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The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

newyorker.com

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Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#501

Post by emodendroket »

hattmall wrote: post #439
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Having seen LLMs so many times produce coherent, sensible and valid chains of reasoning to diagnose issues and bugs in software I work on, I am at this point in absolutely no doubt that they are thinking. If one could write a quadrillion-line python script of nothing but if/elif/else statements nested 1 million blocks deep that seemingly parsed your questions and produced seemingly coherent, sensible, valid "chains…

I write software that is far less complex and I consider it to be "thinking" while it is working through multiple possible permutations of output and selecting the best one. Unless you rigidly define thinking, processing, computing, it's reasonable to use them interchangeably.

To borrow a line from Dijkstra, the claim seems a bit like saying that a submarine is swimming.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#502

Post by Zardoz84 »

simulator5g wrote: post #442
tkz1312 wrote: post #274

Having seen LLMs so many times produce coherent, sensible and valid chains of reasoning to diagnose issues and bugs in software I work on, I am at this point in absolutely no doubt that they are thinking. Consciousness or self awareness is of course a different question, and ones whose answer seems less clear right now. Knee jerk dismissing the evidence in front of your eyes because you find it unbelievable that we c…

Having seen photocopiers so many times produce coherent, sensible, and valid chains of words on a page, I am at this point in absolutely no doubt that they are thinking.

I saw Dr. Abuse producing coherent, sensible and valid chains of words, running on a 386.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#503

Post by efitz »

simulator5g wrote: post #442
tkz1312 wrote: post #274

Having seen LLMs so many times produce coherent, sensible and valid chains of reasoning to diagnose issues and bugs in software I work on, I am at this point in absolutely no doubt that they are thinking. Consciousness or self awareness is of course a different question, and ones whose answer seems less clear right now. Knee jerk dismissing the evidence in front of your eyes because you find it unbelievable that we c…

Having seen photocopiers so many times produce coherent, sensible, and valid chains of words on a page, I am at this point in absolutely no doubt that they are thinking.

https://www.theregister.com/2013/08/06/xerox_copier_flaw_mea...

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#504

Post by bongodongobob »

bopbopbop7 wrote: post #420
bongodongobob wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ridiculous. I use it daily and get meaningful, quality results. Learn to use the tools.

They are only meaningful and quality if you don’t know what you’re doing. But please do show some of this meaningful and quality work so I can be proven wrong.

See my comment to parent. One example of many. You can say "Oh, well, it just sounds like your company needs better tools and processes, you don't really need AI for any of that. You should just invest in a tool for this and monitor that and have managment prioritize..."

Yeah, I know, yet here we are and it saves me boatloads of time.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#505

Post by rhubarbtree »

JPLeRouzic wrote: post #443

Citation: " These days, her favorite question to ask people is “What is the deepest insight you have gained from ChatGPT? ” “ My own answer,” she said, “is that I think it radically demystifies thinking ”

I think it radically demystifies _language generation_ and it seems this is part of the brain’s function too.

So we know how to create a part of the brain using simple techniques, which suggests that intelligence might not be so magical as we think. But thinking, well we still don’t know what that is yet.

It feels like, hey, there is a route to machine intelligence.

The big question is how long is that route. Do we have the ingredients to build a brain with the right architecture? And I’d say “nope”. But I’m not so confident that with half a dozen breakthroughs we’d get there. How many years per breakthrough? Well, it’s been nearly a decade since the last one. So 60 years on that count. But more money is going in and there may be some compounding effect, but it should at least be unlikely someone suddenly produces AGI next year. More likely we stairstep and with each step the estimated window should tighten.

But I really don’t think we know what thinking is.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#506

Post by rhubarbtree »

yalogin wrote: post #264

I don't see how we make the jump from current LLMs to AGI. May be it's my limited understanding of the research but current LLMs seem to not have any properties that indicate AGI. Would love to get thoughts from someone that understands it

Possible candidates we are missing: online learning, embodiment, self direction, long term memory and associated processing (compression etc), the ability to quickly think in tensor space.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#507

Post by bongodongobob »

9rx wrote: post #499
bongodongobob wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ridiculous. I use it daily and get meaningful, quality results. Learn to use the tools.

> Learn to use the tools. Thing is, you wouldn't need to learn to use the tools if the tool was able to think. A thinking entity is able to adapt to other parties who lack learnings. This confirms that LLMs are little more than fancy RNGs. > I use it daily and get meaningful, quality results. That's what the tea leaf readers say too, funnily enough.

Yeah, this is what LLMs might say too, funny enough.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#508

Post by 9rx »

bongodongobob wrote: post #507
9rx wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Learn to use the tools. Thing is, you wouldn't need to learn to use the tools if the tool was able to think. A thinking entity is able to adapt to other parties who lack learnings. This confirms that LLMs are little more than fancy RNGs. > I use it daily and get meaningful, quality results. That's what the tea leaf readers say too, funnily enough.

Yeah, this is what LLMs might say too, funny enough.

The probability is in its favour.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#509

Post by veegee »

tkz1312 wrote: post #274

Having seen LLMs so many times produce coherent, sensible and valid chains of reasoning to diagnose issues and bugs in software I work on, I am at this point in absolutely no doubt that they are thinking. Consciousness or self awareness is of course a different question, and ones whose answer seems less clear right now. Knee jerk dismissing the evidence in front of your eyes because you find it unbelievable that we c…

[dead]

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#510

Post by yawpitch »

tkz1312 wrote: post #274

Having seen LLMs so many times produce coherent, sensible and valid chains of reasoning to diagnose issues and bugs in software I work on, I am at this point in absolutely no doubt that they are thinking. Consciousness or self awareness is of course a different question, and ones whose answer seems less clear right now. Knee jerk dismissing the evidence in front of your eyes because you find it unbelievable that we c…

You’re assuming the issues and bugs you’ve been addressing don’t already exist, already encoding human chain of reasoning, in the training data.
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