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Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

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Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#41

Post by dekhn »

xianshou wrote: post #33

Pour one out for the decline of human exceptionalism! Once you get material-reductionist enough and accept yourself as a pure function of genetics, environment, past experience, and chance, this conclusion becomes inevitable. I also expect it to be the standard within a decade, with AI-human parity of capabilities as the key driver.

We'll see! I came to this conclusion a long time ago but at the same time I do subjectively experience consciousness, which in itself is something a mystery in the material-reductionist philosophy.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#42

Post by throw0101a »

Chabsff wrote: post #17
Probiotic6081 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I firmly believe that LLMs are stochastic parrots and also that humans are too. To the point where I actually think even consciousness itself is a next-token predictor. Almost every time I'm on hackernews I end up baffled by software engineers feeling entitled to have an unfunded opinion on scientific disciplines outside of their own field of expertise. I've literally never encountered that level of hubris from any…

The befuddlement goes even farther for me. LLMs are, effectively, black-box systems that interface with the world via a stochastic parrot interface. You'd think that software engineers would be a group that easily understands how making radical assumptions about implementation details when looking at nothing but an interface is generally misguided. I'm not saying that there isn't a strong case to be made against LLMs…

> You'd think that […]

As a stochastic parrot I'm unable to do that.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#45

Post by gardenhedge »

LASR wrote: post #5

Often the "stochastic parrot" line is used as a reduction on what an LLM truly is. I firmly believe that LLMs are stochastic parrots and also that humans are too. To the point where I actually think even consciousness itself is a next-token predictor. Where the industry is headed - multi-modal models. This really I think is the remaining frontier of LLM Human parity. I also have a 15 month old son. It's totally obvio…

Did you teach your child to crawl? To laugh? To get excited?

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#46

Post by ImHereToVote »

Mattasher wrote: post #8

Humans have a long history of comparing ourselves, and the universe, to our latest technological advancement. We used to be glorified clocks (as was the universe), then we were automatons, then computers, then NPC's, and now AI's (in particular LLM's). Which BTW I don't think is a completely absurd comparison, see https://mattasher.substack.com/p/ais-killer-app

Except LLM's are built on neural networks. That are based on how neurons work. The first tech that actually copies aspects of us.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#47

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

function_seven wrote: post #12
LASR wrote: post #5

Often the "stochastic parrot" line is used as a reduction on what an LLM truly is. I firmly believe that LLMs are stochastic parrots and also that humans are too. To the point where I actually think even consciousness itself is a next-token predictor. Where the industry is headed - multi-modal models. This really I think is the remaining frontier of LLM Human parity. I also have a 15 month old son. It's totally obvio…

I'm in the same boat. It feels wrong to contemplate that our consciousness might not be a magical independent agent with supernatural powers, but is rather an emergent property of complex-but-deterministic actions and reactions. Like it somehow diminishes us. Reduces us to cogs and levers and such. But I can't imagine how it could be otherwise, though. I'm still baffled by the existence of qualia, phenomenology, etc.…

I don't think we're ever going to arrive at a satisfactory answer for where qualia comes from, for much the same reason it's impossible to test the quantum suicide hypothesis without actually putting yourself through it enough times to convince yourself statistically.

The only "real" evidence of qualia you have is your own running stream of it; you can try to carefully pour yourself, like a jug of water, into the body of another, and if you go carefully enough you may even succeed to carry that qualia-stream with you. But it's also possible that you pour too quickly, or that you get bumped in the middle of the pouring, and poof - the qualia is just gone. You're left with a p-zombie.

Or maybe not. Maybe it comes right back as soon as the transfer is done, like the final piece of a torrented movie. The important part is you won't know unless you try - and past success never guarantees future success. Maybe you just got lucky on the first pour.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#48

Post by TaylorAlexander »

ImHereToVote wrote: post #46
Mattasher wrote: post #8

Humans have a long history of comparing ourselves, and the universe, to our latest technological advancement. We used to be glorified clocks (as was the universe), then we were automatons, then computers, then NPC's, and now AI's (in particular LLM's). Which BTW I don't think is a completely absurd comparison, see https://mattasher.substack.com/p/ais-killer-app

Except LLM's are built on neural networks. That are based on how neurons work. The first tech that actually copies aspects of us.

sigh

Neural networks are not based on how neurons work. They do not copy aspects of us. They call them neural networks because they are sort of conceptually like networks of neurons in the brain but they’re so different as to make false the statement that they are based on neurons.

Re: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

#50

Post by Zambyte »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #19
LASR wrote: post #5

Often the "stochastic parrot" line is used as a reduction on what an LLM truly is. I firmly believe that LLMs are stochastic parrots and also that humans are too. To the point where I actually think even consciousness itself is a next-token predictor. Where the industry is headed - multi-modal models. This really I think is the remaining frontier of LLM Human parity. I also have a 15 month old son. It's totally obvio…

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.)

Lossy compression + interpolated decompression = new information
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