351–359 of 359 posts
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A lot of the claims of usefulness evaporate when tested. The word useful has many meanings. Perhaps their only reliable use will be the rubber duck effect.
> A lot of the claims of usefulness evaporate when tested In your personal experience? Because that's been my personal experience too, in lots of cases with LLMs. But I've also been surprised the other way, and overall it's been a net-positive for myself, but I've also spent a lot of time "practicing" getting prompts and tooling right. I could easily see how people give it try for 20-30 minutes, not getting the resul…
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Having studied those things I can say that from their perspective “what’s the difference?” is an entirely legitimate question. Boldly asserting that what LLMS do is not cognition is even worse than asserting that it is. (If you dig deep into how they do what they do we find functional differences, but the outcome are equivalent) The butlerian view is actually a great place to start. He asserts that when we solve a pr…
> Boldly asserting that what LLMS do is not cognition is even worse than asserting that it is. That's the issue I was driving at. The machine is so convincing. How can we say what it does is not "thinking" when it seems to be breaking down a query like a human does. The distinction between what an AI is and what an LLM is - is so thin that most of us will be ignorant and combine the two because you really need to see…
But it doesn't ... and it's important to understand why not.
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I've tended to agree with this line of argument, but on the other hand... I expect that anybody you asked 10 years ago who was at least decently knowledgeable about tech and AI would have agreed that the Turing Test is a pretty decent way to determine if we have a "real" AI, that's actually "thinking" and is on the road to AGI etc. Well, the current generation of LLMs blow away that Turing Test. So, what now? Were we…
There's this funny thing I've noticed where AI proponents will complain about AI detractors shopping around some example of a thing that AIs supposedly struggle with, but never actually showing their chat transcripts etc. to try and figure out how they get markedly worse results than the proponents do. (This is especially a thing when the task is related to code generation.) But then the proponents will also complain…
It doesn't logically require that and you can't provide any sort of logical argument for the claim. And what the heck is "life"? Biologists have a 7-prong definition, and most of those prongs are not needed for intelligence, "volition" whatever the heck that is, or self-awareness.
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I've tended to agree with this line of argument, but on the other hand... I expect that anybody you asked 10 years ago who was at least decently knowledgeable about tech and AI would have agreed that the Turing Test is a pretty decent way to determine if we have a "real" AI, that's actually "thinking" and is on the road to AGI etc. Well, the current generation of LLMs blow away that Turing Test. So, what now? Were we…
> I expect that anybody you asked 10 years ago who was at least decently knowledgeable about tech and AI would have agreed that the Turing Test is a pretty decent way to determine if we have a "real" AI The "pop culture" interpretation of Turing Test, at least, seems very insufficient to me. It relies on human perception rather than on any algorithmic or AI-like achievement. Humans are very adept at convincing themse…
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The terminology is so confusing in AI right now. I use LLMs, I enjoy them, I'm more productive with them. Then I go read a blog from some AI devs and they use terms like "thinking" or similar terms. I always have to ask "We're still s stringing words together with math right? Not really thinking right?" The answer is always yes ... but then they go back to using their wonky terms.
I personally love LLMs and use them daily for a variety of tasks. I really do not know how to “fix” the terminology. I agree with you that they are not thinking in the abstract like humans. I also do not know what else you would call “chain-of-thought”. Perhaps “journaling-before-answering” lol. It’s basically talking out loud to itself. (Is that still being too anthropomorphic?) Is this comment me “thinking out loud…
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Thinking in humans is prior to language. The language apparatus is embedded in a living organism which has a biological state that produces thoughts and feelings, goals and desires. Language is then used to communicate these underlying things, which themselves are not linguistic in nature (though of course the causality is so complex that the may be _influenced_ by language among other things).
Agreed. Many animals without language show evidence of thinking (e.g. complex problem solving skills and tool use). Language is clearly an enabler of complex thought in humans but not the entire basis of our intelligence, as it is with LLMs.
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You say that "I don't believe LLMs have become sentient" nor contemplate. But what is the basis for your belief in this? I would think than an atheist would be more likely to have opposite beliefs. I also concede that a "form" of intelligence/sentience could emerge. Presently the form is called "artificial," I'd say. And you're right... not all scifi argues machine evolves to humanity. I meant to refer to that body o…
Thanks for the respectful reply. We agree on scifi! As for atheism: it's merely the lack of belief that god exists (or in some definitions, the active belief that it doesn't exist). Nothing else, nothing more. Individual atheists may believe some other things, or not. I believe some kind of intelligence could arise again, much like ours arose "out of nonintelligence". I just don't think this is it -- LLMs are very im…
Someone said, "The AI you use today is the worst AI that you will ever use."
Is the internet today better than it's ever been? I can easily imagine LLMs becoming ad-riden, propagandized, cloudlfare intermediated, enshittified crap the way most of the internet has.
I do believe the LLMs we're using today are the best they're going to be - for the reasons you've highlighted.
Some superior tech might displace them, but LLMs as they are seem much more likely to get worse.
I'm encouraging people to make any important queries right now and save the results. For example "which books should i read on X" - right now you get good answers, in the future it'll be enshittified.