongorman_and-after-it-did-... Going rogue and deleting data - https://x.com/jasonlk/status/1946069562723897802 Agent security nightmares because they are not in fact intelligent assi…

I've seen all of these from human teammates in my 30+ years in tech.

Sure but now everyone can do them all the time at 10x speed!

Re: I don't know how you get here from “predict the next word”

#257

Post by gwern »

asymmetric wrote: post #167

The ideas in the update were previously explored by Gwern 2 years ago: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PQaZiATafCh7n5Luf/gwern-s-sh...

Specifically, Cochrane wrote:

> On reflection I have started to worry again. In 10 to 20 years nobody will read anything any more, they just will read LLM digests. So, the single most important task of a writer starting right now is to get your efforts wired in to the LLMs. Nothing you write will matter if it is not quickly adopted to the training dataset. As the art of pushing your results to the top of the google search was the 1990s game, getting your ideas into the LLMs is today’s. Refine is no different. It’s so good, everyone will use it. So whether refine and its cousins take a FTPL or new Keynesian view in evaluating papers is now all determining for where the consensus of the profession goes.

For more recent comments, see https://dwarkesh.com/p/gwern-branwen https://gwern.net/llm-writing https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/34J5qzxjyWr3Tu47L/is-buildin... https://gwern.net/blog/2025/ai-cannibalism https://gwern.net/blog/2025/good-ai-samples https://gwern.net/style-guide

The scaling will continue until morale improves. I advise people to skate to where the puck will be, and to ask themselves: "if I knew for a fact that LLMs could do something I am doing in 1-2 years, would I still want to do it? If not, what should I be doing now instead?"

Re: I don't know how you get here from “predict the next word”

#258

Post by fc417fc802 »

qsera wrote: post #252
fc417fc802 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course we don't say that. You can't ask the (traditionally) programmed computer a freeform question and get a sensible answer back. We tried that for going on 50 years and it never really worked. (The highest achievement that comes to mind is answering jeopardy questions.) You can very carefully construct a query in a dedicated language, debug that query, and get useful results back. But that's clearly just a huma…

>multi-billion parameter LLM This is equivalent to an `if` statement with multi-billion levels of nesting. It is just a "traditional program", just unimaginably huge. Just because it is not "traditionally programmed" does not mean that it is not a really huge "traditional program". Scaling something by many order of magnitude does not put it in a different category. A computer program, no matter how big, is still a c…

No, it's not equivalent to nested if statements. If you can mathematically demonstrate that it is I would be interested.

Anyway that's irrelevant. The point is that we use different language when referring to the one because its capabilities appear to be fundamentally different.

Your argument comes down to a claim of human exceptionalism - that a computer program can never "understand" simply by virtue of being a computer program. You haven't actually provided any defense of that claim though. You've just assumed it without justification.

Re: I don't know how you get here from “predict the next word”

#259

Post by fc417fc802 »

qsera wrote: post #249
fc417fc802 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can reduce the human auditory process to a similar mechanical list. At which specific point would you say a human is hearing? You've fallen into the trap of human exceptionalism but you don't seem to be aware of that fact. Are you a substance dualist or not?

>You can reduce the human auditory process to a similar mechanical list. You can't. Because we don't know at which point sound gets registered in consciousness.

Because you can't even define what consciousness is, let alone objectively test for it.

You are entirely wrong though. You most certainly _can_ reduce the human auditory process to a (bio)mechanical list.

You have unilaterally, arbitrarily, and without justification added consciousness to that list.

Re: I don't know how you get here from “predict the next word”

#260

Post by qsera »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #258
qsera wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>multi-billion parameter LLM This is equivalent to an `if` statement with multi-billion levels of nesting. It is just a "traditional program", just unimaginably huge. Just because it is not "traditionally programmed" does not mean that it is not a really huge "traditional program". Scaling something by many order of magnitude does not put it in a different category. A computer program, no matter how big, is still a c…

No, it's not equivalent to nested if statements. If you can mathematically demonstrate that it is I would be interested. Anyway that's irrelevant. The point is that we use different language when referring to the one because its capabilities appear to be fundamentally different. Your argument comes down to a claim of human exceptionalism - that a computer program can never "understand" simply by virtue of being a com…

>No, it's not equivalent to nested if statements.

It is. If you control the randomness involved, the output of a model is completely deterministic. Which means that it can be represented by a huge lookup table.

Anything that can be represented by a lookup table can be expressed as an `if then else` statement.

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